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" The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the thrill of victory. "
Jonathan Kozol
Moral
Believe
Know
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" In the book, I write about children in first grade who were taught to read by reading want ads. They learned to write by writing job applications. Imagine what would happen if anyone tried to do that to children in a predominantly white suburban school. "
Jonathan Kozol
Reading
Children
Book
" I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older. "
Jonathan Kozol
Old
Books
Classroom
" At present, black children are more segregated in their public schools than at any time since 1968. In the inner-city schools I visit, minority children typically represent 95 percent to 99 percent of class enrollment. "
Jonathan Kozol
Time
Class
Children
" Apartheid does not happen spontaneously, like bad weather conditions. "
Jonathan Kozol
Weather
Bad
Bad Weather
" Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state. "
Jonathan Kozol
State
Teachers
Wonderful
" You need massive recruitment to tell the poorest of the poor what is possible. "
Jonathan Kozol
Need
Possible
You
" I hope to be remembered for writing books about social justice that also have enough aesthetic value to endure as works of literature. "
Jonathan Kozol
Value
Writing
Enough
" If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream. "
Jonathan Kozol
Los Angeles
Today
You
" Congress has an opportunity to take advantage of the opening created by Justice Kennedy later this year when it reauthorizes the federal No Child Left Behind Act. "
Jonathan Kozol
Opening
Opportunity
Child
" Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today. "
Jonathan Kozol
Work
Will
Today
" Public school was never in business to produce Thoreau. It is in business to produce a man like Richard Nixon and, even more, a population like the one which could elect him. "
Jonathan Kozol
School
Business
Never
" Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance. "
Jonathan Kozol
Back
Education
Racial
" I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education. "
Jonathan Kozol
Private
Public
Use
" Businessmen are not in business to lose customers, and schools do not exist to free their clients from the agencies of mass persuasion. School and media possess a productive monopoly upon the imagination of a child. "
Jonathan Kozol
Imagination
Child
School
" The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King. "
Jonathan Kozol
Difference
Dream
King
" As a matter of record, New York City spends a higher portion of its budget on instruction and associated costs within the schools themselves than any of the other 100 largest districts in the nation. "
Jonathan Kozol
City
Budget
Matter
" What I tell these young people is, the world is not as dangerous as the older generation would like you to believe. Anyone I know who has ever taken a risk and lost a job has ended up getting a better one two years later. "
Jonathan Kozol
Generation
People
Believe
" A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this, yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly, and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom. "
Jonathan Kozol
Experience
Blame
Great
" I don't know if anything I write will endure, but I do try to write it as a narrative that will not only challenge but also entice the reader into the lives of children. "
Jonathan Kozol
Endure
Know
Try
" It's sad that some people who have one exciting moment spend the rest of their lives rehashing it. "
Jonathan Kozol
Moment
Some People
Sad
" No human being who wants to read and own a book should ever have to go on a bended knee to get it. "
Jonathan Kozol
Go
Book
Own
" Competitive skills are desperately needed by poor children in America, and realistic recognition of the economic roles that they may someday have an opportunity to fill is obviously important, too. But there is more to life, and there ought to be much more to childhood, than readiness for economic functions. "
Jonathan Kozol
Opportunity
Children
Childhood
" The primary victims of Katrina, those who were given the least help by the government, those rescued last or not at all, were overwhelmingly people of color largely hidden from the mainstream of society. "
Jonathan Kozol
Color
People
Government
" It is our nation which is blind, and needs our prayers. "
Jonathan Kozol
Prayers
Needs
Nation
" Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco. "
Jonathan Kozol
Village
Believe
Wealth
" The fact that a crime might have been committed with impunity in the past may make it seem more familiar and less gruesome, but surely does not give it any greater legitimacy. "
Jonathan Kozol
Crime
Past
Fact
" I think a lot of people don't have any idea of how deeply segregated our schools have become all over again. Most textbooks are not honest in what they teach our high school students. "
Jonathan Kozol
Think
High School
School
" Nationally, overwhelmingly non-white schools receive $1,000 less per pupil than overwhelmingly white schools. "
Jonathan Kozol
Receive
Than
Per
" The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are children of the rich, who grow up to privilege and anesthetic oblivion to pain - and who then use the servants produced by ghetto schools. "
Jonathan Kozol
Achieving
Work
Rich
" Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. "
Jonathan Kozol
Win
Battles
Big