Jonathan Kozol

Monday, October 20, 2008 (part of Columbia's Creative Nonfiction Week)

Jonathan Kozol is an educator and activist whose 1967 Death at an Early Age detailed his experiences as a first-year teacher in Boston Public Schools. Nearly 25 years later, Kozol’s revelations about East St. Louis Public Schools in Savage Inequalities earned him finalist honors for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Kozol is one of America’s most tireless and influential advocates for public education. He is the one man who put the nation’s public schools on the national political agenda, and he fights tirelessly for the rights and needs of children.

Kozol's books have set the agenda for social change for three decades. His book Death at an Early Age has sold over two million copies, while Illiterate America made public the debate on adult illiteracy. In 1985, Kozol spent a year working in a homeless shelter, and his book Rachel and her Children gave voice to the people living in desperate poverty and to the tragic death of an 8-month-old child. His other books include Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace, and Ordinary Resurrections, which deals with one of the South Bronx's most dismal neighborhoods, Mott Haven, whose residents struggle with poverty, imprisoned fathers, asthma and AIDS.

In A New War on Poverty: Jonathan Kozol on Equality and Opportunity in America, Kozol asks the following questions: In a nation of such abundance, why do so many children go without a decent education? What are the true costs of childhood poverty, and why does the American political system seem incapable of addressing them?

Kozol is one of the few people who have worked tirelessly to keep these questions before the public. His talks are a searing expose of the tragedy of childhood poverty and sub-standard education. Audiences will leave the room with a deeper understanding of the challenges America faces, and practical solutions for meeting them.