Education Activist, Author Jonathan Kozol, Nov. 14

“Letters to a Young Teacher” will be the topic of a presentation by education activist and award-winning author Jonathan Kozol on Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. in the Bone Student Center Braden Auditorium.  The event is free and open to the public and will include a book signing.

Throughout his career, Kozol has combined teaching with activism in the fields of literacy and education reform.  His presentation, co-hosted by Illinois State University’s College of Education, is part of the University’s 150th Celebration. 

The presentation, “Letters to a Young Teacher,” is based on Kozol’s recently published book of the same name, which features his advice to and encouragement of a young first grade teacher working in an inner-city school in Boston.  Kozol also addresses many issues he sees as detrimental to education: a growing emphasis on standardized testing that he feels turns many classrooms into test-prep factories where spontaneity and critical intelligence are no longer valued; the influence of private corporations on schools; and the persistent inequalities of urban education.

Kozol has recently undertaken a “partial fast” to protest the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, an education policy that he feels places too much emphasis on standardized testing and places black and Hispanic students at a distinct disadvantage.

Kozol began teaching fourth grade in the Boston public school system during the civil rights campaigns of the mid 1960s.  In the decades since then he has devoted himself to championing education reform and social justice issues. 

He is the author of Death at an Early Age (1967), a description of his first year as a teacher; Rachel and Her Children (1987), a study of homeless mothers and children; Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation (1995), an account of life in the South Bronx in New York, America’s poorest congressional district; and The Shame of the Nation (2005), which examined the racial inequities Kozol discovered in many urban school districts.