Jonathan Kozol, an educator, writer and social activist known for his books on public education in the U.S., spoke on the inequalities within inner-city schools during the 55^th presentation in the Saint Vincent College Threshold Series on Thursday at the college’s Robert S. Carey Student Center Performing Arts Center. The talk was co-sponsored by the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media and made possible, in part, by a grant from the McFeely-Rogers Foundation.
 
Using humor and poignancy, Dr. Kozol said despite the struggles of the 1960s and the efforts of the courts, the nation's public schools remained still separate and still unequal.
 
“Segregation of African-American and Latino students has come back. Brown vs. the Board of Education had its guts ripped out by other legislation,” said Dr. Kozol. “When I walk into the classrooms of inner-city schools and look into the eyes of the children, I’m looking into absolute segregation.”
 
Dr. Kozol said a school in the South Bronx area of New York City spends only $11,000 annually on educating African-American and Latino children, while on Long Island, $23,000 is spent educating white students.
 
“Inner-city school children come to school with a cheap price tag on their heads,” Dr. Kozol said. “If we don’t change the way we finance public schools, we won’t ever have equality.”
 
Inner-city children are “almost totally cut off from mainstream society,” Dr. Kozol added.
 
“These children have never heard of Columbia University or Cornell. They don’t even know what to hope for,” said Dr. Kozol.
 
Cafeterias in the poor districts are typically squalid rooms in the schools’ basements.
 
“Everybody gets debased by the squalor. Children become wild and teachers become like tyrants,” said Dr. Kozol. “Aesthetics do count. Beautiful surroundings inspire children.”
 
Dr. Kozol also spoke about a dark-skinned Latino girl from a public school in California who told him the school district insisted she take sewing and hairdressing classes instead of an honors class.
 
“She wanted to take Advanced Placement English. She had hoped for something more from school. This is nothing but the purposeful decapitation of potential of our African-American and Latino students,” said Dr. Kozol. “I get angry when I see this educational shortchanging.”
             
He drew laughter from the audience when he talked about Pineapple, a young African-American girl who attends the South Bronx elementary school and how she charmed him into buying a new suit.
 
Dr. Kozol also reflected on his friend, the late Fred Rogers.
 
“Fred’s sweetness and purity of character are a litmus test. Every time I worry about my voice losing its passion, I think of Fred Rogers,” he added.
 
He said Mr. Rogers visited him several times in New York.
 
“Fred asked if I thought the children in the South Bronx school would be intimidated by him. I worried that no one would recognize Mr. Rogers,” said Dr. Kozol. “We got off the subway and were walking down the worst street in New York City when a garbage man saw Fred, ran over, and picked him up in a bear hug.”
 
Fred Rogers also worried about the health of Dr. Kozol’s beloved dog, Sweetie Pie, who was dying of cancer. He faxed Dr. Kozol a letter expressing his hope that the dog was doing well.
 
“Four weeks later I heard on the news that Fred had died. He was a beautiful man who never told me he was sick,” said Dr. Kozol.
 
William Isler, a friend and former colleague of Fred Rogers, and the executive director of the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College, said Fred Rogers recognized Dr. Kozol’s lifelong work on behalf of children.
 
“He was especially intrigued by the fact that Jonathan never flinched from the responsibility to let people know about the struggles which some children have to live, the struggles of the adults who are closest to them, and the responsibility all of us have to them and to our own children,” said Mr. Isler.
 
 Dr. Kozol wrote his first non-fiction, ‘Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools,’ shortly after he was fired from his teaching position for reading from a book of poetry by Langston Hughes. His 1995 book, ‘Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation,’ addresses the issues of race and poverty by exploring the lives of inner city residents in the South Bronx. He followed with ‘Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope’ in 2000, and ‘The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America’ in 2005.
 
A resident of Byfield, Massachusetts, Dr. Kozol is the recipient of the Olympia Award, National Book Award, Guggenheim Fellow, Field Foundation Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Rockefeller Fellow, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, Conscience in Media Award, Christopher Award, New England Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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