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Noam Chomsky - The Purpose of Education

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    Well, we could ask ourselves what the purpose of an educational system is
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    and of course there are sharp differences on this matter.
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    Now, there's the traditional, an interpretation that comes from teh enlightenment
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    that holds that the highest goal in life is to inquire
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    and create, to search the riches of the past,
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    and try to internalize the parts of them that are significant to you
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    and carry that quest for understanding further in your own way.
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    The purporse of education from taht point of view is just to help people to get their own help, to learn
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    on their own.
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    It's you, the learner, who is going to achieve in the course of education.
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    It's really up to you what you'll master, where you'll go,
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    how you'll use it, how you'll go on to produce something new and exciting for yourself, maybe for others.
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    That's one concept of education.
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    Now the other concept is essentially indoctrination.
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    People have the idea that from childhood
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    young people have to be placed into a framework in which they'll follow orders,
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    accept existing frameworks, and not challenge.
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    And this is often quite explicit.
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    For example, after the activism of hte 1960s, there was great concern
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    across much of the educated spectrum
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    that young people were just getting too free and independent,
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    that the country was becoming too democratic and so on.
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    There was an important study on what's called the crisis of democracy, too much democracy,
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    claiming that there are certain insitutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young--
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    that's their phrase-- and they're not doing their job properly.
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    That schools, universities, churches---we have to change them
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    so that they carry out the job of indocrintation and control more effectively.
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    That's actually coming from the liberal internationalists
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    end of hte spectrum of educated opinion.
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    In fact, since that time there have been many measures taken
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    to try to turn the educational system towards more control, more indoctrination,
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    more vocational training.
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    Imposing a debt which traps students, young people, into a life of conformity.
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    That's the exact opposite of what I referred to that traditionally comes out of the enlightenment.
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    There's a constrant struggle between those.
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    In the colleges and the schools, do you train for passing tests?
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    Or do you train for creative inquiriy?
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    Pursiung interests that are aroused by materil that's presented, you want to pursue either on your own
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    or in cooperation with others.
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    And this goes all the way through up to graduate school and researh.
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    Just two different ways of looking at the world.
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    When you get to a research institution like the one we're now in,
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    at the graduate level, it essentially follows the enlightment tradition.
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    In fact, science couldn't progress unless it was based on inculcation of the urge to challenege, to question
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    doctrine, question authority, search for alternatives, use your imagination freely of your own impulses.
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    Cooperative work with others is constant as you can see just by walking down the halls.
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    That's my view of what an educational system should be like down to kindergarten.
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    But there certainly are powerful structures in society
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    which would prefer people to be indoctrinated, to conform, to not ask too many questions, to be obedient,
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    to fulfill the roles that are assigned to you and not shake systems of power and authority
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    Those are choices we have to make, wherever we stand in the educational system.
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    As students, as teachers, as people on the outside trying to help shape it in the direction that we think it ought to go.
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    Well there certainly has been a very substantial growth in new technology--
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    technology of information, communication, access interchange.
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    It's surely a major change in the nature of hte culture and society.
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    We should bear in mind that the technological changes that are taking place now,
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    while they're significant probably come nowhere near having as much impact
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    as technological advances of a century ago.
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    Let's take communicaiton.
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    The shift from a typewriter to a computer or a telephone to email is significant.
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    But it doesn't begin to compare with a shift from a sailing vessel to a telegraph.
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    Tge time that that cut down in communication between England and the United States
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    was extraordinary as compared with the changes taking place now.
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    The same is true of other kinds of technology.
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    The introduction of widespread plumbing in the cities had a huge effect on health,
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    much more than the discovery of antibiotics.
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    So the changes are real and significant,
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    but we should recognize that others have taken place that were much more dramatic.
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    As far as the technology itself and education is concerned,
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    technology is basically neutral.
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    It's kind of like a hammer.
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    The hammer doesn't care whether you use it to build a house
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    or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody's skull.
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    A hammer can do either.
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    Same with modern technology, say, the internet, and so on.
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    The internet is extremely valuable if you iknow what you're looking for.
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    I use it all the time for research, I'm sure everyone does.
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    If you know what you're looking for, you have a kind of framework of understanding
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    which directs you through particular things
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    then this can be a very valuable tool.
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    Of course, you always have to be willing to ask
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    "Is my framework the right one?"
