Title:
Chomsky on democracy and education
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
New York, NY : RoutledgeFalmer, 2003
ISBN:
9780415926317
Added Author:
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Summary
Summary
Engaging and incisive, Chomsky on Democracy and Education is the first collection of writings, talks, and interviews, some previously unpublished, of his views on language, power, policy, and method in education.
Author Notes
Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 7, 1928. Son of a Russian emigrant who was a Hebrew scholar, Chomsky was exposed at a young age to the study of language and principles of grammar. During the 1940s, he began developing socialist political leanings through his encounters with the New York Jewish intellectual community.
Chomsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He conducted much of his research at Harvard University. In 1955, he began teaching at MIT, eventually holding the Ferrari P. Ward Chair of Modern Language and Linguistics.
Today Chomsky is highly regarded as both one of America's most prominent linguists and most notorious social critics and political activists. His academic reputation began with the publication of Syntactic Structures in 1957. Within a decade, he became known as an outspoken intellectual opponent of the Vietnam War.
Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use (1985). He also has written dozens of political analyses, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chronicles of Dissent (1992), and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| Foreword | p. xiii |
| Introduction: Chomsky's education-for-democracy: enlightening mental growth | p. 1 |
| 1. The educator | p. 2 |
| 2. The scientist and the epistemologist and philosopher of mind | p. 4 |
| 3. The student of culture and history and the activist | p. 8 |
| Prologue: Democracy and education (October 1994) | p. 25 |
| I. Science: the genetic endowment | p. 43 |
| 1. Things no amount of learning can teach (November 1983) | p. 45 |
| A close parallel to embryology | p. 45 |
| Piaget versus Skinner | p. 51 |
| A riddle: free will | p. 53 |
| The new work in art and science: a crisis of modernism? | p. 54 |
| One major scientific revolution with a lot of outgrowths | p. 56 |
| 2. Language as a key to human nature and society (1975) | p. 58 |
| Is anything really "learned"? | p. 58 |
| Thought without language | p. 59 |
| Language without communication | p. 60 |
| Limited scientific capacity | p. 62 |
| A condition of (temporary) ignorance? | p. 63 |
| 3. A really new way of looking at language (November 1987) | p. 65 |
| Four central questions: innate knowledge and its creative use | p. 65 |
| A system of mental computations | p. 68 |
| The most complex and intricate biological system | p. 69 |
| A very radical departure from the tradition | p. 69 |
| Problems of the society at large | p. 71 |
| 4. Perspectives on language and mind (October 1999) | p. 73 |
| A product of biological evolution: discrete infinity | p. 73 |
| The faculty of language as a "language organ" | p. 74 |
| Incomprehensibility of the natural world | p. 77 |
| Important lessons for the cognitive sciences | p. 79 |
| An idea surprising in its implications | p. 81 |
| II. Anthropology: the cultural environment (vision and reality) | p. 85 |
| 5. Rationality/science and post-this-or-that (October 1992) | p. 87 |
| A self-destructive perversion of the values of rational inquiry | p. 87 |
| The "two cultures" and their respective limits: no coherent alternative | p. 90 |
| "White male science" as the struggle to understand hard questions | p. 92 |
| A common human attribute providing means of emancipation and liberation | p. 95 |
| Appendix Comment on the Kansas school curriculum decision (September 1999) | p. 98 |
| 6. Equality: language development, human intelligence, and social organization (March 1976) | p. 100 |
| Government programs in an inegalitarian society | p. 100 |
| Egalitarian efficiency and egalitarian freedom | p. 102 |
| A theory of justice | p. 103 |
| Human nature and social order | p. 106 |
| The variability of human talents: remuneration, IQ, and race | p. 115 |
| Appendix Some elementary comments on the rights of freedom of expression (October 11, 1980) | p. 121 |
| 7. Two conceptions of social organization (February 16, 1970) | p. 126 |
| Four points of reference | p. 126 |
| From classical liberalism to libertarian socialism | p. 129 |
| State socialism and state capitalism: two parallel ideologies | p. 139 |
| An escape from contemporary barbarism | p. 143 |
| Appendix On the "national interest" (January 28, 1977) | p. 147 |
| 8. Some tasks for responsible people (August 1969) | p. 150 |
| "Internal aggression" and "national defense" | p. 150 |
| A vision of a future social order | p. 152 |
| Technology and self-management: from autocracy to acracy | p. 155 |
| A large-scale "cultural revolution" | p. 157 |
| The university and the future | p. 159 |
| "Radical" culture and social change | p. 160 |
| 9. Toward a humanistic conception of education (April 1971) | p. 163 |
| Libertarian educational theories: the nature of work | p. 164 |
| Implications for social theory and educational practice | p. 166 |
| Well-planned schools and challenging environments | p. 171 |
| Immense potential for good and for evil | p. 172 |
| A real potential for revolutionary social change | p. 176 |
| 10. The function of the university in a time of crisis (1969) | p. 178 |
| One measure of the level of civilization | p. 178 |
| Sharing of discovery and mutual assistance | p. 179 |
| Open to any person, at any stage of life | p. 181 |
| A center of intellectual stimulation: ("subversive") challenges of orthodoxy | p. 181 |
| Critical analysis of our institutions and ideology | p. 186 |
| Commitment to a "free marketplace of ideas" | p. 188 |
| Goals of university reform | p. 191 |
| 11. Scholarship and commitment, then and now (December 1999) | p. 195 |
| The liberating function of the university | p. 196 |
| A difference between the sciences and the humanities | p. 197 |
| Two kinds of intellectuals | p. 199 |
| A serious threat | p. 200 |
| 12. The mechanisms and practices of indoctrination (December 1984) | p. 202 |
| A rare specimen of newscaster | p. 202 |
| Astonishing subservience to the doctrinal system | p. 203 |
| Spurious tasks of an educational system | p. 205 |
| The spectrum of mainstream thinkable thought | p. 207 |
| Less subtle methods of indoctrination | p. 209 |
| The manufacture/engineering of consent, otherwise known as "agitprop" | p. 211 |
| Appendix The media as a mirror of society--not quite in the usual sense (October 1984) | p. 212 |
| 13. The task of the media: Central America as a test case (April 1989) | p. 217 |
| Basic presuppositions of the propaganda system | p. 217 |
| A textbook example | p. 218 |
| The limits of debate | p. 220 |
| "All the news that's fit to print" | p. 221 |
| Dramatic insight into media priorities | p. 223 |
| 14. Propaganda and control of the public mind (February 1997) | p. 226 |
| One of the major issues of twentieth-century U.S. history | p. 226 |
| Protecting the minority of the opulent from the majority | p. 228 |
| The "Mohawk Valley formula" | p. 229 |
| Selection for obedience in the schools | p. 233 |
| A major theme of modern history | p. 233 |
| Marketing as a form of manipulation and deceit | p. 235 |
| 15. Prospects for democracy (March 1994) | p. 236 |
| Conception of a good society: enriching popular participation | p. 236 |
| The autocratic structures of twentieth-century absolutism | p. 238 |
| Liberty as a bridge to equality | p. 241 |
| Brainwashing under freedom: an American invention | p. 245 |
| A recurrent pattern through American history | p. 249 |
| The attack on democracy: a key to understanding policy | p. 252 |
| Lessons still not taught in elementary school | p. 256 |
| i. The educational institutions | p. 261 |
| 16. Some thoughts on intellectuals and the schools (June 1966) | p. 263 |
| The schools, civilization, and justice | p. 263 |
| A program of intellectual self-defense | p. 265 |
| A central part of any civilized curriculum | p. 267 |
| Level of culture as a life-and-death matter | p. 269 |
| Appendix On staying informed and intellectual self-defense (March 1999) | p. 270 |
| 17. The responsibility of a university community (May 31, 1969) | p. 276 |
| The major contribution of a university to a free society | p. 278 |
| Guidelines for (socially useful) technology | p. 280 |
| The university and national goals | p. 281 |
| A primary task for the university | p. 282 |
| 18. Remarks before the MIT Commission on MIT Education (November 11, 1969) | p. 284 |
| The universities as instruments of state policy | p. 285 |
| The time scale for social change | p. 286 |
| Open debate, (self-)education, and contempt as the best weapons | p. 288 |
| Contemporary affairs as part of the curriculum | p. 289 |
| The two university foci: professionalism and significance | p. 293 |
| The beginning of wisdom: a need to educate the faculty | p. 295 |
| A social inquiry program: student-initiated courses | p. 297 |
| The faculty and students ought to run the university | p. 299 |
| A Hippocratic oath, weapons production, and the fate of civilization | p. 300 |
| 19. Two roles of the American university (1997) | p. 305 |
| The rise in international power and the intellectual climate | p. 305 |
| Activism and the university | p. 309 |
| War and the intellectuals | p. 315 |
| The course of recent historical scholarship | p. 324 |
| The university and two related systems | p. 328 |
| Three nontrivial questions | p. 330 |
| 20. The universities and the corporations (May 1973) | p. 332 |
| Narrow ideological controls and a failure of honesty | p. 332 |
| Missing: an integrated view of the way society functions | p. 335 |
| Loyal servants of the autocratic corporate state and economic fascism | p. 336 |
| Worker and community control of industry | p. 337 |
| ii. Language in the classroom | p. 339 |
| 21. Some observations on the teaching of language (September 1969) | p. 341 |
| An intelligently designed curriculum and active participation | p. 341 |
| An entirely invalid inference | p. 343 |
| Graded reading materials and oral practice | p. 345 |
| Appendix The irrelevance of prescriptive grammar (1954) | p. 345 |
| 22. Language theory and language teaching (August 1966) | p. 348 |
| The principles of "learning," under challenge | p. 348 |
| A frightful willingness to rely on "experts" | p. 350 |
| Developments with a possible impact on language teaching | p. 351 |
| A universal prerequisite for language acquisition | p. 353 |
| Appendix Letter about the teaching of grammar | p. 355 |
| 23. Our understanding of language and the curriculum (1964) | p. 357 |
| From a simple observation to an important conclusion | p. 357 |
| Shortcomings of traditional and structuralist grammars | p. 358 |
| The basic parts of a transformational grammar | p. 360 |
| A unique opportunity for studying the basis of mental development | p. 362 |
| Appendix Comments for Project Literacy meeting (September 1964) | p. 363 |
| 24. Language theory and language use (1981) | p. 368 |
| A Cartesian assumption about humans | p. 370 |
| The importance of psychology for educational practice | p. 371 |
| Aspects of language important for us to understand | p. 373 |
| 25. Language, politics, and composition (1991) | p. 374 |
| Persuasion as an authoritarian practice | p. 376 |
| The Cartesian revolution in the cognitive sciences | p. 380 |
| "Teaching" or "learning" as just some kind of triggering effect | p. 384 |
| The propaganda function of concision | p. 386 |
| Paulo Freire's avenue to "critical consciousness" | p. 388 |
| A deeper understanding of our own moral nature | p. 388 |
| "Education" as filtering toward submissiveness and obedience | p. 391 |
| Two conceptions of the intellectuals and their role | p. 393 |
| One purpose of the media and the educational system | p. 394 |
| Preventing democracy in the form of democracy | p. 397 |
| Creative reading as the heart of the writing program | p. 402 |
| Language and interpretation | p. 407 |
| Editor's notes | p. 411 |
| References | p. 437 |
| Index | p. 465 |
