Jonathan Kozol
Personal Information
Description
Jonathan Kozol is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist best known for his work towards reforming American public schools. Upon graduating from Harvard, he received a Rhodes scholarship. After returning to the United States, Kozol became a teacher in the Boston Public Schools, until he was fired for teaching a Langston Hughes poem. Kozol has held two Guggenheim Fellowships, has twice been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and has also received fellowships from the Field and Ford Foundations. Most recently, Kozol has founded and is running a non-profit called Education Action. The group is dedicated to grassroots organizing of teachers across the country who wish to push back against NCLB and the most recent Supreme Court decision on desegregation, and to help create a single, excellent, unified system of American public schools.
Books
The shame of the nation
"This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable." Visiting nearly 60 public schools, Kozol finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, the segregation of black children is at a level not seen since 1968. Few of these students know any white children. Second, discipline modeled on methods traditionally used in prisons is targeted at black and Hispanic children. And third, liberal education in our inner-city schools has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction. Kozol pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, and offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.--From publisher description.
Ordinary Resurrections
In this national bestseller, now in paperback, the acclaimed author of Savage Inequalities recounts the lessons he has learned from the struggles and unlikely triumphs of children in the South Bronx, one of America's most impoverished neighborhoods.
Children of the revolution
Ex-college lecturer Gavin Miller is found dead; his distorted body strewn across a disused railway track near his home. There's no sign of a struggle, and no concrete evidence except for one distinguishing package: 5,000 pounds in cash, tucked inside the man's pocket. But when DCI Banks delves into Miller's past, he uncovers a troubled existence tarnished by accusations of abuse and misconduct which throws up an array of puzzling questions. What really occurred at the college where the victim used to teach? How was he embroiled in political activism at Essex University, over 40 years ago? And what links him to an upstanding pillar of the community, who also harbours a dark secret from her past?
The fume of poppies
THE ANATOMY OF A LOVE AFFAIR "In that year at Cambridge I began to realize what it means to make love. When you make love you are molding it by what you are doing, forming it in your fingers and pressing it between your limbs. There love is born at last-and only there. "That is why I do not understand when I hear people talk of love that knows no flesh. I do not think there is any such thing as that." THE FUME OF POPPIES is the youthfully radiant story of two young Americans "who are able to love each other as enthusiastically and as romantically as they please." THE NEW YORKER