Quotes by Jonathan Kozol

“Charity isnt a good substitute for justice”

“Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.”

“Lets 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 whats 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.”

“These are children whom this nation does not truly value and of whom, despite our presidents rhetoric of high expectations, we in fact expect so little that we will not let them go to the same schools our [white] children attend. The kind of schooling that we give to children is the most important determinant of their future options in life.”

“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 Ill feel my life has been worth it.”

“I do feel heartsick that the inequalities, if anything, are worse today than they were when I wrote Savage Inequalities, and that segregation is now back at the point where it was when I published my first book,”

“Theres a reason why politicians and the pedagogic establishment keep churning out these lists of new how to fix it plans. Its because they dont dare speak about the central point. It is not that we dont know what works in public education.... All we have to do is go out and visit Glencoe, Ill., Scarsdale, N.Y., or any of the wealthiest districts in California and we find out right away.”

“Apartheid does not happen spontaneously, like bad weather conditions.”

“we do not have the things you have ... Can you help us?”

“The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”

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.

I do not know very much about painting, but I know enough to know that the Art Teacher did not know much about it either and that, furthermore, she did not know or care anything at all about the way in which you can destroy a human being. Stephen, in many ways already dying, died a second and third and fourth and final death before her anger.

I urge you to be teachers so that you can join with children as the co-collaborators in a plot to build a little place of ecstasy and poetry and gentle joy

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.

There is a belief advanced today, and in some cases by conservative black authors, that poor children and particularly black children should not be allowed to hear too much about these matters. If they learn how much less they are getting than rich children, we are told, this knowledge may induce them to regard themselves as victims, and such victim-thinking, it is argued, may then undermine their capacity to profit from whatever opportunities may actually exist. But this is a matter of psychology-or strategy-and not reality. The matter, in any case, is academic since most adolescents in the poorest neighborhoods learn very soon that they are getting less than children in the wealthier school districts. They see suburban schools on television and they see them when they travel for athletic competitions. It is a waste of time to worry whether we should tell them something they could tell to us. About injustice, most poor children in American cannot be fooled.

Many suburban legislators representing affluent school districts use terms such as sinkhole when opposing funding for Chicagos children. We cant keep throwing money, said Governor Thompson in 1988, into a black hole. The Chicago Tribune notes that, when this phrase is used, people hasten to explain that it is not intended as a slur against the race of many of Chicagos children. But race, says the Tribune, never is far from the surface...

The idea that private money can solve our problems is very dangerous. Ultimately thats charity. Charity is a lovely thing. Ill never turn it down. But charity is not a substitute for systematic justice and equality.

I feel, in the end, as if everything Ive done has been a failure.

By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools and keeping them there.

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. Its blasphemy.