Jonathan Kozol Quotes About Teachers

Quotes about: Teachers

• I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Education, Teacher, Hate

• Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the military or floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They don't yet know what's in the box. They don't know if it's breakable.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Children, Military

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope”, p.10, Crown

• Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Wonderful, Drill Sergeant

• The future teachers I try to recruit are those show have refused to let themselves be neutered in this way, either in their private lives or in the lives that they intend to lead in school. When they begin to teach, they come into their classrooms with a sense of affirmation of the goodness and the fullness of existence, with a sense of satisfaction in discovering the unexpected in their students, and with a longing to surprise the world, their kids, even themselves, with their capacity to leave each place they've been ... a better and more joyful place than it was when they entered it.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, School, Kids

• I write books to change the world. Perhaps I can only change one little piece of that world. But if I can empower teachers and good citizens to give these children, who are the poorest of the poor, the same opportunity we give our own kids, then I'll feel my life has been worth it.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Children, Book

• Well, teachers have been profoundly demoralized in recent years and are often treated with contempt by politicians. There's a great deal of reckless rhetoric in Washington about the mediocrity of the teaching profession - and I don't find that to be true at all.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Teaching, Years

• I encourage teachers to speak in their own voices. Don't use the gibberish of the standards writers.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Voice, Use

• On Mondays and Fridays in early May, nearly 18,000 children-the equivalent of all the elementary students in suburban Glencoe, Wilmette, Glenview, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Deerfield, Highland Park and Evanston-are assigned to classes with no teacher.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Friday, Teacher, Monday

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.65, Broadway Books

• My goal is to connect the young teachers to the old, to reignite their sense of struggle.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Struggle, Goal

• The contrasts between what is spent today to educate a child in the poorest New York City neighborhoods, where teacher salaries are often even lower than the city averages, and spending levels in the wealthiest suburban areas are daunting challenges to any hope New Yorkers might retain that even semblances of fairness still prevail.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, New York, Children

• Children, of course, don't understand at first that they are being cheated. They come to school with a degree of faith and optimism, and they often seem to thrive during the first few years. It is sometimes not until the third grade that their teachers start to see the warning signs of failure. By the fourth grade many children see it too.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Children, School

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.70, Broadway Books

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