Jonathan Kozol’s The Night Is Dark and I Am Far From Home:
A Professional Journey 50 Years On
Jonathan Kozol’s third published “teacher” book (in a very long and impressive series of his publications) was The Night is Dark and I Am Far From Home. The book was published in 1975, the year I graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and also the year I began my elementary school teaching career right there in my college town, Indiana, Pennsylvania. I started out as a third grade teacher at Horace Mann Elementary School. (And by the way, Horace Mann – the person – is cited in this very book as a pioneer in establishing American public schools as agents of indoctrination and class stratification.) Anyway, the school was located on the edge of town, in an economically (but not racially) mixed neighborhood that included working class families as well as university-related families. My students thus ranged from professors’ kids to children whose parents worked in, for example, coal-related industries, agriculture, or retail business.
As a first-year teacher, I thoroughly absorbed the ideas that Jonathan Kozol presented in The Night is Dark and I Am Far From Home and incorporated them (both the philosophical ones and the highly practical ones) into my teaching of reading, of social studies, of science, and – most importantly – into my planning for the integration of all curriculum areas in the service of student understanding and awareness of the world around them. Jonathan Kozol served as a major literary mentor as, almost 50 years ago, I embarked on my professional and academic journey.
Check out some of the first sentences of Chapter 1, page 1:
U.S. education is by no means an inept, disordered misconstruction. It is an ice-cold and superb machine. It does the job: not mine, not yours perhaps, but that for which it was originally conceived. It is only if we try to lie and tell ourselves that the true purpose of a school is to inspire ethics, to provoke irreverence or to stimulate a sense of outrage at injustice and despair, that we are able to evade the fact that public school is a spectacular device, flawed beyond question but effective beyond dreams. … The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens [through] twelve years of mandatory self-dehumanization, self-debilitation, blood-loss.
So of course, as a first year teacher, I read these words and proclaimed, “OK, let’s get to it!”
As I began the school year, I was already enrolled in graduate classes at IUP and as part of a course-based project, I asked to be placed with a group of struggling third-grade readers in order to implement an integrated curriculum approach to teaching reading, social studies, and science for struggling readers. I had come by this interest in integrated curriculum (joining subject areas) prior to Kozol’s book, but his ideas meshed perfectly with that perspective and provided an important foundation for the implementation of that approach. I’ll say more about the integrated curriculum throughout this discussion.
Chapter II: Straightforward Lies.
In this chapter, Kozol presented an overarching framework for much of the rest of his arguments. He wrote this:
Children ask us: “Why do I have to go to school?” We act as if it were a foolish question and we answer : “It is for your own good.” It isn’t a foolish question, though; and the answer that we give is far from honest. Children do not go to school “for their own good.” They go to school for something that is called “their nation’s good.” They go to school to learn how not to interrupt the evil patterns that they see before them, how not to question and how not to doubt. … It is not so much that they learn to be “cruel” people. Rather it is, they learn it is not needful to be urgent in compassion or importunate in justice. Not positive desolation, but a genial capability for well-behaved abstention in the presence of despair: this is the innocence we teach our children. … The message that gets through is one of calm, benevolent, and untumultuous assurance. The world is nice and people are okay. Poverty, pain, and desperation are not real or, if real, then at least they are not realizable in normal school-imaginations. It is a filtered message.
Then: I am sure that first question (“Why do I have to go to school?”) was on the minds of my third graders, whether from low-income households existing on the margins or from more affluent and privileged families and communities. I recognized – in reading Kozol – that all were at risk for the consequences of social apathy and the sterilized narratives prevalent in school textbooks and curricula. These children were going to need the confidence and the tools to fend for themselves and to challenge systems created to preserve the status quo.
Now: Tragically, it doesn’t seem necessary to review how Kozol’s “straightforward lies” permeate our contemporary environment, in school and pretty much everywhere outside of school. Just in the past couple of months, the news has been saturated with stories of book banning, fake outrage about Critical Race Theory, conspiracy theories of every size and type, and outright lies about everything from election results to viruses to the motives of lepidopterists at a butterfly refuge in Texas. In a new book (2022), Lisa Sharon Harper wrote this:
There is a narrative gap in our nation. Wide is the distance between the stories we tell about ourselves and the actual truth of how we got here and who we are. The gap is the distance between Make America Great Again and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream” of the beloved community. … Our narratives shape our politics – our conversations and decisions. … Narrative shapes worldview.
So, the challenge – for a professor of pre-service teachers – becomes: How can I promote the kind of critical thinking and self-awareness in future teachers that will equip them to encourage the same in their future students? The question, “Why do I have to go to school?” has been all but sublimated by the time individuals reach college age. So, how can I reawaken that natural questioning sense and curiosity that will enable these new teachers to keep open the eyes of their own students. In educational psychology, for me, this has much to do with a critical approach to Piagetian developmental theory and also the information processing model of cognition and learning, not to mention theories of identity development from Erik Erikson to Alfie Kohn to Carol Gilligan.
As a teacher of future teachers, I am responsible for encouraging college students to examine their own worldviews, recognize the origins of those worldviews, and where warranted, to challenge the false neo-liberal narratives routinely disseminated in American classrooms.
Chapter IV: No Connections.
[We are] trained in school to undergo the infinite fullness of the world through patterns of disjunction, segmentation, separation. … Prior to the classroom, outside of the school, most things flow into each other, one thing blends into another; many things certainly at any single moment are residing simultaneously within a child’s mind. Suddenly in kindergarten, then more clearly in the First and Second Grades, the day begins to lose it complex wholeness and turns into separate items known as “periods.” Imagination, diffuse as in reality it is, begins to be divided into items known as “subject matter.” Intellect itself gets split up two ways into “reason” and “emotion.” The day and the week and the season and the year or turned into two items known as “school” and “real world”; and the future is transformed into twelve evenly divided, but distinct and isolable, items known as “school years” – separated by invisible connective called “promotions.”
From an early age, children must be taught to see things as separate and disjointed because it’s not natural.
Then: As a beginning teacher, I saw how the language of division and disconnection predominated and also how this phenomenon more negatively impacted struggling learners. Students more able to play along and master the “details” would rise above (and eventually, not even notice) the dis-integrated nature of their school experiences. As mentioned before, I was fortunate to begin my teaching career in a progressive-friendly environment and was given permission to help struggling students to see connections and thereby perhaps find a greater measure of meaning and relevance in what was going on at school.
Some examples from the integrated curriculum:
(1) Historical fiction and non-fiction were used in the teaching of social studies;
(2) Science-related activities were reviewed and processed as experience stories, which then formed the reading curriculum;
(3) Creative drama work reinforced all areas of the curriculum through the spoken word and expressive enactment.
By the way, as I was teaching in a “neighborhood school,” the educational process quite naturally involved knowing children’s families (another connection). This provided another means to integrate school life with “real life” for these students.
Now: All of this is still relevant … and still tragically under-addressed. For example, in contemporary university “methods” classes, we still carve things up in ways that obscure (obliterate) any sense of connection that future teachers may see (or seek) in their professional practice. This approach, of course, reflects the environment in which these college students have been raised and also the settings in which they will eventually be teaching.
Chapter V: Progress.
The myth of progress is today a basic item in the worldview of the social studies text. It is, for most young men and women, a familiar myth: the sense of self awarded respite from concern for those who are in trouble on the part of those who aren’t. The palpable illusion of inevitable progress up and onward to a place that waits for us at all times just beyond the line of sky is so pervasive … that a child ceases soon to notice any longer that it is a bedrock premise for the whole narration. … Human process, from the first, is narrated like the story of Horatio Alger – only with months replaced by centuries and years by “ages” or by “civilizations.”
