Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Death at an Early Age

by Jonathan Kozol, Robert Coles (Preface by)

4.21 of 5 stars 4.21 · rating details · 506 ratings · 39 reviews

In this National Book Award-winning book, Kozol unflinchingly exposes the disturbing "destruction of hearts and minds in the Boston public school." A new Epilogue assesses the last 20 years of the educational system.

Paperback, 272 pages

Published October 1st 1985 by Plume

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Social Justice: Books on Racism, Sexism, and Class

145th out of 548 books — 382 voters

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

Books White People Need To Read

184th out of 205 books — 176 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 874)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Dec 05, 2012 Kylee rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book I read was "Death At An Early Age" by Jonathon Kozol. It was about a teacher who moved into the Boston Public School System in 1964. The purpose of this book was to show how schools differed from today. The book made me realize how the school system was at that time and many things which happened there would not be tolerated today. The teachers could do anything they wanted to without consequences.

I believe the theme of the book is to appreciate what we have and not take things for gran...more

like · see review

May 16, 2012 John added it

This is an autobiographical indictment of the Public School System in the Boston, Mass. area by Jonathan Kozol from his personal experience until his discharge from Teaching in 1965. It is stunning. This book is simultaneously tragic and sweet, frighteningly horrible and delightful. It offers the reader a view into the halls and classrooms and even the Teacher's lounge in a School that was supposed to be educating Black students in a manner befitting any other student, revealing terrible inequit...more

like · see review

Jan 08, 2012 Joey rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book as part of my teacher-training curriculum when pursuing my bachelor's degree in education. It relates the story of a young teacher's first year in the educational system in the late 60s in the inner-city schools of Boston, and as such it focuses a great deal on racial discrimination, bigotry from teachers, administrators, and politicians, and the recalcitrance with which the same individuals rebelled against desegregation.

The book details the horrific conditions that poor black...more

like · see review

Feb 25, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 25-books-in-2013

Death At an Early Age was a hard book to finish, but even harder to put down.

Substitute teacher Jonathan Kozol left his mark on literature by publishing this, his memoir of a year in Boston Public Schools. I'd never even heard of it until I sought out the African American lit section of a local bookstore. So I picked it up at a whim, thinking it would offer some novel insight into my own profession and the Civil Rights era.

I came to find Death At an Early Age to be more alarming than enlightenin...more Death At an Early Age was a hard book to finish, but even harder to put down.

Substitute teacher Jonathan Kozol left his mark on literature by publishing this, his memoir of a year in Boston Public Schools. I'd never even heard of it until I sought out the African American lit section of a local bookstore. So I picked it up at a whim, thinking it would offer some novel insight into my own profession and the Civil Rights era.

I came to find Death At an Early Age to be more alarming than enlightening. Reading about the deplorable conditions of Kozol's school, his tyrannical coworkers, and the sadistic treatment of black students was unsettling at best, and jaw-dropping at its lowest points. Although the book recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, I still felt aftershocks of the false 'equality' of urban school districts that echo through our society today. It's an obscene mark on our country's storied history of civil rights that experiences like Kozol's were likely not unique for young teachers in so-called integrated educational settings. One of the most troubling aspects of this book is that it takes place entirely in Boston, a city I tend to think of as integral to the United States' image as a free and just nation. One can't help but wonder, if this is how segregated New England had become, what was happening in the rest of the country?

This book is as emotional as it is educational, and it's hard not to be moved by the realities that were commonplace for black students in the Boston school children. Beating, flaccid expectations and high teacher turnover are a way of life for the students in Kozol's school. Although he runs the risk of making himself out as a martyr at the center of this turning point for civil, Kozol does so as a tribulation to telling a story worth hearing. While reading his memoir, I often found myself wondering what the other teachers (and even students) in his school would have to say about the author, but I have no reason to think Mr. Kozol exaggerated the harsh realities of a young educator. The story does not have a happy ending, but the teacher's perseverance to save his students was not spent in vain. This book is testament enough to that.