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    Maybe I have to modify it."
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    Maybe if there's something I look at that questions it, I should rethink how I'm looking at things."
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    But you can't pursue any kind of inquiry without a relatively clear framework
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    that's directing your search and helping you choose what's significant and what isn't.
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    What can be put aside, what can be pursued,
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    what ought to be challenged, what ought to be developed.
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    You can't expect somebody to become a biologist
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    by giving them access to the Harvard University biology library
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    and say, "Just look through it."
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    That'll give them nothing.
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    The internet is the same except magnified enormously.
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    If you don't undertsand or know what you're looking for,
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    if you don't have some kind of conception of what matters--
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    always with the proviso that you're willing to question--
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    if you don't have that, exploring the internet
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    is just picking out random factoids that don't mean anything.
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    Behind any significant use of contemporary technology--
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    the internet, communicaitons systems, graphics, whatever it may be--
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    unless behind it is a well constructed, directive, conceptual apparatus,
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    it is very unlikely to be helpful.
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    It may turn out to be harmful.
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    For example, random exploration through the internet
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    turns out to be a cult generator.
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    You pick up a factoid here, a factoid there
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    and someboyd else refers to it,
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    and all of sudden you have some sort of crazed picture
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    which has some factual basis but nothing to do with the world.
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    You have to know how to evaluate, interpret, and understand.
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    Say biology again.
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    The person who wins the Nobel prize in biology
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    is not the person who read the most journal articles and took the most notes on them.
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    It's the person who knew what to look for.
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    And cultivating that capacity to seek what's significant--
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    always willing to question whether you're on the right track--
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    that's what education is going to be about.
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    Whether it's using computers and the internet or pencil and paper and books.
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    Well, education is discussed in terms of whether it's a worthwhile investment
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    Does it create human capital?
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    It can be used for economic growth and so on.
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    And it's a very distorting way to even pose the question, I think.
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    Do we want to have a society of free, creative, independent individuals,
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    able to appreciate and to gain from the cutlural achievements of the past, and to add to them?
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    Do we want that?
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    Or do we want people who can increase GDP?
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    It's not necessarily the same thing.
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    An education of the kind that ---- John Dewey and others talked about,
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    That's a value in itself.
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    Whatever impact it has in the society, it's a value
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    because it helps create better human beings.
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    After all, that's what an educational system should be for.
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    On the other hand, if you want to look at it
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    in terms of costs and benetifs,
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    take the new technology that we were just talking about, where did that come from?
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    Well, actually a lot of it was developed right where we're sitting,
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    Down below where we now are was a major laboratory back in the 1950s,
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    where i was employed in fact,.
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    Which had lots of scientists, engineers, people of all kinds of interests--
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    philosophers, others.
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    Who were working on developing the basic character and even the basic tools
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    of the technology that has now come.
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    Computers and the internet for example,
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    were pretty much in the public sector for decades,
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    funded in places like this, where people were exploring new possibilities
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    that were mostly unthought of, unheard of at the time.
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    Some of them worked, some didn't.
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    The ones that worked were finally converted into tools that people could use.
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    Now that's the way scientific prgress takes place.
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    It's the way that cultural prgress takes place generally.
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    Classical artists, for example,
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    came out of a tradition of craftsmanship that was developed
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    over long periods with master artisans, with others.
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    Sometimes you can rise on their shoulders and create new, marvelous things.
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    But it doesn't come from nowhere.
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    If there isn't a lively cultural and educational system
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    which is geared towards encouraging creative exploration,
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    independence of thought, williingness to challenge accepted beliefs.
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    If youdon't have that you won't get teh technology that will lead to economic gains.
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    Though that I don't think is the prime purpose of cultural enrichment in education.
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    There is in the recent period particularly an increasing shaping of educaiton
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    from the early ages towards passing examinations.
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    Taking tests can be of some use, both for the person who is taking the test
Title:
Noam Chomsky - The Purpose of Education
Description:

Noam Chomsky discusses the purpose of education, impact of technology, whether education should be perceived as a cost or an investment and the value of standardised assessment.

Presented at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference - Jan 25th 2012- London (LWF 12)

http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com

credits:
Interviewed & directed by Graham Brown-Martin
Filmed & edited by Kevin Grant at wildtraxtv (http://on.fb.me/wildtraxtv)
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Video Language:
English
Team:
PACE
Duration:
21:58
altmediaangela edited English subtitles for Noam Chomsky - The Purpose of Education
altmediaangela edited English subtitles for Noam Chomsky - The Purpose of Education
altmediaangela added a translation

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