Letters to a Young Teacher

October 15, 2007
Kozol provides another tract on the politics of education, slightly disguised as an ongoing (albeit one-way) dialogue with a young teacher named Francesca from Boston. Each letter provides long, extensive discussions about public education as well as the specifics of Francesca's classroom and his own classes in the past. Drawing upon a lifetime of experience and research, Kozol addresses a wide range of issues, including standardized testing, voucher programs, school segregation, student creativity, objective outcomes and recess. Drummond performs the role of doting and inspiring senior quite well. His elderly voice brims with hope and concern for the next generation of teachers and the battles they will have to face inside and outside the classroom. However, the sound editing for this audiobook is particularly poor, with Drummond's voice shifting abruptly every couple of tracks. Drummond's voice sounds audibly different on these rerecorded tracks, which significantly disrupts the listener's experience. Simultaneous release with the Crown hardcover (Reviews, June 4).

Starred review from June 4, 2007
Forty years ago, Death at an Early Age
catapulted Kozol into national prominence as a compassionate yet clearheaded observer of the rotten state of American education. His latest book reviews many of the basic issues he has spent his life exploring through teaching and writing. Here, he cleverly weaves his observations—as well as a thinly disguised biographical memoir—into a series of 16 letters written to “Francesca,” a first-grade teacher at an inner-city public school in Boston. Overall, the book will delight and encourage first-year (or for that matter, 40th-year) teachers who need Kozol's reminders of the ways that their “beautiful profession” can “bring joy and beauty, mystery and mischievous delight into the hearts of little people in their years of greatest curiosity.” But his encouraging words rarely lapse into treacle. In fact, he offers tough observations on American education addressed to a larger audience. His forceful opinions are convincingly argued—most notably, that educational vouchers will deepen divisions between diverse groups in racially decided cities; that middle schools demoralize students and should be abolished entirely; and that the Gates Foundation made a “damaging mistake” in aggressively funding a “small school craze” that will reinforce “the racial isolation of the students they enroll.”

August 1, 2007
Through the framing device of actual letters to a first-year grade school teacher at a New England inner-city school, Kozol ("Death at an Early Age") explores themes familiar to readers of his previous works. He shares his passions about the education of children, including his opinion that vouchers will benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor, deep concerns about the privatization of public education, and ongoing disdain for the dishonesty he discerns lying behind the rhetoric about equality in education. His points are well documented in an extensive notes section that includes sufficient references to his own earlier writings to provide a retrospective view of this progressive educator's life work over the past four decades. In one quite lovely chapter focusing on the value of interpersonal relationships between and among students and teachers, he pays tribute to the late Fred Rogers (of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" fame) by describing vignettes from their shared classroom visits and subsequent correspondence over the last ten years of Rogers's life. Kozol has made important contributions to progressive education in his own life. A fine update of his ideas and insights; recommended for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 4/15/07.]Jean Caspers, Linfield Coll., McMinnville, OR

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2007
Acclaimed author Kozol began a correspondence with Francesca, a young first-year teacher at an inner-city school in Boston. His letters offer a revealing, heartfelt look at the state of education and his own joy and agony in reporting on it. The letters provoke recollections of his early days as a teacher and, as a reporter, the humbling experience of visiting classes and maintaining relationships with the people on the frontlines of teaching, while he observes and writes. Kozol offers encouragement, advice, reflection, and admiration forall the teachers likeFrancesca, who pour their souls into their jobs. The letters explore the challenges of teaching in the inner cities: bureaucracies and standardized tests that take the creativity out of teaching; distrustful, defiant children who take away time and attention from those who want to learn; the heartbreaking irony of teaching diversity in schools that are clearly racially segregated. A beautiful book that offers an intimate look at the challenges and joys of teaching and one that will inspire and inform teachers and all those interested in public education.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)