understand his foundations. he as an example of someone who is very devious and enhanced very effective. thank you. >> would you regard salman rushdie's as essential reading? >> i guessot because i haven't read it. . . to attend that it

celebrates great writers. and i've noticed many of these works are very leftist and while i agree that we ould read many of theseworks, what sps can we as conservative college students do to get more conservative works in the classrooms? >> that's a big problem. probably others of you have had the same problem i would gather in your classes. am i right? yeah. he just -- i mean try to work royour professor and the dean then if that doesn't work, try to figure out, you know, there might be some alumnists on the board of trustees, perhaps a recognizable conservative that you can go to.

i think also to try to get not only yourself but other studen s maybe to sign a petition in which you're saying here are some books that we think to be added, some of the things we talked about this morning to the reading lists and keep at it and be as politely aggressive as you can be. >> i don't really think that our goal -- i mean, in politics and economics, it's a little different. but humanities and particularly in all kinds of literature, i don't really think that our goals should be to get more conservative books on the reading lists. i think our goal should be to depoliticize of reading books and pick books on the quality and not the politics on the people who wrote them. [applause] >> i'm sorry. but i have to respectfully disagree with elizabeth. i don't think its either/or.

it's not either/or, it's both. i think as we pointed out here that whatarry and elizabeth and but then said that there are certain classics, great books, and we're assuming that either -- you either have or should or must read whether it's shakespeare, plato and so rth but on top of that, you guys are political activists and that's what we have to realize. that's the reality of what we're talking about here. and so not in addition to those great classic books there are certain what i call books in the cannon of the modern conservative movement which should be and ought to be added to any reading list, that includes hayek, weaver, kirk and whitiker chambers. >> good morning, chris. where do you think the bible and christianity fits in e overall

picture of the conservative movement? thank you. >> well, think -- if we were hoping conservatives on organizations that are founded on bible and i think it's vital. i think something is missing from many curricula. it's a history of christianity. you think what shaped europe, it's one word, the church. and yet it's very rare, in my experience, that the school had such a course. i didn't take it. but which cover the history of the developing of the church and see how it aligns with the development of europe. i thin both of those things are crucial to your studies.

>> i'd say, just speaking personally, i'm a christian before i'm a conservative and i think that's a good conservative position to have. [applause] >> the left is all about politics giving mean to your life and sort of being everything that there is. and that's not what we're about. >> i'd like to pick up on that last point because you get confused about gaining power or reconstruct the order of society so the good things can be our primary focus. i will fight so that i can every morning be on my front porch drinking coffee with my wife and my six kids. that's what you want to fight for. that's the primary thing. you don't want to get so caught up in politics and twittering and so forth that you miss what is worth fighting for so i'm going to add one book, read

"lord of the rings." it's all by the shire and the orks are in the shire now. [laughter] [applause] >> and we look to all of you to be frotos in the years and the decades to come. [applause] >> please join me in thanking our panel, i think, for giving a really wonderful panel discussion. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> for more information on this panel, visit yaf.org. >> up next, author and education activist jonathan kozal joins book tv for a three-hour in depth interview. >> host: jonathan kozal it's been 34 years since that national book award. right? >> guest: that's right. >> host: 1968. >> guest: that's right, yes. it's intimidating to me. >> host: it was your first real -- it was your first nonfiction book. >> guest: it was my first serious book, that's right. >> host: what was it like to win the national book award for your very try out on nonfiction? >> guest: well, it was very intimidating 'cause i was so young. >> host: how old were you? >> guest: i don't know. arou 28 or 30, i guess.

but i'llell you, it was a blessing for me in one way. my mom and dad, i must say, they just passed away, both of them actually at the age of 1 steer -- 102, they were very nervous and by some mistake i won a rhode scholarship, which i gave it up because i found it boring after harvard and i went to paris and made friends with all the writers that were there, richard wright, they mentored me and then i came back to the

united states and then returning to the university, to harvard, they expected i'd become an english professor, instead i was concept up in the civil rights movement and i went off to ro s rocks -- roxbury in boston and i became a fourth grade teacher so they were really scared as any parent would be, i think. not that i was in the black community but just ty kept saying, my father especially, my mothe was better, that my father at first kept saying, you're squandering your education, you know? rhode scholar teaching fourth grade in the inner city. and so in a way when i wrote "death at an early age" when i was a teacher, it suddenly

redeemed me in my daddy's eyes. and even when it was published he wasn't sure whether he was going to forgive me because in a sense -- he'd gone to harvard at the med school, and he felt in a sense i turned against everything he stood for and he was worried tt i was going to ruin my life. so when "death at an early age" won the boo award, i think it was the first time that daddy felt that i was going to survive. that i was okay. >> host: but before death at an early age you had a novel. i have a copy of it. it's hard to find. "the fume of poppies." >> guest: i call it -- what's that term, a piece of juvenil

juvenile-alia. i wrote it in my senior year at harvard. i had a wonderful english professor. his name was archbald mcleash. >> host: uh-huh. isn't he theibrarian of congss. 12k3 >> guest: he lived most of his life in paris and brought stt fitzgerald drunk home at the he said of long evenings. he really kind of adopted me as an undergrad at harvard so i had him for two years. but in senior year, he took me aside and he said, jonathan,

this was like in noveer, you know, you're not going to get an a because you're supposed it write so during christmas vacation i spent exactly 12 days and i wrote this absurd little romantic novel and i got my a and i thought that was the end of it but by accident, it actually got published. and i immediately put it out of print. >> host: you put it out of print? >> guest: i did. >> host: an author can do that? you just pulled it? >> guest: well, you know, it survived for about a year and i convinced my publisher that it was a silly book. nobody has the right to publish a book that they wrote in 12 days during christmas vacation. >> host: i want to ask you, so many of your books are about people. i thought we would kick off by

asking you to talk a little bit about a few of your pple in your books. let's start off with pineapple. >> guest: yes. >> host: who is pineapple? >> guest: pineapp is this wonderful little girl whom i met in the south bronx. i've been working in the south bronx or with south bronx kids for about 25 years. i met her about 15 years ago in the middle 1990s, early 1990s, when she was in kindergarten. and she's just adorable. very smart. very bossy. a little plump. and i remember like in kindergarten when i was trying to help her with her arithmetic 'cause teachers always put me to work when i visit classes, they always say come and visit my

class and then when i get ther they say don't just stand there, do something. you're supposed to be a teacher. so i was trying to help her and she lookst me and she says, you're standing on the wrong side of me. 'cause she wanted me to lean over h left elbow. so i moved, you know, and that pattern continued. when she was in fourth grade she got so bossy with me that she got worried about my social lif and started trying to fix me up with her teacher. fifth grade, she looked at this suit. see this suit i'm wearing, this is the same suit i used to wear every time i visited her. and she did not like the fact that it was always the same suit and black. she said toe once, she fingered it with her hand and said it is shabby andt's ratty

and you can't see on tv but i is and she said, jonathan, is that your only suit? and i said, no. i have two. but they're both the same so she looked very concerned to me. i remember we were sitting face-to-face in the chairs and she rolls her eyes like she was the school social counselor and she says, jonathan, do me a favor. she said some day when you're in a nice part of town, go into a good store and get yourself a good new suit. she was so commanding that i behaved her and i went to brooks brothers and i bough a new suit just to please her but to her dismay it was the same black suit again. so we had another counseling session is the end of this story and she folds her arms again and

she looks at me -- i'll never forget this because she was pretty mature now. she was a fifth grader and she said, jonathan, i know you get depressed sometimes to see the way we have to live, but you don't always need to dress in black. i loved her for tling me. here she was a little gl in a part of the south bronx where the last five books had taken place and that book was "amazing grace." that's the poorest urban neighborhood in the united states and there she is living in dire poverty in a grim, grim building. the elevator never worked. you had to walk up eight

flights. there's too much desolation around her and she worried about me. >> host: that's not her on the cover, is it? >> guest: that's her bossing me there. >> host: how old would she would have been there. >> guest: 6 or 7 and she got worse as she got older. >> host: what is she doing? >> guest: she's a wonderful success story. and i'm so proud of her. her real name isjackie. pineapple is her nickna. she was rescued from the new york city public schools, at least from the very bad schools in the south bronx by a very kind person who read my book. and we brought her up to new england and she went to a good

school in new england and last june the principal called me up and asked me if i would give the commencement addss so i could hand her her high school diploma and she's now a freshman in a very good college, and she udying to be a social worker so that she can go back to the bronx to help other children. >> who's francheka. >> guest: it's a made up name for a first grade teacher. it's unusual in that she majored -- she went to swathmore college and she majored in literature and anthropology and history. she was very broadly educated but she also got certified as a

teacher. she took good education courses. i met her when she asked me -- she called me up once as teachers do all the time. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: teachers always do this. she calls and says would you visit my class sometime 'cause she was in the first years of first grade teaching in boston, in my hometown. and i said, sure, i'd love to. and the teachers always do this to me. as soon as i walk into her first grade, she says to me, well, don't just stand there, help one of the children. so i started helping one of the kids. and i did it wrong. i made a mistake. i wasn't following the lesson plan. she scolded me.

i love teachers like this. she's not only a beautifully trained teacher and jubilant love of life and i made a mistake and she said to the class -- sheaid mr. jonathan did not pay attention to the instructions. he's not behaving like a big grown-up first grader. you know how they say to always first graders. what should we do to him? and the children voted tt i needed a little time-out, those little devils. she was the kind of -- there are thousands like her. she was the kind of beautifully prepared, wonderfully educated, sparkling idealistic young

teachers who are flooding into our urban schools who are eager to teach in urban schools. a lot of them like franchekas steeped in civil rights tradition and whaver they are, plaque or what i they are very much on the side of the children and they identify with the kids and she just flooded that classroom with all the beautiful children's classics, wonderful books like my favorites like the very hungry caterpillar. do you remember that book. >> host: i don't kno that one. i read that you liked that. >> guest: eric carle and he also wrote "goodnight moon" and little bits that were accessible to children. >> host: our letters to her were this book, right?

