Chomsky on education and cultural development

(A celebratory note)

by Carlos P. Otero

UCLA

Education (in a well-defined sense, to which I return) is a central topic in the work of Noam Chomsky. This is not surprising. His parents, who were both teachers, sent him to a Deweyite experimental school where they worked (his father was the principal) from the time he was two until he was about twelve. This experience was perhaps the most decisive one in Chomsky's life; to this day he remembers it vividly and fondly, while he barely remembers anything about his years in high school (a sort of "black hole" in his life, he has repeatedly said--with easily detectable abhorrence), although the high school he attended was considered to be the best in Philadelphia, his home town. As for his experience at the University of Pensylvania, he was ready to drop out, after one year or so, when an accidental political connection with a professor of linguistics who shared his political views (Zellig Harris) came to the rescue. The rest, as they say, is history.

Not only was his father, William Chomsky, a teacher and an outstanding scholar ("one of the world's foremost Hebrew grammarians," according to the obituary in the _New York Times_, July 22, 1977), but his main field of interest was education (for most of his life he served as a college professor of Hebrew and Jewish education), and his writings all had an educational purpose (see Otero 1989). Naturally enough, he was "very much influenced" by John Dewey: "his own main work (pedagogy), both teaching and writing, was explicitly Deweyite," and so was "his general point of view about the world, mostly," in the words of his son (the obvious inheritor of Dewey's mantle--see Otero, forthcoming). In fact, shortly before his death William Chomsky described the major objective of his life, echoing Dewey, as "the education of individuals who are well integrated, free and independent in their thinking, concerned about improving and enhancing the world, and eager to participate in making life more meaningful and worthwhile for all" (Kinsman, ed. 1978, s.v.). He appears to have been thoroughly successful in at least one case: It is hard to improve on his words as a description of his oldest son as an individual.

The roots of Noam Chomsky's interest in education go well beyond his formative experiences, however. They are at the very core of his inquiries as a scientist and a philosopher. One of the most important consequences of his investigations into the nature of language is that it provides the most decisive evidence and argument available in favor of one of the two main traditional stances on the nature of education: the stance best represented by a lineage which runs from Descartes and Kant to Wilhelm von Humboldt (the founder of the University of Berlin, consciously selected as a model by a number of modern universities), John Dewey, and Bertrand Russell (two of the outstanding thinkers of the past century), a lineage which, arguably, culminates (as of now) in Noam Chomsky. On this view, "e-ducation" (the process of drawing out something latent in a human mind or helping it "flourish") is to be sharply distinguished from "in-struction" or "in-doctrination" (the process of pouring some concoction into a human mind as one may pour a liquid into a vessel), although the terms education/instruction are not often contrasted in this way (see, in particular, Chomsky 1966a/b, 1969a/b, 1971, 1979, 1989, 1994; cf. Corson 1980 for an early overview).

Thus Chomsky cites, with approval, Russell's characterization of the goal of education: "to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, to encourage a combination of citizenship with liberty, individual creativeness, which means that we regard a child as a gardener regards a young tree, as something with an intrinsic nature which will develop into an admirable form given proper soil and air and light." He also feels, as "Dewey seems to have felt for much of his life (later he was more skeptical)" that "reforms in early education could be in themselves a major lever of social change; they could lead the way to a more just and free society, a society in which, in Dewey's words, 'the ultimate aim of production is not production of goods, but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality'" (cf. Westbrook 1991):

"This basic commitment, which runs through all of Dewey's work and thought, is profoundly at odds with the two leading currents of modern social intel~lectual life, one, strong in his day (he was writing in the 1920s and 1930s about these things) is associated with the command economies in Eastern Europe in that day, the systems created by Lenin and Trotsky and turned into an even greater monstrosity by Stalin. The other, the state capitalist industrial society being constructed in the U.S. and much of the West, with the effective rule of private power. These two systems are actually similar in fundamental ways, including ideologically. Both were, and one of them remains, deeply authoritarian in fundamental commitment, and both were very sharply and dramatically opposed to another tradition, the left libertarian tradition, with roots in Enlightenment values, a tradition that included progressive liberals of the John Dewey variety, independent socialists like Ber~trand Russell, the leading elements of the Marxist mainstream, mostly anti-Bolshevik, and of course libertarian socialists of various anarchist movements, not to speak of major parts of the labor movement and other popular sectors." (Chomsky 1994)

