Death at an Early Age

Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools (Death at an Early Age) is a strongly-worded critique of the Boston Public School system. It was written by Jonathan Kozol. It was first published on October 1, 1967 and republished with an updated epilogue on October 1, 1985 by Plume. It is one teacher’s story about his African-American students and his struggle to teach them in a degrading environment. It won the National Book Award in 1967.

In 1964, Kozol started as a fourth grade teacher in the Boston Public Schools, at one of the most crowded inner-city schools. He was summarily fired approximately three years later after reading his class an unapproved poem by African-American poet Langston Hughes. After his dismissal, Kozol’s students staged a protest. In Death at an Early Age, Kozol takes the public school system to task by exposing the forces of destruction on young hearts and minds.

Kozol is an educator, non-fiction writer, and activist best known for his work on reforming the American public school system. He graduated from Harvard with a Rhodes scholarship. He has received two Guggenheim fellowships, has twice been a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, and has received fellowships from the Field and Ford Foundations. He founded and runs the non-profit Education Action. The group is a grassroots organizing of teachers across America who wish to challenge the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) and help to create a unified system of excellence across American schools.

In his retelling, Kozol enters the classroom 100% on the side of his students. He sees misbehavior on their part as a result of an oppressive and racist school system. Kozol positions himself, his students, and their parents in opposition to the school system, an institution he uses a small sampling of teachers to represent. The art teacher, the reading teacher, and the math teacher stand in for the rest and represent the moral, ethical, and educational failings of the school system. A broken window covered in cardboard is a metaphor for all that is wrong with the teaching environment, such as a broken-down physical dwelling and a racist curriculum. Kozol views his students’ misbehaviors as a means to validate that they are indeed real in a system that fails to see them, especially African-American students, as fully human.

The first chapter describes a boy named Stephen who has a habit of staring at himself in a classroom mirror. Kozol understands that this is not narcissism but rather a coping strategy to validate the boy’s existence. Kozol also understands that the kids who steal money from their parents do so because of the lack of power and have had so much stolen from them during their young lives. This reframing of motive sets Kozol apart from his colleagues.

The first half of the book is dedicated to profiles of Stephen and his peers, giving examples of their day-to-day experiences. They exist in an environment where white teachers take minority students to the basement to hit them with a stick. Kozol writes that these African-American children were sometimes called “animals” and other racist, derogatory names. Some of the students felt so isolated and ignored that they invited physical beatings, preferring this degradation to total neglect.

Kozol’s language is strong throughout the book, fueled by the righteousness that replaces his prior complacency. He talks about the wasted hours spent in a system responsible for soul-draining dreariness and motivational lack. He details the poor working environment and the irrelevance of the curriculum. He expresses surprise that an angry outside population hasn’t yet burned these schools to the ground.

Kozol focuses on one of his colleagues, the art teacher, who seems immune to the ways a child can be destroyed. He illustrates her hypocrisy, while also worrying about his own hypocrisy in remaining silent. He recognizes his own complicit behavior, for he has accepted the atrocities as inevitable. Kozol also recounts the math teacher's destruction of a student’s free thought and independence. While Kozol's colleagues play the part of consummate professionals, they are firmly entrenched in their superficial cultural trappings and narrowmindedness. Their covert racism is characterized by rhetoric based in half-baked liberalism. And in some ways, Kozol views their lip-service as worse than the basement beatings.

Kozol’s own friends berate him for his quiet collusion. The second half of the book shifts from the anecdotes about students’ lives to a study of classroom teaching. Frustrated by the lack of adequate teaching material, Kozol brings in provocative artwork and literature that does not go over well with his fellow teachers and administrators. Kozol is fired after teaching a poem by Black poet Langston Hughes entitled The Ballad of the Landlord about the exploitation of black tenants by white property owners. He is not permitted to say goodbye to his students or tell anyone what has happened. A district official explains to him that no literature outside the Course of Study can be read or taught without prior permission from a higher authority.

Kozol’s humility and self-deprecation is replaced with a die-hard righteousness. He stands up to the jargon and bureaucracy surrounding him, his students, and their parents. In his 1985 updated epilogue, he states that the book has done little to improve racial inequalities and urban schools. However, this books and others like it, lay the foundation for change. Indeed, authors like Langston Hughes are now a part of U.S. schools’ standard curriculum.

The author’s frustration echoes that of many who feel policymakers are ineffectively slow to address the substandard conditions of inner-city schools. Many see the current push for standardized and high-stakes testing as the best hope, while others proclaim that these strategies just turn teachers into test-score-raising technicians. Kozol disparages this kind of teaching-to-the-test instruction. He argues that teachers need to know their students and connect learning with all aspects of their lives. What makes the book a classic example of progressive education is Kozol’s description of how he takes on the institutional apartheid by attempting to close the gap between teacher and student. Death at an Early Age speaks to a whole new breed of teachers.