Jonathan Kozol Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• False hope is worse than despair.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Change, Despair, Human Nature

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Use, Fund

  11 Copy quote

• A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Dream, Real, People

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• The recklessness with which we sacrifice our sense of decency to maximize profit in the factory farming process sets a pattern for cruelty to our own kind.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Sacrifice, Patterns, Kind

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Nationally, overwhelmingly non-white schools receive $1,000 less per pupil than overwhelmingly white schools.

  Jonathan Kozol

  School, White, Pupils

  6 Copy quote

• The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Dream, Kings, Teaching

  52 Copy quote

• During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.

  Jonathan Kozol

  School, Black And White, Achievement

  53 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Growing Up, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh

  The Education World Interview, www.educationworld.com.

  32 Copy quote

• If you could lead through testing, the U.S. would lead the world in all education categories. When are people going to understand you don't fatten your lambs by weighing them?

  Jonathan Kozol

  Education, Math, People

  5 Copy quote

• I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Christmas, People, Charity

  4 Copy quote

• Now, I don't expect what I write to change things. I think I write now simply as a witness. This is how it is. This is what we have done. This is what we have permitted.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Writing, Thinking, Done

  4 Copy quote

• We know that segregation is evil. We know that the sickest children should not go to the worst hospitals.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Children, Evil, Segregation

  4 Copy quote

• The answers I remember longest are the ones that answer questions that I didn't think of asking.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Thinking, Asking, Answers

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope”, p.32, Crown

  4 Copy quote

• I do get scared about the physical danger from drug dealers. But it's not in the same league as the danger I feel eating an $80 lunch with my privileged friends to discuss hunger and poverty. That's when my soul feels imperiled.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Courage, Adversity, Humility

  14 Copy quote

• We continue, however, to write about important people, prize-winning people, blacks of grandeur, women of great fire, fame or wit. We do not write about ordinary people.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Educational, Writing, Winning

  Jonathan Kozol (1993). “On Being a Teacher”, Oneworld Publications Limited

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• The primary victims of Katrina, those who were given the least help by the government, those rescued last or not at all, were overwhelmingly people of color largely hidden from the mainstream of society.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Government, Color, People

  7 Copy quote

• The cause of homelessness is lack of housing.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Causes, Homelessness, Housing

  Jonathan Kozol (2011). “Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America”, p.14, Broadway Books

  24 Copy quote

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