For more than half a century, Jonathan Kozol has exposed the deep inequities shaping America’s schools. In this urgent and unflinching new book, he confronts the enduring segregation of public education and the regressive forces that seek to silence dissent, privatize public institutions, and deny children the right to think with critical intelligence. The book describes in painstaking detail the brutally racist treatment of Black and Latino and immigrant children, who are frequently perceived as if they are a lesser breed of child than children in the mainstream of America.

 

But Kozol believes that Trump has brought the historic inequalities of U.S. education to a new and sinister crescendo that drags our nation back 100 years to the Era of Eugenics and is dangerously reminiscent of the words and policies that Hitler espoused in the early 1930s as he rose to power.

 

In this book Kozol also confronts the assault by Donald Trump on the dignity and autonomy of teachers. "I have always believed," he writes, "and I still believe today, that teachers in the classrooms of young children are the front-line soldiers in the defense of our democracy." And he portrays dozens of warm and loving and ethically undefeated teachers who refuse to genuflect before an oppressive and autocratic order.

 

In her Introduction to the book, Randi Weingarten writes, "Jonathan Kozol is without doubt one of the most important thought leaders on the past, present, and future of public education in America.... I am painfully aware that this might be the last great book from this great thinker, which is all the more reason we should pour over every single page, relishing not only the beauty of his writing and the stories he shares, but also the delightful way in which he interacts with even the most vulnerable children."

 

This is Kozol’s most courageous book and a stirring invocation to resistance.