>> guest: letters to a yng teacher went to franchek with beautiful music playing in the backgroufd sometimes african-americanusic or brahms. d she had this personality and kids would line up to wait for their hugs every morning. the thing is, we're getting thousands of people like her coming into the urban schools nowadays. the trouble is, we're losing a lot of them. a lot of them quick within three years and when i ask them why, 'cause i get hundreds of phone calls o emails every month from teachers like this whom i encouraged to go into these classrooms, i go why are you quitting? they never blame the children 'cause they fall in love with

the kids. they always say it's because of this obsessive crazy testing mania that's been forced down our throats by the federal government. this is the law, no child left behind. we'll get to that later. i think it's about the worst single piece of education legislation that i've seen in my lifetime. but anyway teachers hate it because it spulates every single day and if kids like francheksa read to the children a marvelous poem she read the night before or get off topic a little bit and let one of the children tell her a wonderful story, there's this loggerhead, don't do that. you're wasting time. that's not going to help to pump the test scores, you see?

unfortunately, s stuck it out for eight years but a lot of these teachers are quitting within three years. and it's a loss to the children because when ty do quit, if they stay -- if they continue to teach, they end up in the best suburban schools where they can -- where they know they are not going to lose their souls, you know? >> you lost an early job by bringing langston hughes and i bring that you mean because y were talking about the teacher brinng things she maybe read last night or something she enjoyed. can she do that now and you weren't allowed to bring langston hughes into the classroom that many years ago? >> guest: is even worse now. these standards are so -- in the effort to -- in the effort to push the test scores, which is th only goal in no child left bend, almost everything that's

not going to be on the test gets exiled from curriculum. you know, people would say to me, holdg up francheka a fine in the suburbs and leave brahms and woody guthrie and great plaque folk music -- leave happiness to the children in the suburbs. these plaque kids in the city can't afford that. we need to drill them along a protomilitary regiment to pump those test scores three percenta point to satisfy the government. it's worse now than it wa then. but it's parallel. in boston when i was a young teacher, there were standards,

too. there was accounbility. and i was not a rebel at all. i wasn't political in the least when i started teaching. i was stirred by martin luther king and by the death of young civil rights workers in the south and that's why i bame a teacher but basically i just wanted to teach children. in my fourth grade class, this was a typical all black class and there was no black material in the curriculum of any substance except for a few tokens, you know, everybody got george washington carver because the kids called him the peanut man. 'cause he didn't do anything controversial.

there's no story -- there were no stories or anything about plaque -- black kids. and purely on an impulse when i went to harvard square, i went to our local communist bookstore. joe mccarthy said harvard was crimson and that's a good name for them because they are red. and i picked up a book by langston hughes. kids used to say everything i old and raggedy and i brought it in and even before i opened the door, i just held it up. by the way, i had 35 kids in my class. they had a string of subs before

i was appointed. i was their twelfth teacher that year. and they were hostile to me at first because, you know, why should they trust me after they had been abandoned 10 o 12 times already t suddenly everybody was on the edge of their chair and i remember a little girl in the front row whispered to the girl in front of me, look, tt man is colored because there's a picture of him on the front and i read a couple of poems. and one girl in the back row motion to dismiss been -- h been distant, a beautiful young woman smiled and looked at me in

malcolm x's eyes in the famous picture of him, never smiled, shos suddenly got up and touched my shoulder very gently, stroked it kind of thafully and she whispered, thank you. 'cause they had never heard a poem by a black man before. she said could i bring that become home and show it to my mom? i was so happy. i would have given her my car. and the next day she came in and she memorized one of the poems, the great famous poem ballad of a dream deferred. what happens to a dream deferred? does it - does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? the next day i was fired. i was fired for reading that and other poems of langston hughes.

they have this list just like today langston hughes was an eighth grade poet and i read him in fourth grade. so the formal charge against me if i recall this was on the front page of the "new york times" because people were serious about it. the charge was curriculum deviation. and the "boston globe," our local paper, of course, played with this and the headline was rhode scholar fired from fourth grade. it didn't hurt me, you know. i got fired for curriculum deviatio and a couple months later the federal government hired me for curriculum development. white people can take these risks.

my harvard degree was like my american gold express card. does that make senseo you. it did politicize me and i became politically angry. and the parents of my kids were very loyal. a lot of white teachers said to me, if i stick out my neck, do you think the black parents will support me? and i said, of course, they'll support you if they think yore on their side. black parents, they're not stupid. if you think you're fighting for their children, they're like all other parents so they shut down the school the next day and then they shut down the whole school system. they organized -- it's sort of -- what's that word, it mush roomed. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: the bck leaders in the city seized on this, good

lord, if the greatest black american poet is forbiddenn the fourth grade along with the fact that we had a segregated system and a viciously unequal system, we got to fight. so they organized a massive protest on beacon hill, which is for those who don't boston, it's sort of like capitol hill. it's the center of government. and i had to come out and march with them and i was very nervous. i was frightened because i didn't want i was shy. i was a very shy person. i used to tremble in public all the time. i stildo sometimes. and they made me get up and speak, you know? i still remember the head of the

naacp saido me, jonathan, you get it? i didn't want -- see, i liked watching history. i liked watching history narrow - narrated by walter cronkite. i want to enter history. i was afraid of it, but i had no choice and that transformed my whole life. >> host: so bringing that to today, do you support teachers taking that kd of action today and if they did, would you come out or do you go out and defend them, yes? >> guest: i absolutely do. i support teachers who take stand on principle and teachers who are not afraid to speak their voices courageously when they see a real atrocity in front of them.

>> host: and is that happening? >> guest: of course, it's happening. it's not as obvious as the story i just told because nobody today dare to ban langston hughes from the public schools. i got my reward not in heaven or on earth when langston hughes called me up. i was so happy and i felt honored for that. the teachers today, the thousands that contact me, at least, are mostly overwhelmed by the merciless -- i don't walt to sound objective because we mentioned this before tdo nothing to prep their kids for exams. i'm talking particularly about elementary school.

teachers don't want to teach third grade because third grade is the yr in which the tests really count the st. that's under nclb, no child left behind. third grade is the year that if the child fails the test, school systems e encouraged to hold the child back and don't promote the child. teachers, i find, are outraged by the anxiety that it creates for children and -- let them explain. no good teachers that i know are opposed to testing. if you're tting something valuable and useful. if you're just testing subject matter andf you're also including things that don't show

up in numbers such as if a child writes for charm, whether a child writes with humor, whether a child canrite a story that can make you cry, but see these tests don't measure anything like that. you don't get any credit under nclb for writing a beautiful story that brings trs to someone's eyes. a story that could break their het, a story that makes them smile. now, you get credit for only topic sentences. do you know what are topic sentences? i've written books and i've never used a topic sentence in life. thee teach these useless things and they require them to do these things probably because the people who wrote the standards are not very bright and they learned this in school when they re kids. standards are not written -- the inside they are enforcing by nclb. these are not written by brilliant poets or great

philosophers i assure you. >> host: who writes them. >> guest: semi intellectuals. >> host: government? >> guest: the fine university people, people who would -- could never get tenure at a fit rate university. i hate to be nasty, but they are mediocre. i read the standards. i' a tough person. i read the standards. the other things these teachers protest and they do protest this is the following. very few of their kids in the early grades, they see this, it's obvious, very few of their kids in these desperately inner city schools get preschool. now, there's a program called head start. you remember that. >> host: yes there is. >> guest: you're not as old as i. i helped to start the first head start in boston.

in about 1965 or early '66. it serves less than half the eligible children in america because it's funded so low. there's not enoug money. >> host: all federal funding? >> guest: yes. unfortunately, it's even worse in the inner city neighborhoo whe the poverty is so intse. tycally, if anything into an inner city school, this is the only way to find out the truth about preschool and by the way i never rely on online statistics because they fudge the numbers in lots of different ways. for example, if a child is in daycare or grandma care and they unt that as preschool. if you want to know how many children got real preschool, the

him way to do it, i find, is go io an elementary school. squeeze your bottom into one of those little teeny-weeny chairs and ask one of those teeny-weeny people, what did you do last year and the year before? and if the child is too shy, ask the teacher because the teachers can always tell within a couple days. the teachers will say, jonathan if you mea real pre-k, if you mean the real thing, the kind of thing your harrd classmas would by for their own children, those beautiful montessori schools and so forth, you mean the real thing, 25 children, maybe five or six got the real thing for half a day for one year. and meanile, my affluent friends in new york out in

beverly hills and present wo -- brentwood and i still know rich pele. i grew up in that world. i know what they do when they do with their children or their grandchildren. they srt for three years starting at 2 1/2. rich, wonderful developmental preschool. it's not drill and kill testing preparation, but a wonderful educatn where -- i call it preliteracy. you might sit on a reading routing. you -- right.

