
Education Is a System of Indoctrination of the Young (1989) [video] - zainamro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVqMAlgAnlo
======
ben509
In a very similar vein is Bryan Caplan's book "the Case Against Education."

In an interview[1] he lays out his argument, roughly, as:

> Right. So, the first story is called human capital, and just says that
> people with more education earn more money because they have been trained
> effectively for the jobs they are going to do. So, school--you go to school,
> and it gives you more skills; you make more money. Nice simple story.

> The main story that I am pushing in the book is called signaling. This says
> that, yes, going to school does cause your earnings to go up; but, the
> reason isn't so much that you are learning useful skills as that you are
> getting certified. You are getting a stamp on your forehead saying, 'Great;
> hey, premium worker. Hire this person.'

> And then, the last story is called ability bias. This one just says that
> it's just coincidental that people who have more education make more money;
> and rather, what's going on is it's the kind of thing that wealthy people--
> the people who are going to be wealthy--rather do.

[1]: [https://www.econtalk.org/bryan-caplan-on-the-case-against-
ed...](https://www.econtalk.org/bryan-caplan-on-the-case-against-education/)

~~~
tasogare
> The main story that I am pushing in the book is called signaling

I saw this idea a lot in other various threads. As the average HN poster is
probably well educated, I wonder if it’s a biais coming from software
engineering where most of the skill set is learnt by experience.

Anyway, I have a long list of university degree, and I can tell there are
indeed differences with autodidacts that learnt the same general fields. The
fundamental difference is that university forces one to learn the unfunny
parts. For computer science it means for example functional programming,
database normal forms, language theory, anything with mathematics inside, etc.
Of course, university classes alone are not enough and much like an autodidact
much study have to be done alone, which might lead one to conclude that
university is not required. But I don’t think it the case.

~~~
balfirevic
> I wonder if it’s a biais coming from software engineering where most of the
> skill set is learnt by experience

For the record, Bryan Caplan is an economist.

~~~
knolax
So a modern day shaman who does rain dances. You don't need much of an
education to the type of bullshitting he does for a living either.

~~~
tasogare
Yes, if anything it gives him even less credibility to speak about education.
Wikipedia mentions that he is an "anarcho-capitalism", so he's basically
trying to sell his main ideological framework without any regard to real
consequence on people lives or society.

~~~
DataWorker
And he is a supported of free market labor policies. Can’t have open borders
and state run big education without conflicts. At least he’s consistent in his
thinking.

------
pariahHN
Well of course it is. How are you supposed to learn about how to integrate
into society without, you know...learning about it?

I wish people would be more specific - it's not that education in of itself is
bad, it's that the way it is currently implemented in this specific society
has these specific flaws. I strongly dislike when a discussion disparages an
entire concept when it's really just our implementation of that concept that
is flawed. It rules out potential solutions simply because they are associated
with ones that failed, when the differences between them could result in
success.

Not saying that's what's in the video - I get the impression that they are in
fact talking about specifically the implementation and not ripping on
education itself, but I've seen and heard stuff like this used as the
foundation not only of attacks on being educated but also on anything else
where some implementations of an ideal failed and so the ideal and all
possible solutions stemming from that ideal are dismissed as unworkable. And
it bothers me a bit how that approach is popular among many sides of many
arguments that I have seen. I would in fact suggest that it is in fact a
marker of a failed education - using an example of a failed implementation to
argue that the concept itself is inherently flawed is itself an example of a
failure in critical thinking.

------
knzhou
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the problem is always scale. The
modern system of American education really was born out of idealism, in fact
the same ideals that the comments here are using to attack it. It doesn't even
matter what you start with. When you scale, you end up with _mass_ education,
i.e. a system tasked with the job of actively taking care of almost every
American child for 40 hours a week, whether they want it or not. There is no
way to have that without the inevitable accompanying problems.

~~~
thundergolfer
> There is no way to have that without the inevitable accompanying problems.

What are these problems and why are they inevitable?

Mass education in the USA is public education, and if the USA had a good
national curriculum and accompanying system of teaching why would it
necessarily produce indoctrination?

If you're conflating the necessary standardisation of mass education with
indoctrination well that's just wrong. Having a shared epistemic foundation is
the basis for a free democratic society not the undermining of it. _The
English language is itself a shared epistemic foundation_ and yet mass
literacy campaigns are obviously not a tool of indoctrination. They are tools
of freedom and empowerment.

------
euske
I just found that this OP and the other two HN articles I've stumbled on today
are somehow related at a deeper level - they're all talking about the
creativity and intelligence in general.

The Lesson to Unlearn -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729619)

Brain tunes itself to criticality, maximizing information processing -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729211](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21729211)

I don't think all individuals should become a 100% creative/original person.
That would make the society very unstable. So we need some (actually, a lot
of) obedient people that makes the society keep going, in this regard that I
think the current education is useful. On the other hand, there's always a
rebel no matter how hard we try to cast people into a form. The question is
that the society needs a good mixture of creative and boring people and I
don't know how we can achieve that. My theory right now is the society is
somehow auto-adjusting itself - like the brain auto-adjusting itself in the
above article - to have its "critical" state, i.e. having the right mixture of
people: not too boring but not too revolutionary. Of course, the society is
much bigger and more complex than a single brain, so its adjustment is slow
and inefficient. But it's interesting how it's still functioning while its
education system is so broken.

~~~
knzhou
There's a near opposite hypothesis to yours: Strauss–Howe generational theory.
The idea is that instead of sitting at an 'optimal' point, we have cycles of
general societal personality that last four generations, which dictate the
flow of history. [0]

At such a zoomed-out level, one can make an argument for any grand theory, I
guess -- they're too vague to pin down specifically. Still fun to occasionally
think about, though. It's the "use sparingly" peak of the nutrition pyramid
for thought.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory#Timing_of_generations_and_turnings)

~~~
goodmachine
Fascinating stuff, although obviously bananas. Reminds me somewhat of Elliot
Waves

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_wave_principle)

------
aaron695
Garbage.

You can look at countries without high levels or any education in existence
today. They are far more Indoctrinated. They are far less free thinking.

Even in a strict religious school I would say every year of education makes a
person less indoctrinated. The things you have to learn like science outweigh
that years negatives whatever that maybe.

Could you improve the education system.... yes... we all know that. But are
not sure how.

The idea about Japan not being scientific is however very interesting for
1989. The meme they are technologically advanced isn't really correct, it's
almost a racist mythology.

------
emrehan
I’d highly recommend Sceptical Essays(1928) by Bertrand Russell to anybody
interested in the topic:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144355.Sceptical_Essays](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144355.Sceptical_Essays)

~~~
harry8
[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222966/page/n3](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.222966/page/n3)

Has it for download

------
sn41
Over time, I've come to realise that the most important gift we can give our
children is formal training in critical thinking. I think STEM and such can
wait.

The ability to question narratives put forth by the industry, the government,
media, political parties etc. is important not only to realise the truth at an
abstract level, but also has practical implications on things such as
successful investment strategies.

~~~
thundergolfer
I'm becoming a broken record on HN about this, but the evidence is in and you
can't divorce critical thinking from domain-specific knowledge.

> The ability to question narratives put forth by the industry, the
> government, media, political parties

You just can't do this properly without a shitload of core domain knowledge in
philosophy, politics, media, history and also whatever specific domain
knowledge pertinent.

You can't "question narratives" you see in the newspaper if you don't have a
good theory of media like what's provided in _Manufacturing Consent_ and even
with that you can't "question [the] narrative" of some specific economics
thought-piece in the Financial Times if you don't have the relevant domain
knowledge in economics.

If you think of the people you'd regard as excellent critical thinkers,
wouldn't these _all_ be people with deep knowledge of their domain(s)? Chomsky
was never formally schooled in "critical thinking". He just went through
normal, rigorous education, reading stacks of books and newspapers along the
way.

source: Why Knowledge Matters, by E.D Hirsch

~~~
teh_infallible
As someone who has majored in English, I strongly disagree. You don’t need to
understand the subject matter to make rudimentary assessments of validity.
People who study the humanities learn to ask questions like, does the author
seem to have a bias? Are some obvious questions not being raised by the text?
Does the author contradict themselves?

You might not be able to definitively state that the author is being
disingenuous, or is a shill, but you can learn to explicitly state where
certain narratives are weakly supported. Most people can’t do this. They tend
to accept all texts as authoritative.

~~~
threwere434234f
As someone who has read a fair bit of "critical"ly read texts - I strongly
disagree. English majors often don't understand enough to even be able to pick
out contradictions properly, and all they end up doing is (quite ironically)
act as spin doctors spinning webs for the ideological sugar daddies.

------
remir
I believe the most important thing we can teach kids is the ability to discern
influences, at all time. Some are positive, and obviously some are negative.
Everything exert an influence on us and it is crucial to be aware of it.

People should be able to see the world with their own eyes, instead of with
the eyes of culture or other socially transmitted concepts.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Also important to teach children about biases. Some are healthy for quick
decisions that yield positive returns. Some are established simply by cultural
norms and are harmful to propagate further.

------
mc32
It most certainly is!

If you listen to kids they will tell you their take on the environment,
consumption, worthy causes, etc. I’m quite sure they’re not thinking about
these things themselves.

So yeah, teachers indoctrinate students with their biases. Some kids seek out
their own information as they grow up, many don’t question it.

So we end up in places where nuclear power was bad, for example, or banning
straws (when there are much bigger issues with plastics) and detrimental
things like everyone is special and unique and the future is yours to conquer
(and of course this leads to disappointment when due to outsourcing and
shipping jobs overseas they end up working at dead end minimum wage jobs).

~~~
WalterBright
In my father's later years he was head of the business dept at a college. He
taught classes in business and finance.

He'd often have students come up to him and say they had no idea there was
even a case for free markets. All they'd ever heard in school was how awful
they were. They'd thank him for opening their eyes.

At one time, the other staff (all socialists) invited him to participate in a
debate about free markets in front of the students, and warned my father that
they were going to take him apart. He happily agreed.

They wound up rather sorry they'd done that. My father was an experienced
debater, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of economics and history. He
shredded them :-) and some had the class to come up later and thank him for
opening their eyes as well, as they hadn't believed there was a case for free
markets either.

~~~
jancsika
You can flip the instances of socialism and free marketeerism mutatis mutandis
and this comment means exactly as much as it currently does.

Was that your intent? To point out that whether it's Your Father's U or U of
Chicago the importance of hearing the dissenting opinion remains the same?

~~~
WalterBright
My intent was straightforward. There is a case for the free market, but the
current school system does not expose the students to it. My father's students
had never heard it, and I'd never heard it from the schools I went to, either.

It's a little sad, being as we live in a free market system.

~~~
dragonwriter
> but the current school system does not expose the students to it

That's not at all my experience, where the case for it is the core of both
high school and introductory college economics, as well as frequently being
touched on in the history and civics curricula.

> It's a little sad, being as we live in a free market system.

No, we don't.

------
hillsofhills
The US formalism and legal system around public education specifically calls
out its purpose for creating nationally aligned citizenship.

For example a few years ago Colorado proposed to educate High Schoolers using
a textbook that highlights morally questionable aspects of American history
from the perspective of "The Left" (Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the
United States"), it was rejected by the courts on the grounds it would not
accomplish the required purpose of creating nationally aligned citizens,
crucially NOT because it wasn't a good textbook for teaching history.

~~~
basch
I've often felt that despite going to a high school that championed critical
thinking, that certain topics were closer to indoctrination.

I've noticed, with much of the public, if democracy is criticized the response
is usually akin to "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of
Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time.…" more often in the form of "well what do you think is better" followed
by the bad sides of that system. It doesnt actually address the argument.

That single catch phrase became a way to shut down critical thinking before it
began. "Nope I have the ultimate rebuttal, I wont even entertain other
premises, even hypothetically." People were taught that, despite its flaws,
its best, and dont question that it might not be the best.

To question democracy itself, as not superior to everything else, is painful
and frightening to many, as it fractures their worldview and lenses theyve
built with which they understand the world. Defense of democracy feels more
like fanaticism, the way people choose a sports team and then never question
it. (Lions fans may question their allegiance, but thats a different story.)

It becomes a bit recursive, as democracy is powered by and predicated on an
educated electorate.

~~~
matheusmoreira
> To question democracy itself, as not superior to everything else, is painful
> and frightening to many, as it fractures their worldview and lenses theyve
> built with which they understand the world.

What's truly frightening are the conclusions that follow this realization:
most people do not think about their beliefs and straight up hate you if you
question them; it's useless to debate those people since that brings only
suffering and persecution; better to somehow seize power and impose one's
world view on them.

~~~
basch
>better to somehow seize power and impose one's world view on them.

That's sort of what politicians do. Over half the population doesnt vote for
them, and the majority of what they said to get votes was platitudes and lies
anyway. Trump and Hillary got less than half the vote each, from 61.5 percent
of the population. Trump played a well crafted and complicated game, one where
he got less votes than his competitor, to take charge with only 28.3% of the
voting age population picking him. He did so despite the entire party he ran
in wanting "anybody but him." He is like a parasite that took over its host,
and in a way it was very interesting to watch someone hijack a party against
the partys will.

Campaigns are basically reduced to who can lie the loudest and most
convincingly. Who can say the right things, even if those things have nothing
to do with what they do when they get into office. (Any republican even
whispering the words small government lately.) Even a candidate like Bernie's
platform, is largely the job of the house and senate. If he didnt also get
both, theres no way hed be anything more than a bully pulpit president. Saying
what he wants, not getting it, unable to do anything about it. Maybe making
compromise to get a shell of what he wants passed.

I have to think a bunch of Trump's support was just that finally someone kept
going after a recording or scandal came out. Instead of letting the "we caught
you, now youre unelectable" committee of the fifth estate disqualify everyone
they didnt like, someone running finally said "i dont care, im not quitting,
youre not in charge of who the people get to vote for."

Basically where im going with this incredibly off topic and unfocused rant is
that i would call; hijacking a party that doesnt want you (GOP establishment),
getting less than 30% of people to vote for you, and doing so by shouting what
amounts to nonsense; either seizing power (or maybe just the electorate saying
"we are done with all these other "approved" people you keep trying to force
down our throats, we give up. Nonsense is better than your narrative.)

------
chmaynard
Nice video! I'd like to know when and where Chomsky made these remarks. In
fact, I'd like to watch the entire presentation. Strange that the captions are
often incorrect -- did Chomsky review and approve them?

~~~
zainamro
The video is an excerpt from a speech he made in 1989. Here's the full speech:
[https://youtu.be/G2dJ0iBhTcA?t=79](https://youtu.be/G2dJ0iBhTcA?t=79).

------
lycidas
I think we can't really expect the opposite to happen. There's not an
educational system out there that would actively try to delegitimize itself or
the power structures it exists in.

That being said, Chomsky's works -- especially, Understanding Power and
Manufacturing Consent -- are extremely helpful to understanding our current
world. Even if the examples are out-dated, you can see the same things play
out today as they did in the 80's. I would recommend them even if you don't
align personally with his politics.

------
Koshkin
It is intended to be, but in reality it’s just a system that trains students
to pass tests. For the most part, such system leaves students highly skeptical
towards everything - which is a good thing.

~~~
WalterBright
> it’s just a system that trains students to pass tests

How do you verify that the students learned anything without some sort of
tests?

~~~
smogcutter
The problem is, what are you actually verifying? Mostly memorization and test
taking strategies. Wasn’t there just a thread complaining that whiteboard
coding interviews are nonsense? It’s the same thing.

“Some sort” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Some kind of assessment -
yes, of course. But for example, consider a portfolio of work & a written
evaluation vs a multiple choice exam. The latter is definitely easier, faster,
and gives you a metric to print, but which is more valuable for the student?
Which better demonstrates what you’ve learned?

NB: obviously this is to an extent domain specific. I’m not talking about med
school, and I don’t care about your evolving perspective on whether 2+2 equals
4, I just need to know whether you can add.

~~~
WalterBright
> Mostly memorization and test taking strategies.

Most people memorize the times tables. I discovered that there was a rule to
them, which was much less work to learn.

At Caltech, tests were open book and open note. Memorizing facts and
strategies would do you no good at all.

I didn't see any point to those methods, anyway, as I went to college to learn
the material, and when I learned it, I did well on the tests.

~~~
smogcutter
Like I mentioned, it’s domain specific to an extent. Tests may be more
effective in fields like engineering where there are specific correct answers
and methods. But we’re talking about k-12, and nothing you did at caltech is
relevant to hs standardized testing.

~~~
WalterBright
I remember taking all those standardized tests all through grade school and
high school. There was quite an obvious and consistent correlation between
those who learned the material and did well on the test, and those who didn't
and did poorly.

This remained true whether the test was multiple choice, fill in the blank, or
open ended.

~~~
smogcutter
Frankly you don’t remember, the sheer amount of testing and degree of
standardization has increased tremendously since NCLB. ESSA walked back the
testing somewhat, but it’s still very different than when you were in school.

