List of honorary degrees awarded to Noam Chomsky

Transcription

said a lot about the role of the media enough so called eric democracy hi i'm wondering how you see here are the rollover educational system what it's doing right now what forces are driving at and what constraints are and how should operate we are i quoted the uh... trilateral commission view of the educational system namely to system of indoctrination of the young and i think that's correct to system of indoctrination linux that was the way the liberal deletes regarded and they're more or less accurate uh... so the educational system is supposed to train people to be uh... obedient conformist not drink too much sugar which told me state passive don't cause any price is a democracy or raise any questions and so on that's basically what the what the uh... system is about uh... they even the fact that the system has a lot of stupidity and i think as a function you know it means that people are filtered out for opinions if you can guarantee lots of stupidity and the educational system you know like stupid assignments and things like that you know that the only people who will make it through are people like me unlike most eli guests who are willing to do it no matter how stupid it is because over the next step so you may know that this assignment is idiotic and i got there couldn't because we had a paper bag but he'll do it anyway because that's the way you get to the next question needed my make it and so on and so forth well there are people who don't do that now there are people who say i'm going to do it through the cutest thing uh... those people are called behavioral problem something like that they end up in the principles officer in the streets are selling drugs or whatever and all of this is a technique for uh... selection for obedience i dot approved this but i have a feeling that when you go to the ailing universities you find more obedience and conformity probably because you're getting the students who were better able to do it uh... were all that is functional that's the way it works for it and it works right through graduate school i mean if you they're upsetting but how do you graduate schools or a little more varied because some real contradictions development system the problem is that you can't progress this way na na especially in the sciences and engineering that's prob because the corporations need science and engineering he don't have innovation you're really in trouble so they have to encourage creativity in independence 'cause he can't get anywhere if you just copy what somebody told me you have to be challenging things all the time challenging everything you know i'm thinking who sought some song and they are real contradiction uh... it's hard to train people to be creative and challenging and so on and yet that i'm sure that somewhere else in their lives their conformist an obedient in everything so you have problems that's a serious problem in japan uh... we think of japan as miss tremendous superpower but that's very misleading japan for example is very poor nowhere and part of the reason is it such as part of its part the same thing that makes them good workers obedient workers to very obedient society very deferential and conformist society and one effect of that is that you you know there are real constraints against independent free said thinking you see it in the science is very clearly the uh... but from here to so there are those contradictions when you get the graduate school are beginning to show up they show up much less than the ideological subjects because there doesn't matter too much of people have there there is no profits aren't made buddy historians having original ideas but french revolution so they can have conventional ideas and that means that the the pressure to try to support innovation and freedom is much less in the profession the pressures for conformity on the other hand are much greater cousin the ideological subject it begins to be dangerous to people think the wrongful dangerous if they have new ideas about physics uh... so saying it but nevertheless you know you do there's you begin to get a little flocks of the system by the time graduate school and even at low levels you find it i mean there's you know there are teachers who do stimulate thought and sometimes they get away with and uh... you know all the way through you know if you feel learning things he just needs can control you can't make them just regurgitate what they heard now there's a lot of pressure to turn the schools into the marine corps lends a lot of support for the for example is this bestseller last couple years by allan bloom that was all over the supermarkets closing the american mine whichever you know huge bestseller supermarket racks which is where i read it and things like that greater cooperation at at the end of tight you know a lot of suggesting accolades for it and so on uh... he was saying that a couple of uh... smart guys will decide what the great thoughts are uh... and every student memorizing as education we are no and that's the way to turn people into pure comedy i mean even if they happen to pick the great thoughts uh... there is no way less likely to get anybody to think about those thoughts than to make that the curriculum that finishes amok that uh... and i think that's the purpose for them i mean the purposes just to impose fire no here's a great for us also stuff is rubbish just learners here okay opic can you memorize that's basically the line now of course that's that's the opposite of education now that's the latest study thoma or something like that uh... but uh... it's very popular and i think it reflects the same concern over the crisis of my person background lemon selfless extreme of the incident that really got them was a case in cornell where he was a professor where some black students took over one of the admins buildings and he would he said that's just like not to give us back to the nazis is old business but the nazis and so on and so forth where you take a little it happened and that you can tell you what he thought the and its effect on the capitulated not just like i did hear which would not to be subsumed that what actually happened if you look back is that there were real grievances undoubtedly that students should love them but they didn't go in the building with guns and so on but it was settled react it was so that we have to remember he was killed uh... the grievances were to some extent dealt with on the net result was better that was before but he doesn't really thought they should have mozart and president clinton i guess they should have bombed the place or something like that that's really set him off and in general what set many people off was the day you know the the sixties are now described in the literature as if it was a time when students were running around burning libraries and you know destroying the foundations of civilization and so on what was actually going on as they were asking questions you know they were raising questions they were uh... looking into things appeal and looked into before they were not just a billion and from the point of view of the log faculty that's equivalent to bring that building weekend that small distinction can make that and the http pressured return schools back to the days when you have to worry about those things like disobedient students asking questions about things that you don't think about