"I'm too old to bite my tongue," longtime education and social justice activist Jonathan Kozol told a packed Cabot Auditorium Thursday, speaking in a forcefully candid lecture on the state of American public schools.
After visiting 60 public schools in 30 different cities and 11 states over five years, Kozol sees an education system that, in some ways, is as bad as it was during racial segregation.
"I walk into these hyper-segregated schools ... I look in the eyes of the children before I say a word ... and I try to convince myself that this post-modern, millennial world we live in is the one that Dr. King and Ms. Parks lived and died for," he said.
Kozol spoke of Pineapple, one girl he met in his studies who attends "one of the worst elementary schools in the country," that exemplifies the vast educational discrepancies that exist today.
At Pineapple's school, which is in the Bronx, administrators can afford to spend $11,000 per pupil. In the first largely white suburb found outside of New York City that number rises to $19,000; on Long Island, it's $23,000.
"The way we finance schools is unjust and undemocratic," Kozol said. "[Our students] go to school with a price printed on their foreheads."
He gave an example of another school in New York City with 3,800 students when it was legally suited for only 1,900. He said that misbehavior of inner-city students is an understandable consequence of bad schools.
"If you treat them like animals, they'll behave like animals," he said.
New York lags behind other states in alleviating issues in public schools, he said, calling New York City "the epicenter of apartheid in the United States."
Kozol also had much to say on the trend toward stricter standardization catalyzed by President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act.
"I'm not against testing," he said. "I believe it serves a useful function when it's diagnostic."
But he said the new mandated tests fail in this respect. Administered at the end of winter with results released in the summer, it's impossible for teachers to use them to address students' needs and weaknesses, he said.
"[The new standards] have not helped our children, have not helped our schools, have not helped reduce the achievement gap," Kozol said. To him, they are a "shaming ritual" intended "to pave the way for privatization and vouchers."
Kozol stressed that it is unjust that some students thrive in small classes while others languish in overcrowded schools.
"If small class size and individual attention is good for the son of a U.S. President or the daughter of a CEO, then it's good for the poorest [child] of a black or Latino woman," he said. "A teacher that can do a pretty good job with 40 kids could work miracles with 18 or 20 kids."
Politicians and education activists today cite past victories as examples of social progress, Kozol said, like the Brown v. the Board of Education case and the integration of Ruby Bridges, the first African-American girl to integrate an all-white elementary school. But he said that much ground had been lost over time.
"Every element of decency in Brown has been shredded," he said.
Kozol's solution to inequality places the federal government at the forefront and cautions against ceding authority to state governments.
"[Education is] never going to be corrected state by state," he said.
He therefore supports an amendment to the Constitution "to make education a fundamental right under the Constitution," he said.
Early on in his address, Kozol criticized both liberals and conservatives on social justice and education.
He referred to white friends from his time at Harvard and others who used to fight during the '60s and '70s as "tired, weak liberals."
So-called "neoliberals" did not win his support, either. "I don't know what a neoliberal looks like, but it sounds like a type of eggplant," Kozol said.
His criticism of neoconservatives was equally forceful, describing them as cruel and as "neofacist intellectuals."
Kozol also rebuffed rightwing critics who fault him for writing anecdotally, saying that statistics are important to him, but so is leaving the office and getting into the classroom.
"It's a humbling experience for me, a guy who writes books, to get back in the classroom and see what it's really like," he said.
Kozol's speech did not make an entirely morbid diagnosis, offering hope for the future. "[There is] a lot of resilience and beauty in [today's disenfranchised] kids," he said.
The author and former educator showed no signs of giving up on his passion of more than four decades either. "I'm going to keep speaking on this issue until my dying day," Kozol said.
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Sarah Butrymowicz contributed reporting to this article.
