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“I told you, didn’t I, about hearing Noam Chomsky speak recently? When the great man was asked about the chaos in public education, he responded quickly, decisi
by charlieok 15y ago
“I told you, didn’t I, about hearing Noam Chomsky speak recently? When the great man was asked about the chaos in public education, he responded quickly, decisively, and to the point: “Public education in this country is under attack.” The words, though chilling, comforted me in a weird way. I’d been feeling, the past few years of my 30-plus-year tenure in public education, that there was something or somebody out there, a power of a sort, that doesn’t really want you kids to be educated. I felt a force that wants you ignorant and pliable, and that needs you able to fill in the boxes and follow instructions. Now I’m sure.”
This speaks to a rather odd state of mind on the part of the teacher. “The great man”?
Believing that the state of education and testing is the result of some powerful villain behind the curtain requires more credulity than simply attributing it to the massive complexity and inertia you describe.
- mooneater 15y agowhat is odd about admiring noam chomsky?
- dhughes 15y agoWhy does a person have to admire? (FYI writing the first letters of a person's first and last name in lower-case is not very polite)
- charlieok 15y agoNothing. I admire him. But I wouldn't cite him in such a hero-worshiping manner. Doing so would detract from my argument and undermine my credibility.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- emmelaich 15y agoI found it jarring, too. Fun link: a fake interview with Chomsky: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=16470 http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=16470
- guelo 15y agoWarning, link is to a right wing propaganda website.
- wyclif 15y agoDo you give equal time fair warnings regarding left-wing propaganda websites? Hmmm?
- emmelaich 15y agoPerhaps guelo would like something less likely to offend his/her sensibilities. Here you go: http://norvig.com/chomsky.html http://norvig.com/chomsky.html
- charlieok 15y agoThat's a very different sort of read than your first link. Your first link was basically snark. I laughed a few times, although I didn't agree with where the author was coming from. I didn't come away thinking the author had very much to say. Go to the root domain of that site, and you find what I think most would agree is right-wing spin on current events. Your second one is to Peter Norvig, a super-smart person at the top of his field, writing inside his area of expertise. He isn't snarking, or being disrespectful, but he's definitely giving substantive answers to legitimate questions. Norvig clearly has a lot of interesting things to say. Visit the root domain and you find a bunch of other interesting stuff by Norvig, most of it technical. No axes to grind jump out at me. More of the second, please :)
- emmelaich 15y agoLet me first agree with you that the first link was not very HNish. But I don't think it was mere snark. It was mockery, of quite a high order. In case its not obvious most of the words quoted are actually Chomsky, from http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200307--.htm http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200307--.htm But let me draw some parallels. PW paraphrases Chomsky as saying "Language has nothing much to do with language" Norvig paraphrases Chomsky as saying "Observed use of language ... may provide evidence ... but surely cannot constitute the subject-matter of linguistics" Not so different. Lastly, you could say Chomsky might even take more offense at Norvigs calling him 'Mystic' and likening him to Bill O'Reilly! Anyway, I don't take PW so seriously, but he is quite entertaining.
- astrofinch 15y ago"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
- Iv 15y agoI read that quote too often. Greed exists and often masquerades as incompetence. Do not be always that adamant.
- mynameishere 15y agoAnd what kind of middle school manages to get Noam Chomsky invited for a talk? Is that something he does normally?
- charlieok 15y agoDoesn't sound like he did. Sounds like the teacher heard him speak, and then told students about it.
- samstave 15y ago>Public education in this country is under attack I think it would be far more accurate to say that our entire culture is under attack, from multiple vectors, to reduce the current upwardly ambitious mass populous to neo-feudalism. Keeping the peasants stupid is just one tactic in a complex strategy.
- nessus42 15y agoThis speaks to a rather odd state of mind on the part of the teacher. “The great man”? Believing that the state of education and testing is the result of some powerful villain behind the curtain requires more credulity than simply attributing it to the massive complexity and inertia you describe. Certainly Chomsky is a great man. He's the founder of modern linguistics. He wrote the paper that demolished behavioral psychology, paving the way for cognitive psychology. He invented the hierarchy of formal languages that is still taught in every Computer Science program in the world. He is the most cited academic in the world. He is the most influential thinker in two completely unrelated fields: linguistics and political activism. He's an "Institute Professor" at MIT, which is the highest honor that MIT bestows. (I think that there are fewer of them at MIT than there are Nobel Laureates.) Just what is there not to consider great? As to "some powerful villain", where did either Chomsky or the OP ever assert that the "villain" isn't a system? Perhaps a system comprised largely of complexity and inertia? I know for a fact that Chomsky believes something along these lines. He's stated many times that the harmful influences that he describes are not the result of a cabal, as he is often misattributed as asserting, but that he is and always has been speaking about the effects of a complex system, whose intent is not the intent of any individual part of the system.