Noam Chomsky - Chomsky on Mis-Education

Series Editor: Donaldo Macedo, University of Massachusetts, Boston

A book series dedicated to Paulo Freire

Critical Education in the New Information Age

by Manual Castells, Ramon Flecha, Paulo Freire, Henry A. Giroux, Donaldo Macedo, and Paul Wills

Critical Ethnicity: Countering the Waves of Identity Politics

edited by Robert H. Tai and Mary L. Kenyatta

Debatable Diversity: Critical Dialogues on Change in American Universities

by Raymond V. Padilla and Miguel Montiel

Imagining Teachers: Rethinking Gender Dynamics in the Classroom

by Gustavo E. Fischman

Immigrant Voices: In Search of Education Equity

edited by Enrique (Henry) Trueba and Lilia I. Bartolome

Latinos Unidos: From Cultural Diversity to the Politics of Solidarity

by Enrique (Henry) Trueba

Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage

by Paulo Freire

Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity, revised edition,

by Basil Bernstein

A Sanctuary of Their Own: Intellectual Refugees in the Academy

by Raphael Sassower

Forthcoming

Ideology Matters

by Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo

Paulo Freire and the Social Imagination: From Dreams to Praxis

by Maxine Greene

NOAM CHOMSKY

Edited and Introduced by Donaldo Macedo

1)onaldo Macedo

Democracy has failed because so many people fear it. They believe that wealth and happiness are so limited that a world full of intelligent, healthy and free people is impossible, if not undesirable.... Such a world, with all its contradictions can be saved, can yet be born again; but not out of capital, interest, property and gold.

-W. E. B. I)u Bois'

Schools in the so-called open and free societies face formidable paradoxical tensions. On the one hand, they are charged with the responsibility of teaching the virtues of democracy, and, on the other hand, they are complicit with the inherent hypocrisy of contemporary democracies, where, according to Noam Chomsky, the term democracy "refers to a system of government in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification, as in the United States itself. Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formation of public policy is considered a serious threat."2

Thus, the popular movements during the sixties and seventies that mobilized to question the criminal involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War and to demand civil rights guarantees and protection of the environment represented a real threat for the dominant ruling class. In the United States, the dominant sector of the society responded by creating the Trilateral Commission with the goal of finding ways to contain the general democratic participation of masses of people in the Western world in questioning their governments' unethical behavior. In so doing, the Trilateral Commission dropped all pretensions concerning schools as democratic sites charged with the teaching of democratic values. The Trilateral Commission, whose members-among them the former president Jimmy Carter-belonged to the international and essentially liberal elite, resolved the paradoxical tensions of "democratic" schools by declaring them as institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young.' This led Chomsky to argue that the Trilateral Commission viewed schools as institutions for indoctrination, "for imposing obedience, for blocking the possibility of independent thought, and [that] they play an institutional role in a system of control and coercion."'

In tandem with the Trilateral Commission's goal of seeking ways to maintain Western capitalism's cultural hegemony, a plethora of cultural commissars emerged (largely funded by conservative foundations and think tanks). Their mission was to contain what they viewed as an "excess of democracy" and blame "those who would [seek to] democratize institutions, who would change relations of power" for the "social catastrophe" of the sixties.' Thus, it became necessary to frontally attack the experiments in democracy that questioned the unethical (and sometimes criminal) behaviors of governments and squarely put the blame on the "great society programs not only for financial losses but also for the drop in high school test scores, drug problems and a generation of children and youth with no fathers, no faith and no dreams other than the lure of the streets."6

Whereas the ruling class makes no apologies for the undemocratic role of schools, cultural middle management composed of teachers, professionals, and experts is expected, through a reward system, to propagate the myth that schools are democratic sites where democratic values are learned. As cultural middle managers, teachers support "theological truths" (or unquestioned truths) so as to legitimate the institutional role schools play "in a system of control and coercion."

Nowhere is this more evident than the example I use in earlier works in which David Spritzler, a twelve-year-old student at Boston Latin School, faced a disciplinary action for his refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which he considered "a hypocritical exhortation to patriotism" in that there is not "liberty and justice for all." According to Spritzler, the Pledge is an attempt to unite the "oppressed and the op pressors. You have people who drive nice cars, live in nice houses and don't have to worry about money. Then you have the poor people, living in bad neighborhoods and going to bad schools. Somehow the Pledge makes it seem that everybody's equal when that's not happening. There's no justice for everybody." 7

Spritzler was spared disciplinary action only after the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter on his behalf, citing a 1943 case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barrett, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a student's right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and to remain seated.

As recorded in the first chapter of this book, entitled "Beyond a Domesticating Education: A Dialogue," I asked Chomsky why a twelveyear-old boy could see through the obvious hypocrisy contained in the Pledge of Allegiance, while his teacher and administrators, who received much higher levels of education, cannot. According to Chomsky, "What happened to David Spritzler is expected of schools, which are institutions for indoctrination and for imposing obedience. Far from creating independent thinkers, schools have always, throughout history, played an institutional role in system of control and coercion. And once you are educated, you have already been socialized in ways that support the power structure, which, in turn, rewards you immensely." In this sense, as Edward Said correctly points out, teachers are like other "professionals, experts, consultants who provide authority with their labor while gaining great profit"" As paid functionaries of the state, teachers are expected to engage in a form of moral, social, political, and economic reproduction designed to shape students in the image of the dominant society.