Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools (reissue ISBN 0-452-26292-5) is a book written by the American schoolteacher Jonathan Kozol and published in Boston by Houghton Mifflin in 1967. It won the U.S. National Book Award in category Science, Philosophy and Religion.
Death at an Early Age describes Kozol's first year of teaching, which took place in the Boston public school system. Kozol recounts the deeply entrenched policies of racial segregation and inequality on the part of Boston Public Schools, testifies to a crumbling infrastructure in his Roxbury Boston neighborhood, and documents the public outcry following his dismissal for the offense of teaching a Langston Hughes poem to his reading class.
Famous quotes containing the words early age, death, early and/or age:
“A two-year-old can be taught to curb his aggressions completely if the parents employ strong enough methods, but the achievement of such control at an early age may be bought at a price which few parents today would be willing to pay. The slow education for control demands much more parental time and patience at the beginning, but the child who learns control in this way will be the child who acquires healthy self-discipline later.”
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