If you have an urge to peel back a still-healing wound on our public education system, don't overlook this degradation trip. Although it was difficult for me at points--I set it down several times from feeling depressed--Death At an Early Age still sounds an irresistible alarm to the injustices of our society, carried out in the name of 'protecting' our most innocent members. (less)

like · see review

Dec 21, 2011 Luke Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars

Few books I've read were this shocking, angering and horrifying. Kozol paints a bleak and tragic portrait of a segregated Boston public school in the mid '60s. It's easy to approach this sort of material with a "that was a long time ago, things have changed" attitude. In this case, simply put, not much has changed. The Harvard Civil Rights Project has stated that the United States is twelve years into a process of resegregation. The inner city schools today are still, in many ways, perpetuating...more

like · see review

May 28, 2010 Derek rated it 4 of 5 stars

Winner of the National Book Award in 1967, Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools is the story of a new teacher recruited to finish the year with a group of African-American students. It does not compare much to Boston Public, the FOX television drama created by David E. Kelley (2000-2004).

The first word of the first chapter is “Stephen,” the name of one of Kozol’s students, and roughly the first half of the...more Winner of the National Book Award in 1967, Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools is the story of a new teacher recruited to finish the year with a group of African-American students. It does not compare much to Boston Public, the FOX television drama created by David E. Kelley (2000-2004).

The first word of the first chapter is “Stephen,” the name of one of Kozol’s students, and roughly the first half of the book is devoted to profiles of Stephen and his friends, anecdotes from their day-to-day experiences. In a school where white teachers take minority students to the basement to hit them with a rattan, Kozol makes it clear that it’s him and his students (and eventually his students’ parents) versus “the system.” The institution is represented by the Art Teacher, the Reading Teacher, and a piece of cardboard covering a broken window. It’s allegorical: The two teachers represent all the teachers and the cardboard serves a greater purpose than keeping out the cold. It stands for torn curtains and racist curriculum and everything wrong with Kozol’s teaching environment.

Kozol sides unfailingly with students. “I came into that room knowing myself to be absolutely on their side,” he writes. “I did not go in there with even the littlest suggestion that what had been going on… was even one-fiftieth their fault” (162). The way Kozol sees it, misbehavior is the students’ way of confirming their existence in a system that does not view students, especially African-American students, as fully human; thus, Stephen’s habit of looking in a classroom mirror is not the narcissism of youth but a way for him to “check up on his existence” (7); Kozol discovers some of his students steal money from their parents; this, he says, is because they’ve had so much stolen from them in life.

Kozol uses strong language. He speaks directly about the waste of time in school: “Who is it who bears responsibility for this soul-drowning dreariness and waste of hours?… It cannot be unexpected that motivation becomes the all-important obstacle when the material is so often a diet of banality and irrelevance which it is not worth the while of a child to learn or that of a teacher to teach” (184). About the poor working environment: “All that surprised me was that every one of those schools had not been burned down yet by an outraged population when so many of them were obvious firetraps” (148). About a racist education system: “The school systems kept its unteachables out of sight and turned them into untouchables” (49). About his colleagues: “The Art Teacher did not… care anything at all about the way in which you can destroy a human being” (4). He continues about her: “The hypocrisy involved in her narrow favoritism was revealed in several ways” (152). The Mathematics Teacher: “I cannot say that I learned anything at all except how to suppress and pulverize any sparks of humanity or independence or originality in children” (14). These colleagues are generally consummate professionals – they have the “superficial trappings and the polysyllables of ‘culture’”– but Kozol villainizes them by showing how their covert racism, often characterized by “lip service to a kind of halfway liberalism,” is in many ways worse than the basement beatings executed by others.

Kozol is hard on himself. He aligns himself with the Art Teacher: “I think that [the Art Teacher:] was no more a hypocrite… than I was a hypocrite” (12). He implicates himself: “By not complaining and by not pointing it out to anyone,” he confesses, “in a sense I went along with the rest of them and accepted it as something inevitable… A friend of mine to whom I have confided some of these things has not been able to keep from criticizing me for what he thinks of as a kind of quiet collusion” (31-33). Both admissions happen early in the book. The latter half of the book, shifting from exploration of student lives to a study of classroom materials (Kozol walks us through a close-reading of a textbook and several poems), is more argumentation than narrative. When Kozol gets fired by the curriculum cops for teaching a Langston Hughes poem (“The Ballad of the Landlord”), his humility and self-deprecation die and are replaced with a serious righteousness that, given the evidence, seems warranted. He stops confessing his wrongs and qualifying his arguments. He allows his nearly-annoying earnestness to stand as a refreshing antidote to the jargon and bureaucracy surrounding (and about to collapse in on) him and all his students and his students parents.(less)

like · see review

Jul 21, 2011 Joan Winnek rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I first read this book soon after it was published, when I was a second year teacher at a public junior high school in Vallejo, CA, that had about 10% black students. I had done my intern teaching at Berkeley (CA) High School during the volatile summer of 1967, to a mixed class, about half black, half white, and mixed from the 10 stage tracking system from track 1 (one step below honors) to mentally retarded (as it was then called). This book was an eye-opener and guide in my struggles to learn...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 24, 2011 Shari rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Vivienne

Shelves: graduate-school-books

Although the writing was repetitive at times, this was a story that had to be told. Kozol pulls no punches about de facto segregation in the Boston Public Schools before the era of busing. Honestly, while conditions in the schools are better today, some of his words could easily be applied to students currently attending weaker schools in the system.

I wrote down a favorite quotation: "The slowness of change is always respectable and reasonable in the eyes of the ones who are only watching; it i...more

like · see review

Jun 21, 2012 Susan Olesen rated it 4 of 5 stars

A depressing true story of the absolute decrepitude of the Boston school System in 1965, where black students were warehoused in condemnable buildings with no materials, no learning, hostile racist teachers, and no hope for the future, where their entire psyches were destroyed before they ever had a chance, preordained to fail by the system. Intolerable. If I want to go out and riot after reading it, I cannot imagine how awful it was to live it.

like · see review

Jun 03, 2008 Maureen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: education, anthropology-sociology

I read this book when it first came out. I was appalled by the conditions he described in the Boston public school in which he taught, but not surprised, The poor children have always been denied decent funding for education. In a state of the State address to the Georgia legislature, then-governor Roy Barnes described the Hope Scholarship program as, "my anti-crime bill." Too bad more politicians don't speak out on the close knit connections between poverty, second-class education, and crime. K...more

like · see review

Jun 04, 2011 Chuck Jackson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Good story about a horrid situation. Surprising how much of the systemic insights are still relevant after almost 50 years. For example, the sense of parental powerlessness, administrative indifference and so forth.

like · see review

Jun 25, 2007 Falcon rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: educators, white people, anyone who didn't have to go to an innercity school

The name really speaks for itself in this book, and it refers to the awful, degrading education that black elementary schoolers were given in an inner city school where Kozol was a long-term sub. What I saw in Kozol then was an early antiracist who asked tough questions about his role in the system, which none of his fellow teachers seemed willing to do. The conditions underwhich the students are taught are terrible, and the lessons they are told about themselves similarly destructive.

I never r...more

like · see review

Jan 01, 2010 Jenn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great book on urban education and the struggles of teaching and learning in that environment. Kozol writes things in this book that get me through the tough days at work.

like · see review

Apr 10, 2011 Drew Jameson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: education

This is an unimaginably bleak depiction of inner city public schools in Boston in the mid 60's. The most frightening thing to me is the way his depictions of his colleague's superficially progressive, open-minded self-presentations mask overt but un-accknowledged bigotry feels really familiar living in Boston today.
His 1985 post-script reveals a still bleak portrait of Boston public schools. In the 60's, schools were de facto segregated by income; if you lived in a poor black neighborhood, you w...more

like · see review

Aug 26, 2011 Jacob rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: EVERYONE

Shelves: other-non-fiction

Just thinking about this book makes my blood boil. Read it and have an urgency drilled into you.

like · see review

Aug 24, 2012 Gary rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I have ever read and probably ever will read. Life changing.

