Influential Educator

Jonathan Kozol

Jonathan Kozol is a passionate advocate for quality education for all children. He was born outside Boston, Massachusetts in 1936. He attended public schools early on and then attended Nobel and Greenough School, a private school in Dedham, MA (Wikipedia, 2007, para. 1). He excelled as a student at Harvard University and graduated in 1958.

After studying internationally he returned to the Boston area and became a tutor, and then a public school teacher. As he recounts in his book Letters to a Young Teacher, Kozol took over as a substitute teacher in a classroom where he was the 14th teacher the students had had that year (Kozol, 2007). After teaching a Langston Hughes Poem he was fired from his job. The administration stated that the poetry was not part of the curriculum.

Today Kozol is an author who uses his voice to give voice to many who do not have a voice in the debates over education reform. His works are passionate pleas to value each child equally and to examine the broader context of educational inequality.


Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner was born in Scranton Pennsylvania in 1943. His parents had recently lost another child, and only three years previously has fled to the United States to escape the Holocaust (Gardner, n.d., p.1). Growing up he states that he was studious and his parents encouraged his intellect. He attended Harvard University where his mind was awoken by his experience in class and with professors. Gardner (n.d) remembers that he was drawn the social sciences, and is now able to trace a path through his journey that seems clear in its direction.

Gardner has explored many different topics in his work, and the one that has been explored most in the context of education is his theory of multiple intelligences. In this theory he argues that there exist many ways of knowing (Gardner, 1983). He names nine such manners of knowing, and believes that all people experience strengths and weaknesses with these intelligences (“Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences” n.d). His challenge to educators is therefore not to force all students to “know” in the same manner, but instead for educators to learn about each child as an individual and allow them to work with his or her strengths for maximum learning.

Sources

Kozol

http://edaction.org/kozol.php?section=career

Kozol, Jonathan (2005, September) Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s educational apartheid. Harper’s Magazine, 41-54.

Kozol, Jonathan (2007). Letters to a Young Teacher. New York: Crown Publishers

http://ed-action.org/content/NCLBPoints.pdf

Newman, Joseph W. (2006) America’s Teachers: An Introduction to Education (5th Ed). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Kozol

Gardner
Gardner, Howard (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theories of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books.
http://www.howardgardner.com/bio/bio.html
http://www.howardgardner.com/docs/One%20Way%20of%20Making%20a%20Social%20Scientist.pdf
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm.