Nationally-renowned educational activist, author and educator Jonathan Kozol spoke to a crowded room in the Performing Arts Center Tuesday morning as part of Cal Poly’s Provocative Perspective series. Kozol, best known for his books, “Savage Inequality: Children in America’s Schools” and more recently “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America,” spoke for over an hour about the need for reform, awareness and governmental help specifically for Latino and black inner-city public schools and his life battling for equality in education.
“I’m 73 years old and I’m too old to bite my tongue,” he said. “No matter what they long-term price I may be forced to pay, I intend to keep on fighting in this struggle to my dying day.”
Kozol spoke in a slow cadence, his deep baritone often pausing for comedic and dramatic effect. His tone shifted from humorous to serious and back again and the audience followed him, laughing, sighing and applauding. He spoke in essay form, going from an example to a point and then moving on to the next, often building to an emotional crescendo. Twice Kozol choked up, paused and moved on.
The Provocative Perspectives series has been at Cal Poly for seven years and brings experts to speak on controversial topics, said Cornell Morton, Cal Poly vice president for academic affairs.
“The purpose of the series is to bring people to campus to talk about diversity, who talk about student success and what we call intellectual freedom,” Morton said.
The topic of educational inequality is important nationwide, but especially in California where education, budget and racial diversity are massive topics, Morton said. The talk coincided with the first day of International Education Week, which aims to “celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide,” according to Cal Poly’s Web site.
Patricia Ponce, who works in Academic Programs and once led the PREFACE program, said that strong voices are what we need at this time in the American education system.
“He’s very bold in saying what he sees. We need those voices,” Ponce said. “He’s very powerful in conveying those messages because he is a white person. I think many factions that speak his words or message that do not get heard.”
“The time has come. We need a revolution. Again,” she said.
Kozol stressed the importance and indispensability of teachers and administrators throughout his speech. Kozol started his career as a teacher in the Boston inner-city schools because of his desire to assist in the civil rights movement after graduating from Harvard and dropping out of the Rhodes Scholar program at Oxford, which he found “boring.”
He was urged to teach by a representative of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963. The meeting was the first time in Kozol’s 26 years that he had been to the Roxbury, then one of the black neighborhoods of Boston.
“Teachers are my heroes, especially I will confess, the ones who are with little children in the elementary grades,” Kozol said. “I just think they do the best thing there is to do in life: Bring joy, beauty mystery and mischief to the hearts of little pint-sized people.”
Kozol’s preference for teachers of the elementary grades is based on his research of inner-city schools. Many black and Latino students start to decline into a life predetermined for them by white upper- and middle-class politicians, Kozol said. Research has shown that students who are not exposed to the idea of college and higher education early will not consider it when it is brought up in junior high or high school, he said.
Kozol cited being raised in a privileged family and community as advantageous to his studies. From that experience, he knows how the “privileged” system works. In privileged educations, students are taught to ask penetrating and pervasive questions. Kozol said this upbringing has helped him immensely in his work on educational inequality.
“I know rich people, I grew up in privilege, although I’ve spent most of my life among people with no privilege,” he said. “I’ve seen both sides so you can’t fool me.”
Kozol’s controversial stances on programs like No Child Left Behind and standardized testing have left him as a target for criticism. He said that he is not opposed to testing and accountability but is opposed to “authoritative techniques that rob the children of the poor of the absolutely crucial ability to interrogate reality, to ask perceptive questions and to develop critical capacities.”
Some of the criticism stings and causes him personal pain, he said. He mentioned television talk show hosts who “wield words like knives with surgical precision” and friends he has lost because of his position.
“It hurts a lot and I’m not a tough guy and I didn’t grow up to be prepared for this,” Kozol said.
He said his efforts do not go without appreciation though, and that is his payoff. Many students, teachers, politicians and parents have shown their gratitude in various ways; late Senator Ted Kennedy came to his assistance when Kozol was fired from the Boston school district for teaching a Langston Hughes poem to his fourth-grade class. A church sent one of his early students to college in Rhode Island, along with her family. He also was asked and accepted to walk alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. at a rally in the Boston Commons.
His impact has reached students, staff and faculty at Cal Poly.
“I got my single subject teaching credential in the seventies,” said Bonnie Konapak, professor and dean of the College of Education, while introducing Kozol. “While I can’t remember all the textbooks I had at that time, I can tell you I remember Death at an Early Age (Kozol’s book). It made such an impact on me.”
Konopak said the book helped guide her through a tough time teaching in inner-city Los Angeles.
Students attending the speech got a strong sense of Kozol’s experience.
“He’s seen it all first hand and knows a lot more than the average person,” said Colton Gow, an agricultural business senior. “He’s trying to bring the issue to the public eye so that’s a great thing. It’s something that needs to be discussed.”