but they learn social skills and everything. and the kids i know get almost nothing. and then suddenly a few years later, they're all in third grade a they all take the same nclb exams and guess which ones score above proficient and are immediately slaughterednd gifted and talented and set on that road that leads to honors in high school and a.p. and on to the best colleges and guess which ones on the other hand are found to be developmentally delayed, which is our polite term for retarded? and likely to be kept back from promotion. and by the way, every time you hold a child back from promotion, it doubles the chance

that she will never graduate from high hool. holder back twice reduces the child by 90%. that was in the "neyork times" so it must be true. >> host: let them invite our views to join us in their phone calls. jonathan kozal is our guest for "in depth" this month. we'll spend 2 1/2 more hours with him this afternoon taking your phone calls, your emails and also just having a discussion with him on his years of writing and his books. >> host: and we have an email address if you would like to send a question in that way.

it's book tv at c-span.org or you could twitter us and you'll see the address at the bottom of the screen. so you came into writing your books really through the civil rights movement as you said >> guest: i did. >> host: now, i had a question r you that i had never seen you write about and maybe you have. in mississippi when three young people were murdered, after that, you said you went to a relgiouperson and asked tm what you should do? who was that and why did you go to that person? >> guest: well, i don't know why i chose a religious person, but, you know, i'm not -- i'm not religious in the sense that my

orthodoxic jewish grandma would like t me to be, but she got something into me deep about spirituality and my mom did too, in different ways. and i've alway been drawn to people who are -- if not religious, spiritual people. and that's one reason i did this. i got my little car in harvard square and i came backro paris at that time and i was on the verge of going back to grad school at harvard to appease my father's anxieties and because i tually would love to have spent my life as a english

professor at a place like harvard. i would have -- at that age i would have loved to spend my whole life -- but i would have loved to have spent my life teaching shakespearean sonnets and reading king lear and othello and hamlet with young people and yeats is my favorite modern poet. but as soon as i read about those young people being rdered by the ku klux klan in mississippi, i thought they could have been me. they were about my age. i just got into my vw, naturally it was the '60s, i had a little

bug plastered with slogans probably. probably a little big happy face or something. i went to roxbury. i lived in the boston suburbs my whole life. i'd never been in the black community before. that's how divided we were. and by the way, still are. >> host: and you came from a fairly privilege background? >> guest: i were. my dad was a neuropsychiatrist and my mom was a social worker. i'd grown up in a classic privileged background where a lot of doctors and lawyers, people like that lived. >> host: you wrote about having a live-in maid. >> guest: it was newton, massachusett it was comparable where scarsdale, new york. >> host: uh-huh. >> guest: and the black person i ever knew was the maid.

and everybody out there had a maid. it seemed like everybody did. and they didn't cal her black. she was the colored girl. that's what people said. i used to hear my friends parents how much they loved their colored girl and maybe they did love them but they sure weren't equal. the colored girls came from roxbury. and they were poorly educated, naturally, they weren't going to end up competing with the doctors and lawyers of neon they would be the maids. that hast changed by the way. it's still exaly the same thing. only now the maid is lijely to be latina or haitian. i went to roxbury for the first time.

i had read about a minister in roxbury, a black minister who was dr. king's sort of sort of dr. king's representative. a wonderful man. james breeden, an episcopal priest. and i went to jim a i said basically, can i be of any use? and he said something like this. he said, yes, young man, you can be of use. and he said i'm glad you came here because all the racial injustice in is nation is not down in mississippi. and i said what should i do? and he said become a teacher. we need teachers who will have some allegiance to our children. and so that's what happened. i justalked into the boston

schools and said, okay, i'm going to be a teacher. i never heard of a certification. and they said where did you go to college. i hate to mak fun of harvard because i loved it. and they said where did you go to college and i said harvard well, then you can't be a teacher 'cause you couldn't have learned anything useful at harvard. i said there must be some way i could do it. you could be a sub. just like wi the inner cities they call it aernate certification that that basically people who kw nothing teaching. and just to get a warm body into that classroom. so they tested me. and the first week they had me teach kindergarten. and i was horrified. i had no idea wha you do, the

children are gerbiles and finally they promoted me and and i became a permanent sub and they gav me the fourth grade and that's how it allstarted. >> let's get to your phone cls and begin with worcester, massachusetts. excuse me. maryland. >> caller: hello. >> host: you're on the air, go ahead, please. >> caller: all right. thank you. i was 20 minutes after jonathan kozal's show begun. i got a chance to thank to you in person andear your talks and insight and by the way someone gave you a copy of a

book i had done because i had written about whas been happening in educationince we had the brown decision. it's called brown and the miseducation. pardon? >> guesti remember when you gave that to me. >> caller: it came from a lot of experiences that i had and was concerned about. in asheville, north carolina, segregated schools, of course, goay back. and i enjoyed those experiences and gained quite a lot, taught in public schools in georgetown, south carolina, where some of michel michelle obama's foreparents.

they were all plaque schools and teachers were teaching and variety were leading and children were learning and there were various communities. from there after a few years of teaching i went to baltimore and i taught in several situations there. and what it -- i want to give one particular experience to illustrate. but what it boils dn to, a lot what we're concerned about now and wondering what we can do about it lies in trying to see what was some of the underlying causes of these conditions of our children. and i'm not talking about wh because we have meant of people who have performed well.

>> guest: good question. good question. we have a mild disagreement. here's my own belief. obviously, everybody was destroyed by segregated education. there's survivors loiktsdz -- like this woman. these are rare exceptions to the shame of the nation, the title, the subtitle is very clear. actually, i forget -- >> the restoretation of apartheid schools in america. >> guest: the fact that our schools are as segreted as they were in 1968, the year

dr. king and bobby kennedy were killed ironically enough. i went to -- there was a long conversation that i had with congressman john lewis. he was a marvelous man. a colgressman from georgia, who grew up in that world. he was so angry what happened to what happened to him. the segregated rules of the 1950s and early 60s. he's probably think of his age, for example, he told me that there were no -- they didn't go to high school. they took this rickety old bus

and passed the high school, that was for the white kids and they went to the school called the training school. he said that was for college kids. they trained you forork with yo hands. it was rock bottom school. they weren learning astrophysics, you know, that kind of thing. these were menial jobs. and he was passionate and angry enough of his experience that he became one of the founders of perhaps the most militant southern civil rights movement of all, an organization called snic. the young college kids i meet now have no idea what ese letters stand for and i won try to fill it in.

they loved dr. king but dr. king used to say, i have to -- i have to walk fast because my young people are getting ahead of me. >> ht: weren't you a member of snic? >> guest: no. i've always been -- i've always been too stubborn to join any organization that had any fixed doctrine or agenda of any sort. that's why i didn't join sds in new york, for example. you know, i just have that kind of nature, i don't know. but i supported the goals of snic and the goals of dr. king's southern leadership conference. and there was the congress of

racial equality, core. they had a simple agenda. it w total nonviolence. very much in the tradition of thoreau and ndhi. but the thing is, here's what i believe. i believe that brown versus board of education, the warren court decision, was right. that segregated education is inherently unequal. that it does have hurt the spirits of the young children and they know from the very start that they have been set

aside. in some kind of sequestration where they won't contaminate the educated. and wholly apart from schools have always been financially underfunded mostly unequal, vile looking buildings, vast overcrowding, stillrue today, in all the cities, chicago, new york, despite wholly apart from the measurable inequalities, you know, like the kids in the south bronx that i know and love get $10,000 less put into their ucation every year than the kids who live in the wealthiest white suburbs. >> host: you mean money coming from the government. >> guest: yep. $10,000 less. but multiply that times 32 in a

class, wow, it means essentially if you belong to a family like mean who live in a million dollar home you're guaranteed a million dollar education. and if you'r born in a rock bottom poverty neighborhood, you're going to get a rock bottom education. but they were the re exceptions. overall, in the past century, separate schools, separate and

unequal schools have never worked. they have never succeeded. they basically brought about the decapitation of an entire class, i would even say caste of people who are -- who are kept on the margins of soety. it didn't work in the century just past. and it's not going to work in the century ahead either. and that's, you know, why i -- that's why i keep coming back to this -- i mean, i drive my friends crazy, my white friends because they hate m to take about it. but i still say segregated education is our nation's oldest sin and greatest crime. and i'm waiting for president obama toind the courage to talk about it. .. took a

left wing newspaper, a right wing newspaper and showed us how to tell when someone was trying to sell you something. and that helped me out more than anything else including college in my whole life. and there's no way you can test for that. and the questio i have is, did you read the august 31st new yorker article by a gentleman named steven brilt called the rubber room about new york's public schools?

and if you did, i tught it was absolutely horrible. >> guest: i didn't read it but i know the rubber room very well. >> host: thank you, >> host: thank you, color. this story in the new yorker basically told the story of the teachers who would be sent to the rubber room because of what, problems they were hg? whatever the problem is they would be taken out. they would be paid and they could remain in this doing nothing for years. >> guest: but to come back to the start of his question, about critical thinking and how important it was. see, really critical thinking is sort of a jargon term not. it is used so ch in education. we are trapped in jargon. but what it really means is the power to interrogate reality, to ask interesting questions. and to ask your own questions.

