Schooled in persistence Kozol still national conscience on education
From: JERRY-P-BECKER-BIG-L@listserv.siu.edu
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From the Boston Globe, Sunday, August 19, 2007. Seehttp://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/19/schooled_in_persistence/
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THE OBSERVER
Schooled in persistence Kozol still national conscience on education
By Sam AllisJonathan
Kozol tells this haunting little story. He and afifth-grader in the South Bronx nicknamed Pineapple are standingtogether on the roof of a building gazing south toward Oz-likeManhattan. "What's it like over there?" she asks him. "Over there where people like you grew up."
If you wonder why Kozol pursues his crusade for fairness in publiceducation, that's the answer. In his books and classroom research,Kozol spotlights, relentlessly, the things we'd rather forget, likethe shameful inequality in funding and educational opportunity amongschool districts across the nation.
Next month, it will have been 43 years since he first stepped into a Boston public school as a young teacher to discover, then uncover,scandalous conditions there. He has been our national conscience andscold about public education ever since. If he didn't exist, we'dhave to invent him.
Kozol is as out of vogue in education today as John O'Hara is infiction. He still believes in integrated schools. His answers to theproblems of public education cost large money, and he thinks thefederal government should run the whole thing.
He is better at identifying problems than solving them, which can bemaddening. That said, his anger is bracing: "I'm sick of Democrats genuflecting to an agenda of Republicans since Ronald Reagan came in."
He still leads with his heart. He sees red when the rest of us seepink. His emotionally powered arguments never change, which is bothhis strength and weakness. To fans, he is the patron saint ofteachers, a man who will not compromise his values. To others, he isa relic of the '60s, a man given to the cri de coeur over economicreality. A man rather like Ralph Nader without the ego disorder.
Kozol doesn't look 70, but he is. He still carries a whiff of campus about him: Corduroy jeans, blue sneakers, floppy brown hair. He has been on a partial fast since the Supreme Court in late June all but banned voluntary school desegregation plans -- a decision he bitterlyopposes. He is a slight man to begin with and had no fat to giveaway. His belt is working overtime to keep his pants up. I tell him he should eat."
I come back here and fast to recharge my batteries," he says abouthis monastic life alone in a small house in a small community northof Boston. "It enables me to transcend the depression of political disappointment.
"Kozol came to prominence in 1967 with his classic "Death At An EarlyAge," which won the National Book Award, about his first yearteaching in a horrid Roxbury elementary school. (He was fired forintroducing a Langston Hughes poem to his kids.)
His new book, "Letters To A Young Teacher," offers support and counsel to a new teacher in a Boston elementary school who, like him, faced the brutal challenges of inner city classrooms.He knows local property taxes cannot shoulder the increased burdenshe demands, like cutting classroom size, and expects states to takeover public education at some point. "Eventually, not in my lifetime,states will cede education to the government," he predicts. "Not forsocial justice but national survival."
He is appalled at what's happened to education since he broke into teaching:
"Separate but equal remains the shameful order of the day almosteverywhere. The Rehnquist court progressively dismantled Brown [the1954 Supreme Court Decision outlawing racially segregated schools].
Now even voluntary integration programs are constitutionally suspect."The nation has not simply reverted to Brown but in a sense back toPlessy [the 1896 decision permitting segregated schools]," hecontinues. "We are more segregated than ever. I believe the WarrenCourt was right. Dr. King was right. Thurgood Marshall was right. Thenotion of separate but equal is the oldest failed experiment in USsocial history."
Love him or hate him, few whites today dare as he does to challengethe position held by many black urban families that good neighborhoodschools, even if they are overwhelmingly of color, are the answer. He fumes at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's caustic take on integration: "He says, 'Our kids aren't going to get any smarter just because they sit next to white kids. That's an insult to us. Justgive us good black schools, good black role models, more money. You folks out in Wayland, don't worry. We won't ruin any garden parties out there.' "It's the cognitive isolation in de facto segregated urban schools that bothers Kozol. "
It's not a matter of assimilating white culture,but gaining access to mainstream opportunity," he says. "To be in aschool where some of the kids know that Belgium is part of Europe,that Spain is that odd-shaped thing south of France.
"The thing with integration is not to compare it to perfection but toapartheid," he adds.
On Sept. 19, Kozol will discuss his new book in a forum at Harvard'sMemorial Church.
He'll be surrounded that evening by his people -- teachers, students, other true believers of all stripes. He will paddle with the tide once again.
