Word: kozol
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...meet somebody who's read it and immediately we're friends. People ask me what I think of the book--it's a Bible, I tell them. The second experience was reading Tobias Schneebaum's Keep The River on Your Right. Another really good book for people is Jonathan Kozol's passionate The Night Is Dark and I Am Far From Home. As far as other Christmas presents, I've got peace and quiet, maybe clean air and water. Really, if I could have a horse, I'd be so happy...
...this rings true, but it has been ringing true for the past decade in works of greater sensitivity and better detail. Kozol offers neither a new approach to the problem, nor new evidence. In fact, he seems to feel little obligation to base any of his conclusions on evidence, and relies instead on instinct. This weakens Kozol's effort, for the most convincing chapter in the book is one based on his own observations and experience in free schools. He argues that "open" schools can be just as politically indoctrinating as traditional schools, and are all the more dangerous because...
When he is not writing about education, Kozol scatters himself all over the social and political terrain of modern America, touching on many of the well-worn bases of American ignominy. We are callous ("Death, murder, exploitation is not credible."), especially the wealthy ("The rich man carves his beefsteak with impunity because he first applies the knifeblade to his brain."); nobody is willing to take responsibility anymore ("Businesses incorporate themselves with somewhat the same goal: in order to achieve immunity from consequences of their own behavior.") Kozol weaves back and forth, often repeating his arguments. The result is not enlightment...
MUCH OF THIS BOOK'S criticism is political, but Kozol has no distinct political or theoretical position. He leans to the left, but never identifies his ideological beliefs: it is impossible to tell whether deep down inside, he is a closet social democrat, Maoist, or, what seems to fit best with his style of wholesale criticism, anarchist. It is difficult to discern the underlying basis of Kozol's critique--or to discover if he has one at all--for he fails to offer solutions to the problems he describes in such detail. In the closing paragraphs of the book, Kozol...
Maybe so. But when the demolition is done with so little finesse, something more is needed. Perhaps judgement on Kozol the social observer/social activist should be withheld until his next book appears. But to succeed, the new book will have to be many times more perceptive than The Night is Dark, and will also have to explain why he wrote this anomalous, unenlightening book...