Kozol wrote this book from the perspective of his experience in Boston’s schools, where he was a teacher. He saw – and describes – first-hand the mismatch between students’ actual lives and the myths of individualism and bootstrap progress being reinforced in school curricula, perhaps especially in social studies.
Then: The Social Studies textbooks with which I was familiar as an undergraduate student, and most of those on the shelves at Horace Elementary School, extolled the myth (described by Kozol) that progress is inevitable, mostly modern, and occurring quite separate from us “ordinary” folks. Societies and cultures that have succeeded are those that acknowledged the myth and willingly went along for a ride on the “progress express.” Fortunately, since I was teaching an integrated curriculum with administrative blessing, I was able to pick and choose social studies resources and even rely on original sources when possible and appropriate for my 3rd graders. For example, as mentioned previously, historical fiction provided material for reading lessons, for writing prompts, and for listening and speaking experiences in the classroom. For this first year teacher, Jonathan Kozol was instrumental in providing some of the “permission” I needed to implement alternatives to the myths of inevitable and detached progress endemic in traditional social studies curricula.
Now: Not much has changed in Social Studies, except maybe the fact that elementary school students are taught much less of it nowadays, due to the cringe-worthy prioritization of what are called “tested subjects,” namely language arts and math. Tragically, too, the young people who now populate our teacher education programs have come up through the era of NCLB and are even more underprepared in those areas included in the realm of social studies: history, politics, sociology, etc. Social Studies textbooks still represent the same myths that Kozol decried in 1975 and new teachers have little choice but to adopt the represented perspectives uncritically, that is, to the extent that social studies are covered at all in classrooms.
One other bit of evidence is the popularity of books like Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, which reiterates (ad nauseum, IMHO) the fallacy of continuous and universal progress, occurring mostly separate from human will or (what should be) obvious examples of gross injustice and unequal access to the fruits of progress within the global community.
Chapter VIII: First Person.
Thoreau, on the first page and in the second paragraph of Walden, set down these words: “In most books, the ‘I’, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. Twelve years in public school render such words, such insolence, such recognition of the role of self, almost beyond the limits of conceivable expression. We all but die inside before we find bravado to make statements of this kind. … Student, from the earliest years, are trained to step away before the open and unthreatened use of the first-person subject-pronoun.
Kozol goes on, in these first pages, to also remark on the tendency of teachers – particularly those in the early grades – to refer to themselves in the third person. It’s as if they themselves – as persons with self-awareness and individual identities – did not exist. (Ruby, next door, 2nd grade.)
Then: The students with whom I worked at Horace Mann Elementary School needed, perhaps more than anything else, opportunities to be heard, to develop confidence in their human worth, to know that their words and ideas mattered. As I reflect back, I realize that Jonathan Kozol provided much of the rationale for including these needs among the goals of my curriculum. Obviously, being heard and recognized makes us feel good, so there are clear affective reasons for teachers to engage in such affirmation. But, for me, it was Kozol who framed these objectives in a far more encompassing context. In other words, the extent to which children learn – early in life – that their words and ideas matter, to that extent are they equipped to embrace meaningful learning, to face the world with confidence, and to thrive with a spirit of innovative responsibility. One very small way that this ideal was implemented in my classroom was through the aforementioned use of the language experience approach to teaching language arts. Most of those experience stories were, after all, verbalized, written down, and then read in the first person.
Now: In academic writing these days, the use of first person is not only allowed, it is encouraged. In my department at West Chester University, we have a graduate program that confers a Master of Science degree in Transformative Education and Social Change. The coursework in this program (including my own course, called Cognition and Transformation, is foundational for the final thesis, which consists of identifying and concretely addressing a particular issue in education. In the initial chapters of the thesis, Master’s Degree candidates outline – in first person – the perspectives, world-views, and positionality that drives their thematic concern. It has been of interest to me to observe this turn toward acceptance of first person in academic writing. I very much welcome the acknowledgement of student voice and student positionality, much as I welcomed it in my 3rd graders. Perspective matters. I trust that Jonathan Kozol is equally gratified to see – at least in this particular instance – his 1975 indictment and proposal finally appearing in the “mainstream.”
Chapter IX: Impotence.
[My students] are, by and large, incredibly well trained, skillful in math, adept with words, successful in exams, confident of their prospects, and well-padded by the social situation of their folks. It is apparent, nonetheless, that most of these students feel inhibited, constrained, and impotent in every way that really matters to their sense of fair play. It is not a part of their inheritance, it seems, to think they have the right to be at once both ethical and efficacious human beings.
Kozol is herein referring to the manner in which schools teach children to recognize the futility of their own ideals and efforts. Otherwise smart students become, over the course of their school years, inhibited, constrained, and impotent. While Kozol is referring primarily to high school students in this chapter, the tendencies he describes certainly have origins in the very youngest years of elementary school.
Then: In my first year of teaching, one place I immediately observed the cultivation of impotence was in the practice – prevalent at that time and less so, or at least less overtly, now – of ability grouping. Though, as I’ve said, I was allowed to work within this system to create an integrated (and hopefully, meaningful and affirming) school experience for struggling students, it is also true that my work remained within the context of ability grouping. Specifically, I was teaching in a system organized around the tragic sanctioning and permanence of placements, groups, and labels. I can actually recall one of the early anxiety-laden observational visits to my classroom by a district administrator (not the building principal). In our discussion following the lesson, he wondered why I was working with the class – as a whole group – on reading-related activities, rather than dividing them up into ability groups.
One of the biggest – and most useful – lessons I learned as a beginning teacher was: When necessary, close the door. From Kozol and from experience, I learned that much of what goes on in schools is superfluous and disconnected from any real pedagogical objective. Much of it, frankly, is for show. School administrators expect to see certain things going on that indicate the educational process is proceeding as expected. In my beginning years, this could have been desks arranged a certain way, phonics and other basic skills charts prominently displayed in the classroom, and lesson plans submitted on time and in the correct format. Once all of that is taken care of, the most appropriate next step might be to close the door and teach … teach what you have been trained to teach, teach according to what you know are legitimate principles of learning. Yes, teach in secret! This may have been my #1 survival technique through all my years as an elementary school teacher.
I saw my role as equipping my third graders, these (in many cases) already discouraged young learners, with the degree of confidence and self-awareness they would need to counter the lifelong lessons of powerlessness and defeat that school and society had planned for them. In that first year, I learned that while stumbling through nearly impossible reading passages, while engaging in science experiments with tenuous connections to the real world, and while answering questions about vague and distant historical events, these students also needed my unconditional acceptance and encouragement. They needed my love. And now, I sometimes wonder if – as 50-something adults – with careers and perhaps families, these same individuals have been able to negotiate their lives with the confidence and hopefulness I had hoped to instill.
Now: As a college professor, I have offered the same advice to future teachers that I adopted for myself – When necessary, close the door. I will elaborate.
It should not be surprising that the sense of impotence instilled from kindergarten to 12th grade carries right over into the college classroom and, in turn, into the classroom practices of each new generation of novice teachers. In other words, we have all learned our lessons well … heartbreakingly well.
In professional practice, this tendency is particularly acute when highly motivated and well-equipped young teachers – with fresh new ideas and a sincere love of children – run up against the clear message that not they, but certain outsiders, know best how children should learn and how the curriculum should be organized. Though they are the “trained and competent professionals” (with a resume to prove it), they are regarded as impotent, dependent upon scripted lessons from on high, needing constant monitoring to assure accountability to an agenda to which they have had little or no input. I feel – and I tell my students this – that this is the biggest cause for teacher burnout. What I have learned then – so many years after reading Kozol – is that my role as a professor is, at least in this respect, similar to my role as a 3rd grade teacher. So, while stumbling through challenging reading assignments in educational psychology, while writing reaction papers in search for connections to the real world, and during discussions of developmental concepts and their implications for classroom practice, these students also need my unconditional acceptance and encouragement. They need my love … and they need to love themselves. They need to love that they are teachers … teachers with expertise and compassion and confidence to make a real difference for their own students. And, whenever necessary, they also need to close the door.
Finally, a chapter that only became relevant later: XVII. Colleges and Universities.
[Today’s universities represent the place] where the graded, numbered, and credentialized end-products of the previous twelve-year interlock of public school turn in their credits (hours and years of heart’s humiliation, proven rectitude, and inept moderation) for better credentials, higher numbers, and more excellent rewards.
It was somewhere around my 7th or 8th year of teaching that I began to cultivate thoughts of teaching at the college level. Once I “graduated” to this particular realm of professional work, Kozol’s influence remained relevant, as I have described already. In this chapter specifically directed to universities, he has influenced my thinking in a few additional and specific ways.
Now: The American education system, as we all know (I think), is basically a 12 or 13 year preparation for college. It is also a “proving ground” for students’ development of self-esteem, identity, sense of competence (or lack of). The issue becomes the fact that most college students have survived – even thrived – within the bounds of this American educational process. While there is significant diversity in family dynamics and in specific experiences of success or failure, the fact is that these students have made it to college. Furthermore, the fact that they are sitting in my upper level educational psychology class is evidence that they are, so far, thriving in their college experience as well. It is only natural that their default as teachers might be to expect the same of their own future students. One challenge, then, is to encourage these future teachers to think “outside the box” of school-as-college-prep and learn to view each of their own students as an individual, to truly know their students. And I mean to know them not as exemplars of certain psychological categories or as exhibiting the diagnostic markers of certain disabilities, but rather to know each student as a human in his or her own right, a complex and unique human, both similar to and different from all others.
I owe Jonathan Kozol a debt of gratitude for the teacher (and learner) I am today. From the moment I embarked on my professional career, this book provided the rationale and motivation for valuing truth over straightforward lies, for restoring and maintaining connections, for avoiding – and countering – the myths of progress, for celebrating first person, for working to encourage student confidence and self-awareness, and for upholding student dignity. The seeds of these ideals were planted during the very beginnings of my teaching career and nurtured through the years, all the way up to my work with future teachers in the college classroom.
The struggle continues and the best future teachers – our current teacher candidates – are those who can recognize and name the possibilities, who can survive and thrive themselves and thereby help their own students thrive and shine into the darkness of defeat, to affirm the light of conviction and conscience and grow up to know themselves as they truly are and to confidently face the world as they truly want it to be.
References
Detroit Mass Choir (2009). The storm is passing over [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/d3jgPsGQSdQ.
Harper, L. S. (2022). Fortune: How race broke my family and the world – and how to repair it all. Brazos Press.
Kozol, J. (1975). The night is dark and I am far from home. Seabury.
Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Viking.
P. S. By the way, through the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century, Jonathan Kozol wrote numerous books that, at first, expanded upon his “in the trenches” experience as a teacher but eventually expanded in scope to address social and political issues in education, particularly the toxic inequities that exist among public school districts across the United States. While routinely incorporating these later writings into my teaching, I have typically made it a point to refer back to The Night is Dark and I Am Far From Home as a still-relevant practical source of ideas and inspiration. The book has also served as a means for me to reveal a bit of my own professional journey for the students in my college classes.
Even though this book has passed its 50th birthday, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in where, as professionals in the American education system, we have been and where we – sometimes sadly – still are. In some cases, we have – as educators – actually managed to innovate in ways that Kozol would approve, only to veer back to past practices in response to societal and political forces that ebb and flow in our vibrant democratic system. A contemporary reading of The Night is Dark and I Am Far From Home thus serves, for me, as a personal primer on educational change, as it has occurred both in my own career path and in the nation as a whole.