[Jonathan Kozol] has not grown more conservative with age. Indeed, he is today far more the enfant terrible than he was in 1967…. Since then, in fact, Kozol has continued to speak out often and forcefully on educational and social matters of immediate and widespread concern. However, though his points are often valid, sometimes shockingly so, he may be losing his ability to persuade people of their validity, because of an unfortunate change in his style and manner of presentation….

In quietly understated, profoundly moving prose, Kozol was able to show [in Death at an Early Age] how creativity, individuality, and ever dwindling self-esteem were squeezed out of the predominantly black children in the school where he taught…. He portrayed in powerful detail the extent to which an educational process estranged from reality attempted to impose through books and teachers unsympathetic to the students the standards and values of...