in the really good suburban schools, and i visit them, because i spent about a quarter of my time in the inner-city schools, but every so often i go back to one of these top flight suburban schools jus to compare, just to remember what money buys or what sophisticated principles consist upon. critical thinking is at the heart of the curriculum in these schools, starting when the kids are in elementary school. because they know they are going to need these skills when they get into the secondary years in order to ask penetrating questions, why did jefferson do this, what was the strategic reason behind the soviet nazi pact, why was it an act of

cynicism on the part of the soviet? whatever the question. or disagreeing with each other, but indiscernibl smartays, and responsive ways. in the inner-city, in the test driven elementary schools there is no time for critical thinking. you don't get a better score on your exam for thinking critically. what about the child who has actually niced that all the good stories he has read in school, let's think -- let's think of something in the big leagues like fourth grade level of shakespeare. lets say like to impede the. pooh and piglet and eeyore, i think they are like wonderful

characrs. think eeyore is one of the great tragic figures, a donkey thout a tail. esn. e. is always sad. and owl is an interesting character. we always tell children owls are very wise, but a now is dyslexic. he can't spell his name, remember? he puts the wb for the oh. anyway, i think they are fascinating. the children aren't allowed to read this for the joy and magic of the book. the soft epiphanies of who is wonderful, mysterious oddities

like walking around the tree again and ain and again because he thinks he is chasing he keeps in his own footpath and he thinks there are more. i love that. kids are not allowed to read that just for the joy of it. at you have to do is you have to excavate the stories of pooh and piglet in order to pull out something like the topic sentence that will be on the state exam. >> host: what about the point maybe that's where parents should be working with the kids? >> guest: they should be unless they have been the victims of exactly the same kind of schools i have described in which their education basically was truncated at a very early age. we can come back to that in a minute. but i just wanted to say,

critical thinking. the child just want to raise his hand and say what is it, teacher, that makes this world of pooh and piglet and christopher robin, what is it that makes it so magical. what makes it seem so sweet, and like a place you would like to live, like you would have your friends. that is an interesting question. you don't getoints for that. that is a little kind of critical thinking. as a result, there is no time for that year that gets shoved out. the child who raises his hand in just as, teacher, a, guess what. younow how a start. guess what. the teacher has to say what.

i went to the zoo yesterday with my uncle pokey. guess what? and then he goes on and tells a wonderful story about a baby bear that he just saw and then he asks a question. and the question might be a tough question. you know, an interesting question. there is no time for that in these inner-city schools. teacher has to cut him off. that is not going to help on the exam. as a result, here is what is happening. some of the schools by simply drilling kids for tests all year, especially thwhole two months before the exam, it's all test drill. and it is usually -- it doesn't have to do with literature or anhi. it's like ticks for filling in the bubbles. do you know what i mean by that? like how you eliminate certain ones. it'sust a test trickery.

it is not education. some of the schools will boast after we have been doing this, our test scores went up. our fourth grade scores went up three percentage points. and the newspapers will jump on that as a fourth grade scores are up three percentage points. and i meet with the same kids four years later to in eighth grade and they can't wre a sentence and they can't read a complicatedubject matter text. but worst of all, they can't participate in a serious class discussion on history, on geography, on modernolitical affairs, or on classic greece, whatever, because they never learned how to ask disturbing questions. >> host: we have a caller was in winning a longtime. t me get to this question and

we'll come right back. let's go to frank in philadelphia. commack hi. great show. i like what mr. kozol is saying. i waed to ask, by the way we have rubber rooms or basement in philadelphia, and philly. i would like him to answer the question. how would you explain the 50% dropout rate, even more if you ask people in the bar association and philly. 50% dropout rate in the school district of philadelphia. that means that 50% plus other graduates, the students, are not graduating and are at the great. how do you explain that? and do you believe that discipline plays a role our schools ask. >> host: mr. kozol? >> guest: great question. i spent a lot of time visiting schools in philadelphia. yes, discipline is very important. i am not -- is because i grew up in the '60s or came of age in the '60s, i am not one of

these, you know, these dreamy people who just say i'll let the kids do whatever they want, you know. don't worry about discipline. no. i can be as mean as william bennett. remember him? that is really sayingomething because he is awfully mean. i once had to debate him on nightlin he was so mean. ted koppel actually defended me. he felt sorr for me. i felt like a kid who met the bully in the schoolyard, getting kicked in the teeth. buthe dropout rate is -- the black, hispanic dropout rate is a national catastrophe. is something which would be

considered a societal emgency in any white suburban district. it's about 50 percent in all our major cities. the cities have very clever ways of fudging theumbers. so in some cities, chicago is one for example, with all respect to the new education seetary who supposedly worked a miracle in chicago, you know, they pretend that they have reduced th dropout rate care what they do and a lot of these cities is at they create very -- they play very clever number names to disguise -- i want to join how they do it. >> ht: but he is saying they are out at 50%. >> guest: give him credit for that. so i apologize, yes. glad he's being candid. it is about 50% across the board for minority kids.

>>ost: in major school dishes or in philadelphia wrecks. >> guest: know, and all the major school districts that is rit. for black males it is worse. in just two cities, just two cities, new york and chicago and i mention them because new york and other people don't know this, together new york and chicago educate 10 percent of all black men in america. just those two cities. those two cities, 65 percent of black boys that are still kids to me, when they enter ninth grade, 65% are entering blackmailed by integrators will never make it to 12th grade and graduate with their peers.

and those who make it, you know, in six years or something seldom graduate because they are so demoralized. by been there over 20. just think, when you look at those numbers. what a loss to our society. i mean, how many toni morrison's, how many langston hughes, how many barack obama as we never know? becausth were somehow intelltually decapitated. spirit destroyed, seven, eight, nine years before. my answer to the question is this. resolutithe solution will neverd in high school in itself because by then these kids are so far

behind. yes, you can try all sorts of redial effor and anything that works. i will support. i am practical person. but ultimately this begins in the early years of school where these kids have received, first of all, no preschool. so they interschool two or three years behind the mainstream. the little boys especially have learned social skills which the lovely, pure, straight blond hair children of beverly hills learned in, you know,y the time they were four years old. elegant, nice social skills. they haven't learned any of that. they come to kindergarten rambunctious, already disciplinary problems, under the new regime of nclb they will

probably fail the third grade test nomad how good the teacher is. and will have to repeat. they will repeat again probably in eighth grade, seventh grade. they don't have a chance of surviving. they will probably give up. typically the biggesyear for dropout rates, it's not like 12th grade. it is usually between ninth and 10th. ninth and 10th grade. the thing is, you know, if you come into secondary school and you can't read a book for content, not just phonetically, but i meanhe content, real comprehension. if you don't have a love of reading books for their own sake, which is almost impossible

under this test agenda. because, you kw, under nclb the only reason to read a book, it's not for the joy you might get out of it. it is the number that would be plastered on your forehead after you have read it. if you come into secondary school with a fascination of numbers, with math, format sake, because it is interesting. remember when you first encountered out of a -- algebra? remember where you, i think it is trigonometry. >> host: gas. quarterback and i did play geometry also. if you don't come into secondary school with an appetite for that because it is interesting because it's like a mystery to be solved. say, we denied them all that.

we told them the only reason to learn this stuff is to pass the test. if you don't comento secondary school with any of that and without the ability to write gracefully and sincerely, you don't have a hope in the world of taking enough pleasure in school to stick it out. and especially if you know you are already threer four great behind. the average black and hispanic 12th grade student in america reads and compe at the level of a typical seventh grade white student. did i say that too fast? >> host: no, 12th grade average -- senior year in high school basically. >> guest: reag computes at a

seventh grade white people. so, you know, no wonder the dropout rate is so high. at's what i continue to believe segregation is an unspeakable evil. is never going to change as long as we put in separate schools where we never send our other kids. >> host: we have about an hour and 45 minutes left with our gas. will take a short break and show a little bit about where you live and how you write. >> guest: oh, my god you are going to show my messy house. >> host: we will be right back. >> this is my hideout. my writing hideout. this house was built in 1740, and whenever people come up here who are a little more, have more

money than i do or a little more convention. they will say the first remark is you could really do something with this house. but i've never done anything. salida package. this is a glorious kitchen. this is all there is. that's the kitchen. i think this was, this was once the wdshed. but it's fine for me. this was once a dining room, but it's been taken over by for one of the two books i'm working on now. this is all like a rly manuscpts, revisions of my last 10 books, my last eight books probably. and it's not organized.

you have to just sort of, you should intuition to arrive at the right spof u want to find the book you want. it's not alphabetic or anything. well, this is the only respectable realm in my house. this is the living room. i'm actually not in here all that much because i'm usually working in the back room, whh my office. and there are only six rooms in this little house. you see the ilings are very low beuse when it was built, you were as tall as they are now. and i got, what do you call those things, high definition

tv. so i can watch the red s. that's the one thing i do completely for fun is, far from jogging out of the woods, which is what i do, is to follow the red sox. the yankees have been destroying them what lethal i've given up on them r a while. so i retired the new tv. maybe not everyone can recognize that face. that isn't langston hughes. when i w in my first year of tehing in boston, in 1964, 1965, actually was fired at the end the school year because i read one of his poems to my class. so he sent me that as my reward. above him is my daddy. that's my daddy wn he was at harvard medical qchool in 1930.

over here is just a bar of music that my , probably my friend, mr. rogers, fred rogers sent me that when was gloomy one wee >> did you know he was a musician? >> a good musician as well as an ordained minister, and also treat his friends, children ever had. that is an honorary degree that i treasure. it's from a school in the bronx where i gave a commencement address at kindergarten graduation. and they gave me an honorary degree, as you can see it says doctor of crayons. i am very happy with that. >> i will still go back and

immerse myself from the civil rights era. this is one of taylor branch is volumes on dr. king. but frankly to be honest, h spent a lot of time reading ildren's books. this is a wonderful one by the way. a sixth grader gave me this ok it a little girl the bronx. the giver. it is a very reminiscent george orwell, 1984, but actually i think it is more subtle. it is a beautiful book. actually adults like this book as much as children do. i just crash out here and lie down. i literay lie down sometimes. and just pick one at random off

the table. you know, when i needs sort of strong version of that is not political at all and has nothing to do with all the injustices we facei will go through some poetry. and i particula like machiavelli. i like the elizabethan period. and read john done for while or some shakespeare. i have three poets to me are

like, i don't know, they are my soul food.

