Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol is an American educator, activist and nonfiction writer whose career has centered on children underserved by public institutions. A Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar, he taught fourth grade in Boston. That experience became Death at an Early Age, his account of racism and neglect in the city’s schools.

Kozol writes documentary social criticism, built from visits to classrooms and sustained conversations with children, teachers and families. His recurring subjects are racial segregation, unequal school funding, poverty and the distance between America’s democratic promises and its treatment of young people. Savage Inequalities surveys disparities among schools across several cities, while Amazing Grace follows children and residents in the South Bronx.

Death at an Early Age received the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy and Religion. Amazing Grace won the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction. His other books include Rachel and Her Children, about homeless families, and Letters to a Young Teacher, which addresses classroom life and education policy through correspondence with a beginning teacher.

Begin with The Shame of the Nation. Based on visits to nearly sixty public schools, it examines the renewed racial isolation of American students and the restrictive, test-driven practices Kozol observed in many urban classrooms. It offers a strong introduction to both his method and his central argument: educational inequality is created by public choices, not by children’s limitations.