The question is what “learned the material” actually means, and if designing
the class around a definition that can be accurately captured on a test is a
worthwhile goal. Again though, I want to make it clear that I’m _not_ arguing
against assessing what and how students are learning, but specifically against
standardized testing.

We can’t spend decades hurfing and blurfing over “failing schools” and then
refuse to consider change when what we’ve been doing clearly isn’t working.

~~~
WalterBright
> specifically against standardized testing.

Without standardized testing, the techniques of teaching cannot evolve beyond
"Phil said this works for him."

------
mythealias
Lot of closed caption is not even close to what Chomsky is saying.

~~~
jackcosgrove
I thought some of the incorrect captions were quite poignant!

I am still wondering if someone had a hand in that.

------
hi41
I don’t agree with this. Because of the education I received at K-12 and
undergrad studies, I was able to get a job. Without that I would not have been
able to support my family. Also the K-12 educational systems across the world
have lifted several billions out of poverty. Without educational system most
people would be mired in ignorance and believing in myths.

~~~
tryptophan
> K-12 educational systems across the world have lifted several billions out
> of poverty.

You can just as easily say "countries spend more on education as they become
richer". The correlation goes both ways (and thats all it is, a correlation.
Beware those who assume causation!).

I think its a little absurd to think that teaching geometry and Shakespeare to
kids somehow will magically lift them all out of poverty.

------
mbar84
There are endless debates about curriculum and yet there is one lessen that is
never up for debate, and it is thought throughout every day and in every
lessen: Sit down, be quiet, do as you're told.

I wonder what a society would look like, where each of us had not been exposed
to over a decade of this in our most impressionable years.

~~~
bellweather49
This is so true, and makes me so sad to think about. I regard formal education
as a form of emotional abuse for this very reason.

------
s1k3b8
It's quite eye opening to learn about the origins of the modern education
system. The how and the why of the modern school system. Especially the people
who brought the public school system from europe to america. They certainly
weren't interested in creating a population of critical thinkers. It's why
public "education" is supported by such disparate countries like america to
nazi germany to the soviet union to communist china. One thing all countries
and politicians and elites love is public "education".

------
whinythepooh
Also school plants into children some biases that later used by authorities
for divide-and-conquer.

E.g. the school told me that I belong to some ethnicity and that there are
other ethnicities I should know about. As a child I couldn't care less. Why
would they tell me this if ethnicity doesn't even matter for future job?

Another example is socio-economic system classification: capitalist vs
socialist vs fascist vs monarchy etc. Why does it have to be so clean-cut
categories? Like if you're not in one camp then you have to be in another.
Just another divisive tool.

So they do want to create the work force but they also want to prevent any
sort of revolt and thus plant psychological leverages in peoples' heads. It is
a science of social engineering that they don't teach in schools.

~~~
asimilator
> E.g. the school told me that I belong to some ethnicity and that there are
> other ethnicities I should know about. As a child I couldn't care less. Why
> would they tell me this if ethnicity doesn't even matter for future job?

I don't think you could have even a basic understanding of history without
understanding what ethnicities are and some details about the historical
experiences of at least a few of these groups.

But let's buy in to the premise, for a second, that schools should only teach
you things you need to get a job (which ignores how important a well educated
population is to democracy). Historical discrimination and the current
disadvantage of several ethnic groups directly informs the hiring policies of
many major companies (in the US). So ethnic groups may directly impact you
getting a job.

------
dennis_jeeves
What a coincidence, I posted this just yesterday at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21730116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21730116)
:

My post reads:

In my view schools/universities are institutions for mass indoctrination. Noam
Chomsky has said something along similar lines. I borrowed the words from him.

A bunch of my other observations:

[https://realminority.wordpress.com/observations-of-the-
world](https://realminority.wordpress.com/observations-of-the-world)

~~~
OJFord
Not necessarily a coincidence, I've often gone down a rabbit hole of reading
triggered by an interesting HN comment; sometimes that comes back to HN in the
form of a submission of something in the rabbit hole that I found particularly
interesting.

~~~
dennis_jeeves
Now that I think of it, it's probably not a co-incidence. The author
'zainamro' who posted the parent post, probably read my post
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21730116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21730116))
and then did a google search to come up with the video that he then posted.

~~~
zainamro
I actually hadn’t seen your comment — I read PG’s essay and was similarly
reminded of Chomsky’s view on education and specifically this video. So it was
a coincidence in a sense but less so because of PG’s essay.