>> host: wre back with another hour and 45 m >> host: we are back with another hour and 45 minutes or so with jonathan kozol we will go next to kirk and clovis, new mexico. >> caller: hello. i want to ask you thisuestion. i know you have a distaste for the conservative agenda and the no child left behd, but my question for you is this. is how do you feel about the liberals who should know better, who have turned their backs on this issue of education, especially in inner cities? and how do you feel about those

who should have been working th, we ha an african-american president now, i mean must know the problem because he is from chicago. and yet heasn't worked, i think diligently enough to attack the iss. because it's not a political or government issued. it is a moral issue. >> host: thanks, caller. >> guest: at the risk of making some of my close friends angry at me, this gem is perfectly right. a lot -- an awful lot of people who are liberal or think they are liberal are pretty much avoided this issue not talked about it. an awful lot of liberals that i've known over the years, they have what i call, ty fall into, it is a special illness

that i would describe as i am the son of a psychiatrist. i have to use fancy terminology. i would call it an ideological promiscuity, because what they do is, i have seen this over the years. you know, this year it's inner-city black children, so we will go in and mentor them, take them to see if you yankees ballgames, or taken to the guggenheim museum, you know. and next year it's redwood tre trees. and the year after that it is was. and the ar after that it's a political issue in singapore. and not all of these things aren't important, but there is something that the danish

philosher kierkegaard called the purity of heart is to will one thing. you know, to start with something, follow through with it and try to win some victories. i think that's a legitimate criticism of a lot of people on the left. and i didn't know if there was a second question. >> host: my follow-up th would be whatould you want to say to the people on the left? and you have mentioned just before the break, you know, president obama wanng him to do something. so this is an opportunity for u to say this is what i want. >> guest: well, i am stunned at the large number of people who consider themsves to doubt liberals, o live in major cities like new york and

chicago, los angeles. i have an awful lot of white liberal friends in new york city, inevitably. who do not merely refused to accept and discussed the fact that they have abandoned the black and latino kids in public schools, that they just lock them out of the agenda, that they have, you know, that -- i didn't word it right. that they have giv them a second agenda. they have given them their own school, apartheid schools like all the. you go into a school, high school with 4000 kids in the bronx duke energy me 12 white children, maybe. at the most. the whole day. 12 out of 4000.

i have a lot of white friend in new york who consider themselves liberals. they are really not. they are what i would call, i would call them like tireless excellent role. there are a lot of them. "the new york times" a couple of years agtried to explain why their hearts have hardened on this issue, why they don't seem to fight for these iues anymore. and the times said the former liberal are suffering from compassion fatigue. i thought that was a wonderful turn. that sounds like another clinical term, doesn't it? it sounds like a very itish disease. compassion fatigue. but these are people who get furious if i come to their home to dinner, if they still invite me to dinner. i don't know why. always afraid i'm going to ruin the dinner party by saying something horrible.

and polite, you know. i say that for dessert and then over the coffee or crème brûlée, i say instead of fleeing from these public schools, why don't you put your children into the schools, not into little boutique, mostly white charter schools in your neighborhood, or even the schools that you know how to get your kids into because you are savvy. but into the schools, regular, poor kids at new york again. the ones that kids like pineapple attended, and transform, and by your clout, bring good schools to all the children in the city. they get furious witthe. they hate it when i say this. i'm in, they are liberal on every other subject except this

one when it com to their own children. and what they do is they get very defensive and they will say to me, what they tell you to do is to haul out your credentials in the '60s and they will say you remember me. remember, i was with you. i was and all of the marches. they will say i was at washington with dr. king in 1964. i was at greensboro. i was another civil rights battle. i was you know, the jewel of the crown of civil rights. i was under the bridge in southern alabama. i always, if all of the former liberals who say they were under that bridge it would have collapsed. i like the words of a black teacher in harlem, who sort of

user civil rights credentials in the '60s to avoid the segregation to which they contributing today. he says, you see,ow did you word it? he said, you see, to the very poor black and latino kids, i teach today in harlem, it doesn't matter much what bridge you stood on 40 years ago. they want to know what bridge you stand on now. i ve that statement. so just forced this issue every chance i get. and it makes people angry, honestly. it makes peopleurious at me because they just want to talk about, you know, some little new trendy school reform, like small segregated. >> host: smaller schools, smaller classrooms? >> guest: separate and unequal schoolwhere black kids are

given lots of slogans to chat all day long. things like that. i just say, well, i will help you in any way that helps. but that's not the issue. you are avoiding, you are avoiding the truth of history that we are running -- br we are still running and apartheid school system. it makes pple furious i think. i get a tax, especially by extreme right wings. >> host: go ahead. by the late sterday was your birthday? >> caller: yes but i don't feel wiser. i don't feel more grown up today. >> host: do yo feel 73? >> guest: no. i feel like 60 maybe.

i don't know. >> host: go ahead,. >> caller: hello. it is an honor to speak with you. and i am close to your age. grew up in alabama. and received a wonderfu education and i uld have to say the person who influenced my li most was this white was a sixth grade teacher, actually put down and showed us square inches in the square yard. and i just held that memory all my life. but i too became a teacher, and mostly it took place pre-and post-cil rights era. i was left for a while to have babies and came bk, and low and behold the school system had changed their and i was pretty

much involved in the civil rights, having seen her my own self what was inequitable with the bus situation in montgomer where i grew up. so iecame a teacher. and the first year i was in a terribleosition because i wasn't a very good teacher, but the principal stood behind me. and then when apparent that, he said don't ever do that again. and that was as far as it went. and i became a very good teacher, and i top for 39 years. and en after i finished public school, i taught ged whhch is also. but here's my question. it is something i noticed over the yea. the principles became less active in supporting the teachers and became more active in supporting parents and administrators about them. and it seems that the hierarchy,

the goal of being an administrator is to prote the status quo to make sur erybod is behind isovered. and the teachers who squeak loudest arehe ones shut down hearted, if you get what i mean. in the good old days, when ms. white was a teacher, the principal was in charge of ordering toilet paper and seeing who was absent. and if youave a problem with a studt, you wld give a note to that student and the parents had to call a teacher. and between the two of them, they settled their problem. now we've got whole school systems run on no child left behind and all these oth programs. and the result is that teachers look like the last person ever considered in the school system. i would really be interested in

your opinion on this. >> guest: a wonderful question. i'm going to try to surprise you by giving a briefer answer. transeventy and the protector of the caller. >> guest: i know. i ramble on. that is what i like little kids because their stories go on for ever. you know? they will start and they keep piling on the aunts and butts. and i say little kids are almost as good at etdrnal run on system as william faulkner. almost, not quite. but first of all, teachers are my heroes. especially urban teachers pick teachers who go into the schools and had the greatest challenges. they are at their best, and that's why i wrote an entire

bo, letters to a young teacher. and they have been humiliated, not only by laws by nclb which treats them like robotsho are simply told, you know, read the scpt which is aligned with the exams, and don't introce any of your own humor, web, personality, or even teaching ideas. we don't want that. i think teachers have been under attack even before nclb. so people like william penn who started just pledging teachs, referring to them. remember that phrase, a tide of mediocrity. in fact, i think there getting better teachers and have been getting better people coming into inner-city schools over the

past 10, 15, 20 years that i saw at any time earlier in my career. but the principleare terribly important, and i happen to b very close to school principals. and i don'tike to feel that we scapegoat them for all the evils of our society, which is a tendencyow. in fact, in my books i always urged teachers, even the angry, the angry, impatient teachers, the anger at some of these testing regations. i always urg them to try hard to befriend the principal, talk to the principal. and you know, good principles, the really good ones, will protect those teachers. i don't mean protecting their jobs. i may protect their heart, protect them emotionally.

francesca had a wonderful principle happened to like very much. she noticed, she looked dejected at school. she might call her at home at 930 at night just to comfort her. and i also urge the young teachers not to automatically write off the old timers. that's the tendency. a lot of these very bright sort of, you know, who have just come out of jail or dartmouth, where ever, vassar, berkeley, gone to these fancy colleges. sometimes make the mistake of turning up the nose at the veteran teachers who often are in the inner city are african-american, latina. and i tell them that's a great mistake because yes, some of them might be not very interesting, but some, you know,

if you look you will find some wonderful veterans who know that neighborhood. to have known three generations of kids in the neighborhood. and who are also, there is an older teacher, there is one african-american teacher i describe who just has what i call earned authority, so that she doesn't have to yell at the kids. the kids are getting a little rambunctious. she says hold your arms. isn't that lovely. isn't that lovely. it's like grandma, you kno and everyone calms down. so i tell the young teachers, you know, don't isolate yourself. but make allies with the other teachers and principals. the one last thing i will say is it's harder for principles to pay tentn to their teacher state of mind.

