Jonathan Kozol Essay ⋆ Education Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Jonathan Kozol’s first book, Death at an Early Age, was published in 1967. It was a damning indictment of American education and its treatment of minority children. In it, Kozol, a Harvard graduate, describes his experience teaching in, and being fired from, an economically poor and segregated Boston public school. Functioning largely outside of the academic establishment, Kozol has spent the forty years since the publication of Death at an Early Age as a critical observer of public education—primarily concerned with issues of racial and social inequality.

In works such as Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (1991) and The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America (2005), Kozol addresses the consistently unequal funding provided to urban versus suburban schools. The research for his books has been based primarily on careful observation and interviews. Through the information he collects, he creates powerful narratives about the lives of the children and the conditions of the schools in which they learn.

Kozol has been criticized for a lack of objectivity in his research and for not having academic and research credentials. Although a polemical writer, he is, in fact, a powerful and thoughtful voice who has focused carefully and systematically on structural inequalities in American culture and its schools. He may be criticized for occasional inconsistencies in his arguments, but he has documented and examined throughout his work the unequal treatment of the poor in our schools, and has tried through reason and moral suasion to point out the need for the United States to develop a more just and equitable educational system.

Bibliography:

Kozol, J. (1967). Death at an early age. New York: Penguin.
Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America’s schools. New York: Crown.
Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown.

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