Jonathan Kozol Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

Books Challenges Children Education Giving Goals Justice

I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling us what actually goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, School, Destiny

Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.12, Broadway Books
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
There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Kids, Eight

Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.53, Broadway Books
Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go not to the child in the greatest need but to the children of the highest bidder-the child of parents who, more frequently than not, have also enjoyed the same abundance when they were schoolchildren.

Jonathan Kozol

Money, Children, Parent

Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.97, Broadway Books
More money is put into prisons than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what is more precious to us than our own children? We are going to build a lot more prisons if we do not deal with the schools and their inequalities.

Jonathan Kozol

Education, Suicide, Children
Young children give us glimpses of some things that are eternal.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Giving, Glimpse

Jonathan Kozol (2007). “Letters to a Young Teacher”, p.45, Broadway Books
Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Blessing, Needs
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
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
Let's concede that we have decided to let our children grow up in two separate nations, and lead two separate kinds of lives. If, on the other hand, we have the courage to rise to this challenge to name what's happening within our inner-city schools, then we also need the courage to be activist and go out and fight like hell to change it.

Jonathan Kozol

Growing Up, Children, School
But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum, removing the arts and music, and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child.

Jonathan Kozol

Art, Children, People
Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.

Jonathan Kozol

Jobs, Children, White
People rarely speak of children; you hear of 'cohort groups' and 'standard variations,' but you don't hear much of boys who miss their cats or 6-year-olds who have to struggle with potato balls.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Struggle, Cat
Placing the burden on the individual to break down doors in finding better education for a child is attractive to conservatives because it reaffirms their faith in individual ambition and autonomy. But to ask an individual to break down doors that we have chained and bolted in advance of his arrival is unfair.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Ambition, Doors

Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.76, Broadway Books
The first ten, twelve or fifteen years of life are excavated of inherent moral worth in order to accommodate a regimen of basic training for the adult years that many of the poorest children may not even live to know.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Order, Years

Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope”, p.166, Crown
If there are amazing graces on this earth, I believe that they are these good children sent to us by God and not yet soiled by the knowledge that their nation does not love them.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Believe, Grace
As damaging as the obsessive emphasis on testing often proves to be for kids in general, I believe that the effects are still more harmful in those schools in which the resources available to help the children learn the skills that will be measured by these tests are fewest, the scores they get are predictably the lowest, and the strategies resorted to by principals in order to escape the odium attaching to a disappointing set of numbers tend to be the most severe.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Believe, Kids

Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.110, Broadway Books
Children sometimes understand things that most grown-ups do not see.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Sometimes

Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation”, p.126, Broadway Books
It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, School, Years
Unlike these powerful grown-ups, children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Powerful, Political Opinions

Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.12, Broadway Books
Competitive skills are desperately needed by poor children in America, and realistic recognition of the economic roles that they may someday have an opportunity to fill is obviously important, too. But there is more to life, and there ought to be much more to childhood, than readiness for economic functions.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Opportunity, Skills
We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, Evil, Segregation
But what is now encompassed by the one word (“school”) are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve entirely different roles. Both are needed for our nation’s governance. But children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed. The former are given the imaginative range to mobilize ideas for economic growth; the latter are provided with the discipline to do the narrow tasks the first group will prescribe.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, School, Ideas

Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools”, p.212, Broadway Books
Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel benevolent. We're not nazis; we're nice people. We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue. Meanwhile, we put other people's children into an economic and environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to ourselves, "Well, I hope that they don't kill each other off. But if they do, it's not my fault.

Jonathan Kozol

Summer, Children, Nice
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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Born: September 5, 1936
Occupation: Writer
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