and the kids themselves, to get to know every child by name. it's much rder to do that and to involve them altogether with the parents when we are now expected them, instead, more and more the government is saying, or local district are saying things like this. sorry, have an itchy nose. they are saying we don't want you to waste time with the kids and the teachers. we watch you to be the administrator of your building. they are sort of trying to force principles to be like business ceos. in fact, i came to school at columbus, ohio, where i walked into the printable office. it's a principle of the door. and i said to her, argue the printable? and believe it or not she didn't like that. she got up out of her chair and she said well, mr. kozol, to be

honest, i would rather not think of myself as the printable. and i thought, what else? she said, i would like to think that i am the building ceo. and i thought, b. i am jewish so i can say that. is that why she studied john dewey and russo and aristotle and erik erikson and all the great philosophers? so that she could pretend to be some kind of half-baked is ceo? that is a very common. there is aot of pssure on these principles under nclb to become sort of like corporate types. and i don't want them to be corporate types. i want them to be mothers to their children, and big sisters to their teachers. and friends to the parents.

unit, there is a great principle in new york by the name of ther row so whoort of typifies my idea of printable. e. retired probably not bse he hates nclb. >> host: let's go to dorothy. >> caller: i just want to follow up on mr. kozol, is that his name? >> guest: john. >> caller: i'm talking about the inner-city schools, and as far as the more older teachers who have been in the system compared to the brighter new mice coming into the system. and the inner-city schools and the school boards and everythin that goes along with it and the union type of teachers who don't necessarily do a good job. and they are in there because of the doing and they can't done

away with for the brighter new minds to come in that wou want to do a better job. so they are stuck in the bubble and these inner-city kids who don't have a choice, who are stuck there, like you bring out, you know, they are stuck there and it is a social, racial injustice that they can't get ahead. and you talk about white people with such disdain like it's th white person's fault that they get a better education when the inner cities are usually ran by the liberal democrat parties like in detroit, our democratic system. the mayor, the city council. everybody, they are all democrats and they have just destroyed it. but the children, the people of detroit have no way of getting ahead because of the system. >> host: thanks, caller. we will leave it at that. fit issue of the democrats

bein in charge and they are part of the problem. >> guest: well, look, we are all part of the problem. i have probably contributed -- hard to say that were. too many syllables. i have been part of the problem. how, i just walked into harvard so easily. i didn't have to apply anywhere else. they deciduous coming here year here, aren't you? isn't that amazing. talkbout affirmative action. so i share in this injustice also. >> host: what about her concerns about the concerns? >> guest: i don't know. i would not defend everything that every teacher in the union does, but it happens, the nea

which i happened to be close to, the national education association represents what, two or 3 million teachers in america. the largest teachers union in the country. has by and large totally apart from what they do on behalf of achers, has been a bastion of decency throughout my caree they have been the ardt advocates for poor people, better housing for poor people, for preschool for four children. and without defending everything that unions do, let's just be blunt about it, or the democts because she raised that point. or the republicans.

the teachers unions are not the reason why we have catastrophic urban rates of failure. among minority kids in america today. because we had teacher unions back in the days when i -- inner cities were mostly white, polish, irish, italian and jewish people. >> host: did they ve the same kind of power as they do today? >> guest: yes. and more powerful. but this is the main point. you know, they have plenty, they make mistake and areas where i just disagrewith the unions. but the fact is the union did not creatthis catastrophe, and they are not responsible for perpetuating it. nor are the democrats. nor other republicans.

it is a systematic injustice. it is a system that has got to be changed, putting all poorest children with the most poorly educated parents who are the victims of arior generation of segregation and underfunding, putting all these kids in schools which is the rest of society shuns, as though they are leprechauns, is a guarantee that you are not only going to isolate them physically, but also cut them off actually from all the benefits of the surroundin society. and that's the big oblem. the big problem is that we, that the united states, for all the wonderful things we do, and i love this country, still runs a

theologically evil school system, a rotten, evil, and the way that iests and rabbis would say, it is evil because i is still on the model of apartheid that we inherited, that we saw in the south in the old days bore dr. king, and which h been largely defeated in south africa. host: plus a follow-up wh at on a question that came in by e-mail. this person says how does america balance the need for and the educational benefits of immigration without busing poor children from place to place? busingas lessuccessful than it could've been because the bird was placed on the poor to go to to the school miles away and into susined a school after all of the white children

left and went to private school. how do we achieve our objective good, objecve goals i think she meant of a good education and a fruitful integration? >> guest: well, i'm going to be real quick on this. i have written -- i noticed the woman said basically parts, of man, whater, how can we have school integration without putting children on buses. obviously so long as we have residential segregation, there is no way to do it unless you use transportation, right? absolutely no other way. if you live in an area, the bronx, you know, the bronx is huge. is a city all its own, it would be i think the fifth largest city in america. did you know that? afd virtually all minority. 90% black, hispanic.

how do you do it without transportation? >> host: right. >> guest: there is no way too it without transportation. let's not kid ourselves. but this is going to infuriate more people i think. that guy says i ain't too old to worry. they can't do much harm to. i'm going to keep saying this. i don't care what price i have to pay. i am going to keep fighting this issuuntil my dying day here listen, she uses the word busing, right? when i was in eighth grade, seventh grade, my daddy got me into what was considered the top classical episcopal prep school in boston. there was a 40 minute ride everyday. i'm jewish, by the way. i think i was the third jew that

what they. it was a good school also. nobody said portal jonathan, isn't it aool thing for dr. cassel to do, to put portal jonathan, to mak him ride 40 minutes every day to go to the best private school in boston dirt and all. people were jealous. they want to know how they could get their kid in th was all poised. how they would get their little boy in. i have friends whoive soho. i dislike the bottom of new york. i always had bottom and top, you know. i looked at it that way. and they send their kids to these wonderful private schools in riverdale, which is like the northernmost tip of new york, of

the city. that is a long ride, especially in rush hour every day. does anybody weep and say, oh, my god, busing? you bust your children all the way from greenwich village, you know. will kids, you know, rich kids haveeen bust for centuries -- or decades to get into the top schools in the community. in fact, almost, i would say about 90 percent of the children in america go to schl by bus. were either, i live in a little working-class town up north of boston near the new hampshire border. part farming, pa mdlclass. you try not to drive anywhere at 3:00 in the afternoon because if you do on those backward, you get stuck behind the big yellow

school bus which keeps stopping for all the little kids. this is baloney. i will just give one example. there is a voluntary integration program that surround the city of boston, where i lived. it started after the protests, the end of the protests, civ rights era. 40 years old. 3000 children ride the bus yes, that horrible thing. they get on a bus and they go typilly not very, an hour and a hf as the people exaggere. typically 20 minute ride, too like the suburb that i grew up in. and 90 percent of them graduate from high school with her classmates. 88% go on to four-year colleges.

black parents object to letting their kids ride the bus to the best suburban schools and some of the bt goals andmerica? there's a waiting list of 16000 people to get their children into that program. i would ju drop the issue there because i realized that americans are so prejudiced against -- americans have been so indoctrinated against the evils of busing for any good cause, that they forget how common the school bus . it is part of life in our society. it is that good old yelow school bus. ere is nothing wrong with it, and left it contains a black kids apparently.

. . ustin, ãhjlelwlelw!çaç-x#xlelwlelwlelww service teachers ready. and it started this summer, i started getting feedback from my studts that all this, it started with president obama. and it --

>> host: did you sayreschool children? preschool teaers? >> guest: yes. >> host: okay. >> guest: i'm hearing back for white preservice teachers. >> caller: i'm hearing back bor white preservice teachers that are saying enough of this, we don't want this. and president obama is going to be speaking to the public schools on tuesday. and these schools in central texas, theublic schools, many of the parents are up in arms. what i kind of, i need from you right now is reassurance that, i need reassurance that, to keep on going down the road that yo have set, what you've bee

saying and writing about. because i'm hearingack from my white preservice teachers that they don't want this. i am hearing back from my teachers, they don't want this. have you heard of this before? is this coming up at other universities? when they say they don't want this? >> host: be more ecific. lbj i didn't mean to get so emotional. wilbur cohen what are you talking about? lbj bringing in other ethnic groups, bringing in lgston hughes, cooking traditional, fr different backgrounds besides william bennett's.

>> guest: to bring in the briefest and dry can, in public, we have been trained, you are not supposed to show your emotions. if you are talking about something painful, think it is normal to do that. the ones i wonder about a the ones who can talk about suffering in a glib, playful way as if they don't know that it's real. i like people like this woman. i would simply say we are all aware, many of us are aware the newspaper needs to be -- this protest, people don't want president obama speaking to kids

in their schools, here is what believe. i just think there are more basically decent, open minded, emotionally generous people in america than you would believe if you just look at these isolated sort of screwball groups that have a particular axto grind for, don't want president obama to speak in their school because they think he is socialist or something like that. despe tha despite frequent meanness and viciousness of many of the people who attacd me

from the right, it is no fun to have to undergo those attacks because i wasn't prepared for that in my education, the people who attacked me and usually better debater than i am because they learn how to narrow down their words, they use their words like surgical instruments. i am not good at tt. despite that, this is basically a good country. i would call it a highly incomplete, but still perfectible democracy. and i think mos people that i meet, even conservative back country areas, i don't know if texas, this woman is calling

from texas, i visit a small university, get to talk with a guy at the 7/eleventh floor late at night, desperately trying to find something to eat after the hotel has shot up, get into the night, i don't know many people filled with visual -- a visceral, racial cruelty or cruelty of any kind. most of the people i meet, whatever their politics, when you get them alone, i you get the sense that if a new pineapple, they would do anything they could for it.

if they knew david, another wonderful boy who i am very proud of, and the knee and jelly and a whole bunch of th, they would do anything they couldor them. the thing is, we are so cut off. that is why i fight so hard against the physical divisions that conceal these beautiful chdren from the rest of our society. >> host: orlando, fla. is next, then we will take a short break, jonathan kozol. go ahead. in orlando, fla.. >> caller: thank you, jonathan, thank you so much for your decation for our children. i also believe they do not

encourage chilen to be independent and creative thinkers and influenza, our former governor, jetblue edge, was a big supporter of charter schools, he also supported giving vouchers to parents of public school children who fail the fcat test. the irony is the kids who failed the fcad tests are not required to take the tests in the private schools. lot of people are not are of that. he was a real estate developer, he helped to build the first private charter school in miami dade area. my question is, what is your opinio about vouchers and charter schools in general? thomas jefferson founded the public-school system so every child would have an education. he would turn over in the grave

e privatization of school concerned with profit margins more than the education of our children. >> guest: you are talking about the florida version of the in seal the -- ncld. i believe that vchers, which means total privatizing of the school system, replacing the public-school system, is the single worst, most dangerous edational idea to be brought to the national level, as a serious proposition in my lifetime. it would mean the end of the legacy handed down to less by

jefferson and so many others. for all its flaws -- i hav criticized the publisystem my whe life in different ways. for all s flaws, public school is a precious legacy. it is the essence of the idea, do we have a common deiny as citizens of one democracy? for all its imperfections, it does represent something that is sacred to me. the voucher idea of individual, often corporate run schools competing with one another on a

market basis, it represents t triumph of narrow, individual self-interest. over anything that even hints at common virtues and embrace other people's children. i am going to use my elbows to get her into that school and if the mother across the street doesn't have the sharp elbows to know how to do it or if she is depressed or too crushed by poverty to know how to do it, tough luck. let her loose. it is not -- to me it appeals to the worst instincts in human

beings. government -- into st. francis of assisi -- you can't make us all into saints, governmentan either bring out the meanest instincts or the most noble instincts in our society. i think vouchers bring out -- charter schools are a halfway step to vouchers, they were invented largely in order to placate people who want vouchers. they said we will call them public schools but they will be run ately, and a lot of them, once a group starts a charter school, they farm it out to a private corporation for

profit. some charter schools, a few that i have seen are very good. i am not aaid to admit that. but for the most part, charter schools tend to be diocre, they open and shut, they enroll kids. a lot of them are a little more than mom-andop shops basically, they won't adm this, but those that do get high scores to get thnewspaper attention tend to be schools that are cleverlyelected in the students they enll. they won't admit, they won't say we are excluding the kids who might cause us problems. but self selectivity, how to

navigate the application system, they tend to be highly sective. most of them don't serve kids with special needs. so what happens is a handful of these charter schools are very good, they get super good tention in the newspapers, and meantime, all the ks they won't accept, the parents don't have the aggressive savvy to 5 to get into them. all those kids are left with feures in the public system. i am proud of -- i am proud of parents is stay in the public system, try to make it a better system. i consider the ones who flee to basically boutique academies -- >> host: name and charter schools have beeno that was top-notch? >> guest: at won't a top-notch.

i visited one of the kit academies in the bronx. it had a bunch of whiz kids, young teachers who had gone to colleges like yale, i guess yale isn't that bad, is it? i always say yale is for -- great kids who are syntactically

impaired. while i was there it was being at the cirque eysoleil. i had never seen so many kids with glasses. they were no richard than anybody else in the bronx, but there are distinctions, the more fortunate poor, and those who

can't get in. charter schools will never -- the great struggle has to be for the mainstream of the children who are in the regular u.s. public schools, t fly that flag even a few they dishonored in many ways. wilbur cohen we wille with jonathan kozol until the top of the hour, focusing on the winner of the national book award. we wille back with more of your queions in just a few minutes. >> this is where you do your writin >> yes, i almost never let anyone in this room. i am giving you a special exemption. this is where i have written all

my books for 25 years. twenty-twoyears, i guess. essentially, a right by hand. i have always written by hand. i don't use a computer. i don't like to write with a computer. i don't like anything mechanical getting in between the and the words. i know this looks crazy. is probably best if you don't film in front of me because i am not too close-up. it has phone numbers, everybod i have ever hado call on the phonen the past ten years, i

come in here. i always drink coffee, i drink too much coffee. it tooke years to figure out all the gadgets that keep the cut on. i don't answer thehone. i never ran to e phone while i am worng. i don't have an e-mail at home either. i have a couple wonderful assistants who run an office for me in cambridge and they do that. there is a fax machine here, it is upstairs. i don't look at that for at least the first seven hours after i wake up. i would like to start by actually writing. this preparatory research that i need to do for that day's

rating, i do it the night before. after a day of writing i will pull together all the notes that i need for the next day's rating because when i start, a cup of coffee, a certain mood, silence, so peaceful here, i will go straight to work. i tend to have this problem. sometimes i don't have enough margin space. so then after two hours, hours, i will read what i have been

doing. you need to add a beautiful words, you forgot. then i have to do all this, i have a line. 2a, on a single page, a bunch of it. fortunately, i have a saintly friend, she cares a lot about these issues, the social issues, moral issues, so she, god bless her, types everything. i don't send anhing, i relate

it because i write everytng. maybe after three weeks, i will send 60 pages, she turns it into typescript that people can read. usually takes me about three to five years to do a book. >> when she hone 60 pages of typing, what happens with that? >> i reduced it to something that looks like -- that looks like a dog chewed it up. itill change so much. we go through maybe five of

those revisions in that section of the book in a certain place. then later, of course, there's fact checking and research. all those bottom shelves behind the, all the data from my last two books. >> thank you for allowing us into your office andour house. >> thanks for coming. nobody else will get in here for another five years.

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♪ >> host: jonhan kozol, we are back for our last 40 mutes. looking at what i wrote down from one of your books. bernardo roiguez, danny santiagootis lamont blair, i pulled those names because of this e-mail here, and a doctoral

student presently doing research in miami, fla. on response to intervention and positive behavior. quite recently i lost my first student due to an ak-47 gun accident. do you think direct instruction in gun awareness and behavioral social, economic at form of behavior motivation programs will transform traditional methods maintaining student conduct? >> guest: those are aot of big words. >> host: the names i gave for kids who died in violence. >> guest: bernardo died at the hands of the violence of new york city, where housing in his building, consequently he was simply playing on the eighth

floor of his apartment building and the elevator was brokennd they complained that the city knew nothing about it, he touched the elevator door to open and he felt eight flights to his death. there was no elevator. it was broken. most of the kids i have known who died young have not died in violence, in crime inflicted on them, but as the indirect result of the tremendous, chronic depression in which they were themlves placed by the conditions of their early childhood. a lot othem i have been

working with kids in the bronx for 25 years. it started when i wrote rachel and her children. the homeless shelter was in man and. when those kids got out of that shelter, a lot of their parents wanted to lived in racially mixed neighborhoods but the city forced them to move to the bronx, put them in section 8 housing, in a neighborhood that was already deeply drug addicted. the years those kids spent in the shelters, the shelters re and anything benevolent, the shelter i described in rachel and her children, and 18 story

decrepit, it was a nightmare. several of those kids were so traumatized by that experien that they never roveredrom it. one shot himself in the head many years ago, another just by of unknown causes o months ago. i would like to see any type of intervention that can spare kids from any kind ofolence, but i don't think that is the main issue. if they went to wonderful schools, they had joy in their childhood, of my favorite

children's books. >> host: this is yr favorite children's book? >> guest: good night moon, this is a wonderful. if they grew up a world, francesca's glass room, those kids were happy, they loved beauty, it is not bad to be joyful at school. they wouldn't be turning to bitterness whe they're

16-year-old. >> host: let's go to idaho. >> caller: there was some early discussion about the 50% dropout rate in ier city high schools. that means 50% of the students are graduating, which in some respects is a much greater accomplishment than graduating from well funded surban high school. my question is, what are our universities, such as your alma mater and other universities particularly private universities, what efforts do they undertake to identify and recruit students that actually succeed in graduating from these inner-city i schools, many of whom may never take a college preparatory test or even consider applying for a university because of the

environment day i in? and my other point, i heard your comments earlier regarding the voucher programs and by observation is many politicians who choose to send their own children to private schools seem to be verypposed and quick to dismiss voucher programs that in effect enable the children of poor families to provide the same opportunity to their children. >> host: thank you. >> guest: on the second point, the point is a lot of those who promote vouchers -- remember a man named lamar alexander who was injured patients secretary under maybe. senior or reagan? i was in a debate with him in a

senate hearing because i remember tom harkin sharing the committee, we were the two witnesses. he said to me becau he was a voucher, he said jonathan, you was ve polite, and jonathan, you know, we send our kids to the to@ schools, t prep schools, all we want to do through vohers is give poor kids the same chance. d i said to him, secretary alexander, if you are proposing that we give $40,000 vouchers to all the kids in inner-ci washington, chicago and new york so they can go to exeter and handover and other top prep schools, i will become a

republican. but that is not what they are offering. vouchers essenally a at best what you would call for people's pretls, schools which at very best might be about -- might deserve c plus compared to the a-plus of handover and exeter. i know those schools very well. i went to one. i went to school which is boston's local version. you know what class size? 12. twelve in a class.

when you pay $44,000 a year for your child, you are getting not only relaxed teacher but in command, small class where even without being mean-spirited, george bsh jr. george w. bush, would do well enough to get into college and get a lot of attention. the kids i know in the inner city, had by way of class size, often in september, 38 kids paed into a rm that holds 24. i walked into a tenth grade in los angeles, the teacher had 40 kids in her class, 40.

i said to her right in frt of the kids, hope it is okay to say this bad word and television, how in hell do you teach 40 kids? i said it made in front o the children, that was not the nastiest word they ever heard. she said you will find out. she left the room. that is why the vouchers thing is a fraud. >> host: toledo, a high. >> caller: i am a teacher here in the neighborhood, the high-school i graduated from was 98% black and working-class. i wanto say have a group of honors kids, 25, they are very ight kids, they absorber

knowledge that they are very good readers also. they deserve the very best. my heart aches becausehey are not going to get it. i did the best i can. asy colleagues, i want to emphasize, to give them a good first-class education. that being said, the other two thirds are kids in his struggle with reading. they don'tead well, they don't like reading, and to get them comprehensionwise, the joys of literature, and they don't have the basic skills which are very difficult which does not mean they are dumb kids, they're not, they are bright kids and their survivors in a difficult environment. my point is, there's tremendous pressure on teachers to move them ahead,pass the test, there are tricks of the trade that we use to get them to pass the test but we know in our hearts, they're getting that

love of learning, it will only come when we slow down, identify them properly, assesses them properly and have what we need, because we don't do it in middlechool, we are going to lose them, then an overwhelming dropout rate. the achievement gap among the latino and african parent and kids, and a big fan of yours but i want to emphasize there are things we can do right now to stop this. with t situation the way it is, the things you are saying about equality of opportunity, educationwise, dicting the response, i agree with everything you said politically but we are in the trenes. i don't mean just myself, a lot of my colleagues, we are desperate people at this point, related to the earlier caller,

this is how we feel, we are sacrificing our own children to think of it that way. >> host: if you could yet one thing from t government, your community, whatever, what would be the most viablehing for you? >> caller: intensive training for identifying features that want to be where they are, things that work, and there are those things, give us the time and the training we need. means we ve to do at the time, but we need it, we need special training because these are intensive problems that can be solved but we need to have the time and the money to do it. >> guest: if i would this five things, maybe four, that would directly address what e described, i would agree with her, you have to start by middle

school. i would start sooner than that. i would use the following things. i would say no. one, we should stop pretending, as every president has done for decades, that when hes or elected we're going to give preschool to all the kids who need it. that is a terrible broken promise. it is time to do it. every one of these needy kids, every single one of them, not just half a day for one year. number two, small class size, a teacher is good, pretty good with 28 or 38, miracles with 18. it is good for the children of the rich, it is good for the poorest ild, the poorest

mother. number three, the heart of any school is the quality and high morale of the teacher. that meansiving not just superb training, but more important, continuing emotional support to the creative, not totally conformist, jubilant, high spirited, and exciting young teachers who adore the children and love the children and who are crawling the walls out of desperaon because of the pathological reliance on drling thdm for exams and four, i would plug the

classrooms with hureds and hundreds of e most expensive, beautiful, brightly colored, fascinating, charming, whimsical, delightful children's books. fled the room, get rid of those phonics readers that are so boring, i swear they do a better job putting children to sleep, they create a kind of said vandalism in the first grade, the walking dead who are good at chanting all day long, teach the vowels and consonants, they create a mood with learning that it is a thrl, it is exciting to walking to school every morning. if you want to get tthat in

the corner of the room where teachers stack hundreds and hundreds of books. i don't just mean a good school library. flood the class itself. >> host: what next for you? >> guest: i have never done this before. i'm working on 2-1/2 books at the same time. one of them is a children's book, that only counts for half. i tell stories to children a lot. they say why don't you turn that into a book? i say i haven't shown it to my others. do it! the two serious books i have been working hard on are a book on 25 years of life and work with children i have known and

written about in the bronx. >> host: a memoir. >> guest: more than that. an update. what has happened sinc where are they now, what is the current education picture look like for their younger brothers andisters, where do we stand now for the next generation? i have been working on tt for several years. it will be one of the major books of my career, i hope. but i have a lot of work ahea is going to take time. the other book is a memoir of my dad, which is complete. i finished it. he died last year at the age of 102, he led a fascinating life.

he started out going to harvey law school, he quit harvard law, went to europe, tracked down the greatest living founders of modern psychiatry, people who are still alive. in vienna and paris, went back to college, and at harvard med school, the next 12 years, residents at mass general, hawkins and baltimore and became one of the fint clinicians' i have ever known. he was traed equally in neurology and psychiatry, so he had a very fine skill at delineating the difference between pure the psychiatric problems and physical and

neurological problems. the combination of his career as a doctor was probably our greatest american playwright, eugene o'nel, moved up to boston to be my father's patient, he treated him for the remainder of his life. daddy saw hievery single day until he died. he didn't want to let him go. daddloved him. my father loved literature. >> host: of thosthree -- >> guest: at the age of 88, he diagnosed themselves with aleimer's and spent the next 14 years, during which he

descrid to mehe progression of his illness. a fascinating story. that was all done. at random house, they think the other book is more timely. they want the other book to come first, even though that will take a lot more work. i've like a book about my d to come out now but they want to put it on ice for 40 years. i love them. my publisher is a close friend of mine, she has been very good to me. but sometimes i think mketing concerns have sort of taken over

the publishing iustry. i am sticking a pin in her rear end, she will pay attention. i would like to publish that book now. >> host: the e-mail from ohio goes bacto your other book, she asks, stephen from death at an early age has haunted her ever since she read the book. do you know what became of him? was he rescued? >> guest: like many of the kids i knew at that time, he never recovered from what he went through in that school. he ended up in prison after committing a truly atrocious crime. my father, god bless him, was a psychiatrist, tried to have him putnto a medical center rather

than a prison but i believe steven has spent almost all his life in prison. that haunts me to this day, makes me sad. i want to say one last came. i am at an age where time is gettin very precious or scarce. a lot of people i have been very close to, not kids b grown-ups that i have trusted and looked upo have died recently, passed away. my closest friend was fred rogers. still keep his unlisted phone number in front of methat is a childi thought, maybe one night -- my mom died two years

ago at 102, my dad last year. when i talk to college kidi always say listen, you woj't lieve it at your age, but life goes sfast. use it ll. shea that to them every time. it goes fast use it well. >> host: another name from your book is james mcdonal. who is he? >> guest: a classmate in high-school who suffered from deep depression andilled himself in ou junior year. he was a very kind friend to me.

as i said, i was the only jewish boy in my school at that time. when one of the other boys who wasn't very nice, i won't say in the name, boy said something to me, call me a dirty jew, my friend, james, swung his book bag, those green book bags, swung his green book bag around and around and hit him in the face. i don't like violence but i said he will never say that agai

hi was hunted that he ed. life is fragile, rich or poor, white or black, life is fragile. i was startled, fred rogers, who to me seemed like any turtle young man, is calling me up, he lled me up to ask me how my mom was doing. he didt tell me had cancer, that he was dying. time was stunned when he died, i thought he would live forever. wanted him to live forever. none of us can. that is why i always said, especially young people, you have very i ideals, people say be patient, get your business degree under your belt, you can

work your way up to a corporation, then later you can deal with your ideals. don't believe that. don't wait too long. your ideals might creep ay and disappear. what matters most to yr sense of ethics right now, do it now. >> host: a phone call from north carolina. >> caller: hi. i agree with most of what jonathan has said, but i do take exception to some things. he was talking about voluntary busing. when he was going to school, that is different from what we had doing now. i'd that parents didn't have to

worry about who was going to take care of them when they went to work early, especially the single parent, went to work fairly and had to make sure their kids were okay, then they had to go on this bus ride to school, passing schools in their own neighborhoods. -did is the community where we need to start because you mentioned communities by poverty, that is what i so prevalent in minority communities. we shod start there. >> all i will say is this. i am practical, i wouldn't spend so much time with teachers and principals as i am doing right now in the south bronx, uess i wanted and believed that we

could make some real progress. a sino from my desk says pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. in that sense, i believe we have to do the best we can inhe situation. i remember dr. king's dream, he did not say i have a dream that someday we will have separate but equal schools with higher test scores and bombastic chance about self-help and self improvement. he said had been little black children and little white children will sit together at the table as brothers.

and i am going to keep fighting for that goal until my dying day. >> host: has the obama administraon approached you at all for advice? have you propose any proct for them? >> guest: i have spoken, no matter what the council, during theampaign, i actually worked for the campaign, i spend more time with senator kennedy, since he was the chair of the education committee, i am very fond of him, we had three long meetings, up until almost the time when he was diagnosed with cerebral -- with a tumor. i am going to continue that struggle. as for my invitation, dinner with the president and his wife,

they must have lost my address or something. >> host: las vegas, go ahead. >> caller: i am so glad i did get on. i just wanted to say that is amazing that the woman who called to talk about getting the community involved was right on the same page with me. i want to say how much i appreciate and am so grateful for the life of jonathan kozol. i can remember back in the 40s when my mother was the community activist in new york, when busing first began, after segregation was abolished. i am sure jonathan can remember something about that case. i am a child of that era. i was in