It is this approach to education that underlies Chomsky's practice, in particular his phenomenal success as an educator in the broad sense of the term, including that of social and political activist. For many of us Chomsky is, above all, a dedicated teacher and mentor. Actually, he has been reputed to be a superb one since the time he began to tutor his classmates in the early 1940s, as his high school yearbook for 1945 attests. There is little doubt that he has been unusually successful as a teacher (far more than Bertrand Russell or Albert Einstein, to mention two of his true peers). He has officially supervised close to a hundred doctoral dissertations, and has contributed to the supervision of many others, within and outside MIT. Many of the most distinguished contemporary linguists were his advisees (or students of his advisees and co-workers), and numerous others were registered students or auditors in his classes and keen students of his prolific, inspiring writings. What is more, there is often something very special about the guidance he regularly provides to his students in a broad sense (in an even broader sense every inquiring student not only of our day but also of a later day for some time to come cannot escape being his student). A small sample of representative testimonials is reproduced, in alphabetical order (by author), in the Appendix (from Otero 1986/1994).

 

APPENDIX

Grant T. Goodall:

"I owe a great debt of gratitude to Noam Chomsky, who was the one who first suggested to me that I take a look at phrase structure, coordination, and reanalysis. I have benefitted from his detailed comments both on my earliest attempts in this direction and on drafts of this thesis. His encouragement and enthusiasm, especially when I was a completely unknown visiting student [at MIT], have been an inspiration to me."

Julia Horvath:

"I am much indebted to a number of people in Cambridge, from the time I spent at MIT as a 'Visiting Scholar'. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Noam Chomsky. In addition to the special intellectual debt that anybody working in the field of generative grammar owes him, I want to thank him for the unique experience of his classes, for being so accessible for individual discussions, and for essentially acting as if I were a student of his -- even in times when I had no official status whatsoever at MIT.

Cheng-Teh James Huang:

"Noam Chomsky, whose influence on me can be seen throughout the following pages, has given me invaluable advice on every aspect of the thesis and of the other aspects of linguistics and life. The extent to which he has made himself available to me and the amount of thought he has put into my work go well beyond what I or anyone else can reasonably expect. His confidence in me and interest in my work has also kept me up during the past years."

Diana Massam:

"Working with Noam Chomsky ... is a privilege few can hope for, and even four years after arriving here, I feel sometimes that it must be a dream. About Noam Chomsky much has been said, and I agree with all of it that is good. His inspiring classes, brilliant insights, and his sharp involvement in the work of his students are just three facets of the experience of working with him. His quick reaction to any problem is such that one of my proudest moments here was when he actually had to think silently for several minutes in order to come up with an argument against me. Thursdays, the day of his class and of my appointments with him, will never be so good again."

James D. McCawley:

"I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Noam Chomsky, who has had a profound influence on my thinking and has been a continual source of intellectual stimulation such as I had never encountered before entering M.I.T. I am equally grateful to Morris Halle, whose ideas can be found on every page of this monograph and with whom I have had countless hours of stimulating and pleasurable discussion. It is to him and Prof. Chomsky that I credit my rapid transformation from the intellectual counterpart of a 97-pound weakling into a productive scholar in my chosen field."

John Ross:

"What I owe to Noam Chomsky is incalculable. Unless he had formulated the A-over-A principle . . ., it is doubtful whether I would have even noticed the problems which this thesis is devoted to solving. I disagree with him on many particular points of analysis, but since it was really from his work that I learned how to construct an argument for or against a proposed analysis, my ability to disagree also derives from him. I am deeply grateful to him and to Halle for helping me to understand what it is that a theory is."

