The John W. Porter Distinguished Chair in Urban Education presents the 2013-2014 Speaker Series: Reach, Teach, and Inspire. The 2013-2014 Speaker Series is hosted by the Department of Special Education, celebrating a century of excellence. Dr. Derrick Fries is chair of the Porter Chair Speaker Series Steering Committee. Our first guest speaker is:
Jonathan Kozol
Jonathan Kozol
Bio
In the passion of the civil rights campaigns of 1964 and 1965, Jonathan Kozol gave up the prospect of a promising and secure career within the academic world, moved from Harvard Square into a poor black neighborhood of Boston, and became a fourth grade teacher.
He has since devoted nearly his entire life to the challenge of providing equal opportunity within our public schools to every child, of whatever racial origin or economic level. He is, at the present time, the most widely read and highly honored education writer in America.
When he is not with children and teachers in their classrooms, or at universities speaking to our future teachers, Jonathan is likely to be found in Washington, where he has spent much of his time in recent years trying to free our schools and children from the punitive and unsuccessful federal testing law No Child Left Behind — and to convince his friends within the Senate leadership that an obsessive emphasis on “teaching to the test” is unhealthy for our children and degrading to our teachers.
Jonathan received a summa cum laude degree in English literature from Harvard in 1958, after which he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University. He has been called “today’s most eloquent spokesman for America’s disenfranchised.” But he believes that children speak most eloquently for themselves; and in his newest book, Fire in the Ashes, we hear their testimony.
| Who: | Jonathan Kozol | Flyer (pdf) |
| Topic: | Fire in the Ashes: Race, Justice, and the Struggle for Survival in our Urban Neighborhoods and Schools |
| Date: | Wednesday, June 26, 2013 |
| Time: | Lecture: 1:30 p.m. w/reception and book signing to follow. |
| Location: |
