Jonathan Kozol

In the form of a series of affectionate letters to a first grade teacher at an inner-city school, educator Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under her irreverent questioning, he also reveals his own personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools. This book reignites a number of the controversial issues Kozol has powerfully addressed in recent years: the mania of high-stakes testing that turns many...

Examination of schools across the country whose children are from poor families in the inner city and the less affluent suburbs.

Amazing Grace is a book about the hearts of children who grow up in the South Bronx - the poorest congressional district of our nation. Without rhetoric, but drawing extensively upon the words of children, parents, and priests, this book does not romanticize or soften the effects of violence and sickness. One fourth of the child-bearing women in the neighborhoods where these children live test positive for HIV. Pediatric AIDS, life-consuming fires,...

Kozol visited 60 schools in 11 states over a five-year period and finds, despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, many schools serving black and Hispanic children are spiraling backward to the pre-Brown era. These schools lack the basics: clean classrooms, hallways and restrooms; up-to-date books in good condition; and appropriate laboratory supplies. Teachers and administrators eschew creative coursework for rote learning to meet testing...

Kozol returns to the scene of his prize-winning books Rachel and her children and Amazing Grace, and to the children he's portrayed there, to share their journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood.