Jonathan Kozol Quotes

Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.

We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children.

The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.

Our political establishment refuses to use the word 'segregated.' They call the schools diverse, which means half black, half Hispanic, and maybe two white kids and three Asians. 'Diverse' has become a synonym for 'segregated.'

Federal, state and municipal policies have isolated many children, especially in urban districts, into schools that are segregated by race, class and income.

I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'

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.

It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.

In fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

I cannot understand how the education of this United States of America has been fooled time and time again. Either make it separate but equal or integrate, therefore it will be equal. And it has been separate and unequal.

Our nation's oldest sin and deepest crime is the isolation of minority children - black children, in particular - in schools that are not only segregated but shamefully unequal.

Very few charter schools are being created in some of the best school districts in the state. If you're an educational innovator, that isn't where the greatest need is.

The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled.

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.

I don't totally believe that all of the politicians see a problem with the gap between the scores of black children and other groups. I believe that many politicians think this has been the way it has always been, so what's the problem?

What the North is sending down for our schools is not money but dynamite. This education is ruining our negroes. They’re demanding equality.

Our schools are more segregated today than they have ever been since 1968. The schools that I visit hardly have any white students…. Schools that had desegregated, are now resegregating.

I know that there is an objection to the association of colored children with white children in the same schools. This prejudice exists in my own State. It would be impossible to carry a proposition to educate the few colored children that now live in that State in the same school houses with white children.

We still have two separate public school systems in this country. It’s not [any longer] based on race; it’s based on economics, but that’s related to race.

The segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law: for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group.

Students who spend their lives in segregated schools can look forward to a life on the margins.

We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.

Savage Inequalities