VSU President's Lecture focuses on 'Inequities in Education'

Valdosta State University will continue its President’s Lecture series on Monday, November 6, in Whitehead Auditorium, located in the Fine Arts Building from 7-8p.m. The lecture entitled “Inequities in Education” will be given by Jonathan Kozol, a National Book Award winner and former school teacher. Following the lecture there will be a reception and book signing from 8-9 p.m. Earlier in the day Kozol will be available for dialogue with students and faculty from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in room 255 of the Dewar College of Education.

After being fired in 1967 for reading a Langston Hughes poem to his fourth grade class, Kozol began his career as a writer when his work, Death at an Early Age, was published in 1967. This book, the first of many, received the 1968 National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion and is considered a classic by most educators.

For nearly 60 years Kozol has focused his work on the differences in education, the richest and poorest schools, and the re-segregation that is currently occurring in American schools.

A summa cum laude graduate and Rhodes Scholar from Harvard, Kozol has received several awards for his works depicting the lives of individuals who are not as fortunate, monetarily, as others. He received the 1989 Robert F. Kennedy and the Conscience in Media Award of the American Society of Journalists and Authors for his work, Rachel and her Children: Homeless Families in America. Kozol also received the New England Book Award in non-fiction for his 1991 book, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. In 1996, his work, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, became a national best-seller and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

For more information contact Dr. Brian Gerber at 229-333-5353.