Newspaper Page Text
Friday, July 23, 1965
TBE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Pag* FVteea
By ROBERT E. SEGAL
As We Were Saying
(A Seven Arts Feature)
A brillant Jewish teacher, 28,
giving his best to lifting the
sights of fourth grade Negro stu
dents in Boston’s black ghetto
has been fired from his job.
Good
Luck
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Itoston school administrators
who put the axe to young Jon
athan Kozol, novelist and former
Rhodes scholar, haven’t denied
that his teaching record in a 70-
year-school building includes
their own earlier praise for his
amazing feat of raising the class
arithmetic average in two weeks
from 38'/, to 79%.
Jonathan Kozol, getting the
princely pay of $300 a month for
his teaching efforts in a school
system that has until recently
refused to acknowledge the ex
istence of even de facto school
segregation, was drummed out of
the system after a policeman-fa
ther had objected to Kozol’s use
of a Langston Hughes poem in
the classroom. Alas, the poem
was “Ballad of the Landlord.” It
bemoans the broken steps, the
leaking roof, the absence of
heat. Add the facts that Lang
ston Hughes once wrote a de
meaning poem about Jesus, that
Teacher Kozol (a Harvard hon
ors graduate) had brought pro-
UN literature into the classroom,
and that he had even used Rob
ert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods
On A Snowy Evening” (pres-
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cribed for sixth graders, not
fourth graders); and you begin to
understand why he was sacked
by one of the most moribund
school systems in the nation.
Were /there other crimes on
Kozol’s record? Oh, yes, he had
brought a French record to
school and played it for the chil
dren. This was a record includ
ing “On the Bridge At Avignon,”
a most delightful nursery song.
But in Massachusetts, it seems
even French nursery rhymes are
suspect.
Gibson School, where Kozol
gave his labor of love to great
grandsons of slaves, is 66%
Negro; and the dedicated tutor
was said to have been the eighth
person who had tried his hand
at teaching the fourth grade
class there this school year.
Teacher morale was low; but
Jonathan Kozol’s inspiration was
so marked that sit-in Negro par
ents petitioned the school auth
orities in every reasonable way
for his reinstatement. But in
vain.
Stung by strong criticism of
their long unwillingness to ac
knowledge de facto school seg
regation. the Boston administra
tors devised a scheme called
“Operation Counterpoise,” sup
posedly to improve the curricu
lum for Negro children not long
up from the South. One of the
selling points of “Operation
Counterpoise” was its encourage
ment of innovation on the part
of teachers. Jonathan Kozol took
that suggestion seriously; and he
lost his teaching neck for his ef
forts.
No wonder young Kozel later
moved on to the picket line in
front of the school headquarters,
protesting the authorities’ ostrich
attitude towards segregation. No
wonder that he was joined there
by his distinguished father, Dr.
Harry Kozol, the psychiatrist who
meant so much to Eugene O’Neill
in the playwright’s troubled
closing days. No wonder that
hundreds in Boston have now
moved off the fence of uncon
cern in the school segregation
scandal and are insisting that one
firing incident involving a
Rhodes scholar is too many.
Even though the Boston sys
tem long persisted in refusing to
acknowledge that segregated ed
ucation is inferior schooling, and
thus goes counter to the public
pronouncement of the Massachu
setts Board of Education, it has
at long last stated through its
superintendent that school seg
regation does exist. A painstak
ing study by the Massachusetts
Advisory C o m m i ttee to the
United States Commission On
Civil Rights revealed back in
January of this year that 15 of
the city’s 153 elementary schools
contained more than 95% Negro
pupils.
This same report and a later
report by a committee named by
the state board invited the atten
tion of the U. S. Commissioner of
Education to the sordid facts
showing undisputable lack of
equality in education. It was
made clear also that a pattern of
segregation in public housing was
an integral part of the matrix in
which the tapestry of school seg
regation was formed. The Massa
chusetts Advisory Committee to
the U. S. Commission on Civil
Rights appealed to the President
to amend the Civil Rights Act of
1964 in such a way as to make
available to beleaguered school
systems like Boston’s certain
technical assistance, institute
training, and federal grants for
teachers and guidance counselors.
Up until the time Jonathan
Kozol was fired, Washington
hadn’t acted. And it still may be
coincidence that a few days after
the Kozol dismissal, word came
through that Boston would be
used as a testing ground for Title
VI of the new Civil Rights Law.
This is the section granting the
federal government the right to
withhold funds in the face of
proved school segregation.
And because of the Kozol in
cident, many people in Boston are
determined that tutelage for chil
dren trapped in the Black Ghet
to will be sharpened.
GOOD LUCK
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