------
cable2600
People should go to school to learn, not to be indoctrinated. They should
learn critical thinking to for their own ideas and opinions based on facts and
logic.

~~~
threwere434234f
This is a joke right ?

Historiography (like most of "humanities") is almost entirely based upon
ideology to write a story around certain "facts". The practitioners might call
that it is a "science" to satisfy their Physics envy, but the intent in these
fields is more about molding the world more than it is about modeling it.

You can never be proven wrong by writing the future. Orwell was right. Chomsky
has no alternative other than pushing another imperial narrative, like his
liberal counterparts during the British Empire.

------
PavlovsCat
Chomsky's talk titled "Corporate Attack on Education" held at St. Philip's
Church, Harlem on March 16, 2012: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbMP-
cy1INA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbMP-cy1INA)

> I think the university should tolerate a large diversity of opinion, which
> it does not. I think there is a severe failure - the failure is one of
> honesty, in my opinion. That is, I don't believe that scholarship within the
> university attempts to come to grips with the real structure of the society.
> I think it is under such narrow ideological controls that it avoids any
> concern or investigation of central issues in our society.

\-- Noam Chomsky, interview in Business Today (May, 1973)
[https://chomsky.info/197305__/](https://chomsky.info/197305__/)

------
valvar
It never ceases to amaze me how this pseudo-intellectual hack is taken
seriously at all. But I suppose it must be by people who have not really been
exposed to any serious thinking before.

Leaving aside how unoriginal and trite the things he is saying actually are (I
imagine it's what Trump would sound like if he had a wider vocabulary), just
consider his smear of Bloom and his book. It's amazing. Here's a very serious
book that tries to address the problems he just presented, and all he's got is
something worse than a straw man. Suggesting that the classics have a place in
the curriculum is 'a couple of smart guys deciding what the great thoughts
are' and paramount to imposing authority and trashing everything else. He even
manages to sandwich it into 'turning the schools into marine corps'. I think
only two conclusions are possible - either he had not read the book in
question, or he is willfully lying about it (and not very convincingly).

~~~
nabla9
_pseudointellectual_ n. A person who claims proficiency in scholarly or
artistic activities while lacking in-depth knowledge or critical
understanding.

As someone who disagrees a lot with the views of Noam Chomsky, I must say that
you can never call him pseudointellectual.

Chomsky is an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. Academically he
has contributed into linguistics and theoretical computer science. As a
political thinker he forms his toughs and arguments irritatingly well.

~~~
valvar
>Academically he has contributed into linguistics and theoretical computer
science

This is true, but

>As a political thinker he forms his toughs and arguments irritatingly well.

is something people keep saying, but which I have never seen substantiated.
I've read many of his pieces and wasted hours listening to his blabbing. None
of it is profound, and a lot of it is quite the opposite (the video linked
being one of the most egregious examples). Perhaps he can be admired for being
a good con man, though - somehow his rhetoric manages to fool a lot of people.

~~~
thundergolfer
> This is true, but

Oh so you'd retract saying "pseudo-intellectual hack" then?

Your couple of comments here have made me very wary of taking you seriously,
but as a big fan of Chomsky I'd like to not dismiss your vitriol and instead
ask for some alternative books and talks to look at.

Who do you recommend in the areas of education, politics, and civics?

~~~
valvar
>Oh so you'd retract saying "pseudo-intellectual hack" then?

Definitely not. One can be an expert in one area, and still be completely
incompetent while claiming otherwise in another one. Chomsky is just as well
known for his politics and social commentary as for his hard science, and
proficiency in the latter does not exonerate him from deficiency in the
former.

>but as a big fan of Chomsky I'd like to not (sic, I presume) dismiss your
vitriol

That's good - you've now dismissed the vitriol of at least two persons. But to
be fair, I do know that I'm not being overly civil, and I do appreciate your
effort to not be as close-minded as Chomsky himself.

>Who do you recommend in the areas of education, politics, and civics?

A good starter is the book which Chomsky slandered in this video. Camille
Paglia has also written a lot on topics related to the ones touched upon in
the video, but with much greater clarity and originality. I haven't read as
much about education as I should have, so I can't give any more
recommendations than that. The other two subjects are much too broad for
recommendations to be meaningful, unless you are looking for something
specific (refuting Chomsky is also too broad, I think) or just want to place
me ideologically.

