(NAME-MCE) Jonathan Kozol - new book

[Anselmo Villanueva]

Jonathan Kozol releases new book, rails against Supreme Court decision
In the 43 years since Jonathan Kozol, now 70, began advocating for
better integration of urban schools, he believes things have gotten
worse. "We are more segregated than ever," said Kozol, who has a new
book, "Letters to a Young Teacher."

Complete article below.

http://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 Allis, Globe Columnist  |  August 19, 2007

Jonathan Kozol tells this haunting little story. He and a fifth-grader
in the South Bronx nicknamed Pineapple are standing together on the
roof of a building gazing south toward Oz-like Manhattan. "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 public
education, that's the answer. In his books and classroom research,
Kozol spotlights, relentlessly, the things we'd rather forget, like
the shameful inequality in funding and educational opportunity among
school 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 and
scold about public education ever since. If he didn't exist, we'd have
to invent him.

Kozol is as out of vogue in education today as John O'Hara is in
fiction. He still believes in integrated schools. His answers to the
problems of public education cost large money, and he thinks the
federal government should run the whole thing.

He is better at identifying problems than solving them, which can be
maddening. 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 see
pink. His emotionally powered arguments never change, which is both
his strength and weakness. To fans, he is the patron saint of
teachers, a man who will not compromise his values. To others, he is a
relic of the '60s, a man given to the cri de coeur over economic
reality. 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 bitterly
opposes. He is a slight man to begin with and had no fat to give away.
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 about
his monastic life alone in a small house in a small community north of
Boston. "It enables me to transcend the depression of political
disappointment."

Kozol came to prominence in 1967 with his classic "Death At An Early
Age," which won the National Book Award, about his first year teaching
in a horrid Roxbury elementary school. (He was fired for introducing 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 burdens he
demands, like cutting classroom size, and expects states to take over
public education at some point. "Eventually, not in my lifetime,
states will cede education to the government," he predicts. "Not for
social 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 almost
everywhere. The Rehnquist court progressively dismantled Brown [the
1954 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 to
Plessy [the 1896 decision permitting segregated schools]," he
continues. "We are more segregated than ever. I believe the Warren
Court was right. Dr. King was right. Thurgood Marshall was right. The
notion of separate but equal is the oldest failed experiment in US
social history."

Love him or hate him, few whites today dare as he does to challenge
the position held by many black urban families that good neighborhood
schools, 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. Just give
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 a school
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 to
apartheid," he adds.

On Sept. 19, Kozol will discuss his new book in a forum at Harvard's
Memorial 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 at globe.com.