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"We are in a battle for the soul of U.S. education." -- Jonathan Kozol

The other night I had the opportunity to hear writer-educator-activist Jonathan Kozol speak to a packed house at my local university.

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, Kozol has been writing about the inequalities in public education for over 40 years. Some of his non-fiction best-sellers are: "Death at an Early Age" (1967), my personal favorite "Savage Inequalities" (1992), and, most recently, "Shame of the Nation" (2005).

Kozol has a reputation for talking about things that many people find uncomfortable to hear. For example, how our public schools are still socially, economically and racially segregated. How in the U.S we spend nearly twice as much per pupil in wealthy neighborhoods as we do in poor neighborhoods. How we need a federal income tax to fund every child's education equally.

He is a powerful, passionate speaker, who had many people in the audience close to tears as he described in vivid detail his visits to the poorest schools in the nation. Most are only a few miles from the richest schools, and yet worlds apart: bathrooms with bursting pipes, smelly, dingy cafeterias, playgrounds of hard dirt or asphalt.

When asked by an audience member WHY he thinks it has gotten this bad, Kozol traced it to the popular notion that has taken hold in the last 20 years of education as a COMMODITY. The sense that we purchase it, and our only concern is for our own child's education.

Where is our sense of civic responsibility? Kozol asks.

It is in our best interest - for the common good - to educate all children equally.

To do anything less is criminal.