-----------------
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.
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From the Boston Globe, Sunday, August 19, 2007. Seehttp://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/19/schooled_in_persistence/
*******************
THE OBSERVER
Schooled in persistence Kozol still national conscience on education
By Sam AllisJonathan
Kozol tells this haunting little story. He and afifth-grader in the South Bronx nicknamed Pineapple are standingtogether on the roof of a building gazing south toward Oz-likeManhattan. "What's it like over there?" she asks him. "Over there where people like you grew up."
If you wonder why Kozol pursues his crusade for fairness in publiceducation, that's the answer. In his books and classroom research,Kozol spotlights, relentlessly, the things we'd rather forget, likethe shameful inequality in funding and educational opportunity amongschool districts across the nation.
Next month, it will have been 43 years since he first stepped into a Boston public school as a young teacher to discover, then uncover,scandalous conditions there. He has been our national conscience andscold about public education ever since. If he didn't exist, we'dhave to invent him.
Kozol is as out of vogue in education today as John O'Hara is infiction. He still believes in integrated schools. His answers to theproblems of public education cost large money, and he thinks thefederal government should run the whole thing.
He is better at identifying problems than solving them, which can bemaddening. That said, his anger is bracing: "I'm sick of Democrats genuflecting to an agenda of Republicans since Ronald Reagan came in."
He still leads with his heart. He sees red when the rest of us seepink. His emotionally powered arguments never change, which is bothhis strength and weakness. To fans, he is the patron saint ofteachers, a man who will not compromise his values. To others, he isa relic of the '60s, a man given to the cri de coeur over economicreality. A man rather like Ralph Nader without the ego disorder.
Kozol doesn't look 70, but he is. He still carries a whiff of campus about him: Corduroy jeans, blue sneakers, floppy brown hair. He has been on a partial fast since the Supreme Court in late June all but banned voluntary school desegregation plans -- a decision he bitterlyopposes. He is a slight man to begin with and had no fat to giveaway. His belt is working overtime to keep his pants up. I tell him he should eat."
I come back here and fast to recharge my batteries," he says abouthis monastic life alone in a small house in a small community northof Boston. "It enables me to transcend the depression of political disappointment.
"Kozol came to prominence in 1967 with his classic "Death At An EarlyAge," which won the National Book Award, about his first yearteaching in a horrid Roxbury elementary school. (He was fired forintroducing a Langston Hughes poem to his kids.)
His new book, "Letters To A Young Teacher," offers support and counsel to a new teacher in a Boston elementary school who, like him, faced the brutal challenges of inner city classrooms.He knows local property taxes cannot shoulder the increased burdenshe demands, like cutting classroom size, and expects states to takeover public education at some point. "Eventually, not in my lifetime,states will cede education to the government," he predicts. "Not forsocial justice but national survival."
He is appalled at what's happened to education since he broke into teaching:
"Separate but equal remains the shameful order of the day almosteverywhere. The Rehnquist court progressively dismantled Brown [the1954 Supreme Court Decision outlawing racially segregated schools].
Now even voluntary integration programs are constitutionally suspect."The nation has not simply reverted to Brown but in a sense back toPlessy [the 1896 decision permitting segregated schools]," hecontinues. "We are more segregated than ever. I believe the WarrenCourt was right. Dr. King was right. Thurgood Marshall was right. Thenotion of separate but equal is the oldest failed experiment in USsocial history."
Love him or hate him, few whites today dare as he does to challengethe position held by many black urban families that good neighborhoodschools, even if they are overwhelmingly of color, are the answer. He fumes at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's caustic take on integration: "He says, 'Our kids aren't going to get any smarter just because they sit next to white kids. That's an insult to us. Justgive us good black schools, good black role models, more money. You folks out in Wayland, don't worry. We won't ruin any garden parties out there.' "It's the cognitive isolation in de facto segregated urban schools that bothers Kozol. "
It's not a matter of assimilating white culture,but gaining access to mainstream opportunity," he says. "To be in aschool where some of the kids know that Belgium is part of Europe,that Spain is that odd-shaped thing south of France.
"The thing with integration is not to compare it to perfection but toapartheid," he adds.
On Sept. 19, Kozol will discuss his new book in a forum at Harvard'sMemorial Church.
He'll be surrounded that evening by his people -- teachers, students, other true believers of all stripes. He will paddle with the tide once again.
-----------------
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com.
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