Jonathan Kozol, author, activist, and educator, presents “A New War on Poverty: On Equality and Opportunity in America” on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, at 7:00 p.m. in Garrison Theater, Scripps College Performing Arts Center. A book signing will follow the presentation. The event is free and open to the public.
Kozol, a leading voice on public education and childhood poverty, is one of America’s most tireless and influential advocates for public education and social justice. He has spent his career fighting to keep alive in the popular imagination and in political discourse such probing and troubling questions as: “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?”
His talk, “A New War on Poverty,” is a searing exposé of the tragedy of childhood poverty and sub-standard education. Kozol will inspire in the Scripps community a deeper understanding of the rights and needs of children, as well as equip Scripps students, faculty, staff, and community members with an arsenal of practical solutions.
Kozol’s first book, Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools, won the National Book Award, and has sold more than two million copies. His book Illiterate America made public the debate on adult illiteracy. In 1985, he spent a year working in a homeless shelter, and his resulting book, Rachel and Her Children, gave voice to the people living in desperate poverty and focused attention on the tragic death of an eight-month old child. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, shed light on the poorest district of America, the South Bronx of New York, and was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1995. Amazing Grace has been taught in Scripps courses such as Professors Nathalie Rachlin and Amy Marcus Newhall’s CORE II: Communities of Hate, while many of his other books have also made it into countless syllabi at The Claremont Colleges.
His other books include Savage Inequalities, Ordinary Resurrections and 2007’s Letters to a Young Teacher. Kozol’s most recent book, The Shame of the Nation, was his strongest, most disturbing work to date: a powerful piece exposing dramatic racial isolation in more than 60 inner-city schools. Kozol is also the founder of Education Action, a non-profit dedicated to grassroots organizing of teachers across the country who wish to help create a single, excellent, unified system of American public schools.
This event is funded by the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series: Voice and Vision, Humanities Institute, Scripps College, and the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry at Pitzer College. For more information, contact the Malott Commons Office at (909) 607-9372.