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Top 10 Remarquable Facts about Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol is an American writer, progressive activist, and educator, best known for his books on public education in the United States. He remains one of the nation’s most eloquent and outspoken advocates for equality and racial justice in our nation’s schools.

He was born on September 5, 1936, in Boston, Massachusetts to Harry Kozol and Ruth (Massell) Kozol. As a teenager, Jonathan Kozol attended Noble and Greenough School. In 1954, he graduated from the school. After graduating, he went on to enroll at Harvard University.

For more than four decades focused his writings and efforts on ending illiteracy, improving the economic conditions of the poverty-stricken, and pricking the consciences of affluent Americans.

Below, we explore the top 10 remarquable facts about Jonathan Kozol;

1. Kozol is of Jewish descent

Kippah, traditionally worn by Jewish males – Wikipedia

A Jew is one who is a descendant of the ancient Israelite ethnic group, and therefore is a member of the Jewish people. This includes those who may not be observantly religious, or may be irreligious altogether, and claim an overtly cultural connection.

Jonathan Kozol was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a traditional middle-class, Jewish family. His mother was a social worker and his father was a psychiatrist and neurologist.

2. His father was a well renowned neurologist

Heiress Patty Hearst – Wikipedia

Harry Kozol, the father of Jonathan Kozol, was an American neurologist who helped establish the fields of forensic psychiatry and neuropsychiatry. Kozol senior graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.

He analyzed several well-known figures, including playwright Eugene O’Neill the Boston Strangler, and heiress Patty Hearst. Harry established a treatment center for sex offenders. At the center, the first of its kind, he conducted pioneering studies of offenders’ behavior after release.

In later years, Kozol suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and his son wrote a book about the family’s experience, The Theft of Memory.

Dr. Kozol died at 102 years at Massachusetts General Hospital of complications from heart failure.

3. He was a “sharp” student

Yale University – Flickr

Jonathan graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in 1958 with an A.B. in English literature.

Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system usually has three levels of honor: cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude. With summa cum laude, meaning “with the highest praise”.

He was also awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford. It is considered among the most prestigious international scholarship programmes in the world.

4. He dropped out of university

Magdalen College, Oxford – Flickr

His great grades at Harvard earned him a Rhodes scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. Magdalen College, Oxford is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete.

He did not, however, complete his scholarship, deciding instead to go to Â鶹APP to learn to write fiction and nonfiction from experienced authors such as William Styron, Richard Wright, and others who were living in Â鶹APP at the time.

This proved fruitful as has received many praises and awards for his writing including two Guggenheim Fellowships, has twice been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and has also received fellowships from the Field and Ford Foundations.

5. He was fired from his first teaching job

Death at an Early Age, The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools – Amazon

After his return from Â鶹APP, he began work as a teacher in the low-income, predominantly African-American Roxbury neighborhood in Boston.

His first published nonfiction, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools (1967), drew upon his experiences as a fourth-grade teacher.

He was fired from his job with the Boston public school system for reading the poetry of Langston Hughes to his fourth-grade class, which was considered “curriculum deviation.” and then became deeply involved in the civil rights movement.

It was this event that launched Kozol’s ongoing crusade for equal education opportunity for all children, with particular emphasis on those students in poor districts who are being deprived of their share of resources and opportunities.

6. He took the biggest risk ever in life

Jonathan Kozol – Flickr

He gave up a financially secure life and dedicated nearly the whole of his life to providing equal opportunities in public schools for children of all races, colors and financial levels. Jonathan has been working with children in inner-city schools for more than forty years.

Kozol, founded The Education Action Fund, which serves as a nonprofit charitable fund that provides direct assistance to many of the children and families profiled in Jonathan’s books.

Donations to the EAF go directly towards children and families living in impoverished or racially isolated areas, and often provide a much-needed relief from financial instability.

7. He is the recipient of several awards

National Book Award – Flickr

His books are eye-openers and give insights to the readers about social problems such as segregated and inadequate schools, illiteracy and vagrancy. This has resulted in him winning a number of prestigious honors and accolades.

Death at an Early Age, his first non-fiction book won the National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion. Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America, which received the Robert F. Kennedy Book award for 1989 and the Conscience-in-Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools, which won the New England Book Award. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 1996.

8. Despite his old age, he remains adamant and vocal about the education system in America

Jonathan Kozol – Wikipedia

Today at the age of 85 Jonathan is advocating for child-centered learning and he virulently criticizes the ‘school voucher’ movement.

A school voucher, also called an education voucher in a voucher system, is a certificate of government funding for students at schools chosen by themselves or their parents.

“I believe that vouchers are the single worst, most dangerous idea to have entered education discourse in my adult life” () is a good summary of Kozol point of view about school vouchers.

In his recent lectures, he describes the sensitive and skillful ways that good, enlightened teachers overcome the harsh and punitive mentality that stifles curiosity and substitutes the fear of failure for the joy that that ought to be the heathy part of learning.

He still remains one of the highly-respected education writers in the United States of America.

9. He published inspiring books that expose the shortcomings of the American schooling system

In Savage Inequalities – Amazon

 In Savage Inequalities, he argues that racial segregation is still alive and well in the American educational system, due to the gross inequalities that result from unequal distribution of funds collected through both property taxes and funds distributed by the State in an attempt to “equalize” the expenditures of schools.

Kozol recommends more tax money on poor schoolchildren and in the inner-city school districts to equalize the spending.

10. He married briefly

Marriage rings – Flickr

Not much is known about Jonathan’s marriage, apart from the fact that he was married for a brief period during the 1970s.