Noam Chomsky Talks About How Kids Acquire Language & Ideas in an Animated Video by Michel Gondry. These days Noam Chomsky is probably most famous for his consistent, outspoken criticism of U.S. foreign policy. Yet before the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, Chomsky became internationally famous for proposing a novel solution to an age-old question: what does a baby know? Plato argued that infants retain memories of past lives and thus come into this world with a grasp of language.
John Locke countered that a baby’s mind is a blank slate onto which the world etches its impression. After years of research, Chomsky proposed that newborns have a hard-wired ability to understand grammar. Language acquisition is as elemental to being human as, say, dam building is to a beaver. A little while ago, film director and music video auteur Michel Gondry interviewed Chomsky and then turned the whole thing into an extended animated documentary called Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
Above is a clip from the film. Related content: Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power (1971) Democracy and Education in the 21st Century and Beyond: An Interview With Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky (Photo: Andrew Rusk) More than four decades of Noam Chomsky's writings are available in a new anthology from Haymarket Books. Get this collection from the master of opposing the hubris of US empire. Click here now.
History teacher Dan Falcone and English teacher Saul Isaacson spoke with Noam Chomsky in his Cambridge office on September 16, 2014, about education and indoctrination, the 1960s, the Powell memorandum, democracy, the creation of ISIS, the media and the way "capitalism" actually works in the United States. Dan Falcone: We're in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Professor Noam Chomsky. I am Dan Falcone with Saul Isaacson, and this is actually the third time I've visited you. I have noticed students making very insightful and uplifting observations in the midst of chaos. Noam Chomsky: I think the activism of the 1960s had a very definite civilizing effect on the whole society in all kinds of ways. By 1965, South Vietnam had already been practically destroyed. Education Is a System of Indoctrination of the Young - Noam Chomsky.
Noam Chomsky: Why Americans Know So Much About Sports But So Little About World Affairs. The following is a short excerpt from a classic, The Chomsky Reader, which offers a unique insight on a question worth asking -- how is it that we as a people can be so knowledgable about the intricacies of various sports teams, yet be colossally ignorant about our various undertakings abroad? QUESTION: You've written about the way that professional ideologists and the mandarins obfuscate reality. And you have spoken -- in some places you call it a "Cartesian common sense" -- of the commonsense capacities of people.
Indeed, you place a significant emphasis on this common sense when you reveal the ideological aspects of arguments, especially in contemporary social science. What do you mean by common sense? CHOMSKY: Well, let me give an example. In part, this reaction may be due to my own areas of interest, but I think it's quite accurate, basically. There are questions that are hard. QUESTION: Do you think people are inhibited by expertise? CHOMSKY: I suspect that this is rather common. Chomsky : Reflections on Education and Creativity. Reflections on Education and Creativity. Noam Chomsky - Problems of Knowledge & Freedom (Ideas at the House) Noam Chomsky (2013) "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (MUST WATCH!!) Noam Chomsky: Education Rediscovered. Current Problems in the Study of Language and Mind.