1 like · like · see review

Jan 17, 2012 Ruth Pagano rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of the best books I've ever read. It is a must read for parents and teachers!

like · see review

Jan 14, 2010 Carrie Pirmann added it

education

like · see review

Aug 27, 2012 Barry Levy rated it 1 of 5 stars

About as subtle as a jackhammer!

like · see review

Feb 03, 2008 Jennie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Disturbing in that when people read this they'll think "Oh, but that was in the 60s. This stuff doesn't happen in schools anymore." I identified so many similarities between the school Kozol describes and the school district in which I teach. Huge disparities and hugely depressing, but important for people to read. (Though honestly I'll have to wait to read any more by him until this summer when the promise of the coming school year helps negate his sobering observations.)

like · see review

Dec 01, 2008 Hatuxka rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the landmark books of any young person coming of age in the late sixties.

like · see review

Nov 16, 2007 Sammy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: activists

I read this when I was pretty depressed about the nature of society. This, along with pedagogy of the oppressed, made me think that any kind of progressive movement must be bottom up. It must be support by the people it is "helping."

Kozol's description of the little girl eating lead paint chips also made me cringed. I remember waking up in my dorm room 3am, pacing around the halls of my residence, wondering about what kind of world I lived in.

like · see review

Apr 13, 2008 sydney rated it 5 of 5 stars

LOVED THIS BOOK. Kozol's account of his first few years as a teacher in an underfunded school in Boston. This book made me cry on the train because the scenes Kozol described (kids being dehumanized, ignored, abused, by the people who were supposed to love and care for them and help them succeed) felt so real and so unjust. Highly recommended for teachers and Bostonians.

like · see review

Aug 18, 2008 Eliza T. Williamson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book truly changed my life, my understanding of fairness and equity and my belief that children are looked after.Kozol documents his experience in the Boston public schools. I was a naive & hopeful freshman in high school and Kozol rocked my world. A must read.

like · see review

Jul 19, 2008 Leslie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: agents of change

jonathan kozol is definitely one of my heroes. this book was about inadequacies in the inner city boston schools in the 60's. the sad part is that not much has changed since then. inner city schools still suffer through the same problems. everyone should read this book.

like · see review

Nov 12, 2008 Huyen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy-psychology

a very outrageous account of a teacher in a segregation school in Boston in the 60's. If you hear on tv that the crime rate among African Americans is very high and you are angry about it, READ THIS BOOK. there are certain things you should be much angrier about.

like · see review

Sep 04, 2007 Sandra added it

I first read this book when I was a beginning teacher. The book relates Kozel's experience teaching in the Roxbury section of Boston. The circumstances are unimaginable for this wealthy country, but he told the truth as he lived it and taught within it.

like · see review

Jul 23, 2007 Corinne rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: students, teachers

Shelves: racialjustice, economic-justice

What Kozol does best, here and in subsequent books on education, is feel out solutions to the problems he brings to light. It's devastating that our education system is still under fire, with students still struggling for equal access to quality education.

like · see review

Jul 08, 2009 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the disenfranchised

Recommended to Kate by: 370.1934 K

Shelves: education

"Mr. Kozol, or anyone else who lacks the personal discipline to abide by rules and regulations, as we all must in our civilized society, is obviously unsuited for the highly responsible profession of teaching."

like · see review

Oct 14, 2007 Mariam saleh rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i loved this book, couldnt stop till i finished, i had no idea how bad the public school systems were in Boston at the time, especialy with the black community. it's enlightning to know some of this history

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 29 30 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (5)

More editions...

Genres

Education

32 users

Non Fiction

23 users

Sociology

9 users

Childrens

3 users

Social Movements > Social Justice

3 users

Teaching

2 users

Social Issues > Poverty

2 users

Politics

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist best known for his work towards reforming American public schools. Upon graduating from Harvard, he received a Rhodes scholarship. After returning to the United States, Kozol became a teacher in the Boston Public Schools, until he was fired for teaching a Langston Hughes poem. Kozol has held two Guggenheim Fellowships, has twice been a...more

More about Jonathan Kozol...

Books by Jonathan Kozol

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Death at an Early...

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

title link	preview: Death at an Early Age
avg rating	preview: Death at an Early Age Goodreads rating: 4.21 (506 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51541.Death_at_an_Early_Age?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347807910l/51541.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51541.Death_at_an_Early_Age?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Death at an Early Age by Jonathan Kozol[/url]

Death at an Early Age

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website