Tim Stowell:

"I am especially indebted to Noam Chomsky, whose influence on my work has been extensive -- as even a cursory reading of this thesis will reveal. During the period when I was actively working on the dissertation, he provided invaluable help and encouragement, and the form and content of the finished product has benefitted immensely from his comments on the first draft as it arrived in bits and pieces over the past few months."

Jean-Roger Vergnaud:

"As the inventor of modern syntactic theory and as its most brilliant exponent, Noam Chomsky has already contributed more to this thesis than perhaps is in it. In working directly with him, I have profited crucially from the unmatched rapidity of comprehension and the immensity of theoretical imagination he routinely brings to bear on the subjects of his attention."

 

REFERENCES

Chomsky, Noam. (1966a). "The responsibility of intellectuals," _Mosaic_ 7:1 (Spring), 2-16. (Expanded version in _New York Review of Books_ 8:3 (23 Feb), 16-26, reprinted, as a separate publication, by the Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, Ithaca, N.Y., 1967, and in Roszak, ed., 254-298. Included in Chomsky 1969, in Chomsky 1987, and in Chomsky forthcoming a.)

--- (1966b). "Some thoughts on intellectuals and the schools," _Harvard Educational Review_ 36, 484-91. (Special issue devoted to a symposium on the topic "American intellectuals and the schools.") (Reprinted in Chomsky 1969.)

--- (1969). _American power and the new mandarins_. New York: Pantheon.

--- (1969a). "Remarks before the Commission on MIT Education." Included in Chomsky (forthcoming b).

--- (1969b) "The function of the university in a time of crisis," _The great ideas today 1969_. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, pp. 40-61. (Reprinted in Chomsky 1973 and in Chomsky forthcoming b.)

--- (1971). "Toward a humanistic conception of education." Lecture, U. of Illinois (Urbana). Revised version in Feinberg and Rosemont, eds., 204-220. (Reprinted in Chomsky forthcoming b.)

--- (1973). _For reasons of state_. New York: Pantheon.

--- (1979). _Language and responsibility_. New York: Pantheon.

--- (1987), _The Chomsky reader_. New York: Pantheon.

--- (1989). _Language and politics_. Ed. by C. P. Otero. Montreal: Black Rose.

--- (1994). "Democracy and Education." Mellon Lecture, Loyola University, Chicago, October 19, 1994.

--- (forthcoming a). _The essential Chomsky_, vol. 1. Monroe, MA: Common Courage Press.

--- (forthcoming b). _Chomsky on democracy and education_. Ed. by C. P. Otero. London/NY: Routledge.

Corson, David J. (1980). "Chomsky on education," _The Australian Journal of Education_ 24, 164-185. (Reprinted in Otero, ed., vol. III, 176-198.)

Feinberg, W. & H. Rosemont, eds. (1975). _Work, technology and education_. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Kinsman, Clare D., ed. (1975-1978). _Contemporary authors, permanent series: a bio-bibliographical guide to current authors and their works_. Detroit, MICH: Gale Research Co. (2 vols.)

Koerner, E. F. Konrad & M. Tajima, compilers. (1986). _Noam Chomsky: a personal bibliography, 1951-1986_. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Otero, C. P. (1986). "Background and publication history of the dissertations written under the supervision of Noam Chomsky, 1964-1986." In Koerner & Tajima, eds., 181-204.

--- (1989). "The third emancipatory phase of history." Introduction to Chomsky 1989.

--- (1994). "Background and publication history of the dissertations written under the supervision of Noam Chomsky, 1964-1994." In Otero, ed., vol. I, 819-839. (Updated version of Otero 1986.)

--- (forthcoming). _Chomsky's revolution: Cognitivism and anarchism_. Oxford: Blackwell.

---, ed. (1994). _Noam Chomsky: critical assessments_. London/NY: Routledge. (4 vols.)

Roszak, Theodore. (1968). _The dissenting academy_. New York: Pantheon.

Westbrook, Robert B. (1991)._John Dewey and American democracy_. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

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