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Education Quotes by Noam Chomsky

83 Education quotes by Noam Chomsky

All Education quotes Noam Chomsky’s page

Noam Chomsky describes education as a filter that often weeds out independent thinkers. He notes that student debt can trap people and limit their ability to change society. He also claims that a deep understanding of the world is essential for those who want to make a difference.

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Education is a system of imposed ignorance.

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They, students have a degree of freedom that nobody else has.

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Education is imposed ignorance.

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Academics are not necessarily nice people.

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The whole educational and professional training system...

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In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.

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In the universities, cheap, vulnerable labor means adjuncts and graduate students.

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The educational system is pretty much geared to passing the next exam. You're educated to pass tests and not to understand.

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If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

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If kids are studying for a test, they're not going to learn anything. We all know that from our own experience.

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Education is not for profit. If you're not in education for profit, it's not going to be a fair critique for education.

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In the academic world, most of the work that is done is clerical. A lot of the work done by professors is…

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The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

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As elite attitudes towards public education over time illustrate, simple formulas are far from adequate. There are conflicting tendencies.

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The country that consistently ranks among the highest in educational achievement is Finland. A rich country, but education is free. Germany, education…

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Real schools ought to provide people with techniques of self-defense, but that would mean teaching the truth about the world and about…

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No matter what engineering field you're in, you learn the same basic science and mathematics. And then maybe you learn a little…

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It makes sense for societies to make education compulsory for children. Children are vulnerable. They can't make decisions. But the decisions can't…

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The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in…

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It doesn't matter how much you learn in school; it's whether you learn how to go on and do things by yourself.…

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Mexico is a pretty poor country, but they are maintaining a free, high quality public education system, not for everyone of course…

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I think that in order to achieve progress in the study of language and human cognitive faculties in general it is necessary…

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Insofar as the universities are free and independent, they will also be "subversive," in the sense that dominant structures of power and…

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The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and…

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I don't really see what can be said about the role of faculty members, or universities, beyond the truisms voiced earlier, and…

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The idea that you have to drop any thing that you might be interested in doing because you have to pass that…

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In studying language we can discover many basic properties of this cognitive structure, its organization, and also the genetic predispositions that provide…

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There's a strange myth of Anglo-Saxonism. When the University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson, for example, its law school offered…

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It is an astonishing fact about the current era that in the most powerful country in world history, with a high level…

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“What does it mean to be truly educated? I think I can do no better about answering the question of what it…

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I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done…

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“Most problems of teaching are not problems of growth but helping cultivate growth. As far as I know, and this is only…

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Student debt is structured to be a burden for life. The indebted cannot declare bankruptcy, unlike Donald Trump. Current student debt is…

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The educational system in the US was a highly predictable victim of the neoliberal reaction, guided by the maxim of "private affluence…

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“Well, that's pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and they punish independence of mind.…

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“Over recent years, [there's been] a strong tendency to require assessment of children and teachers so that [teachers] have to teach to…

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“In his book Politics, which is the foundation of the study of political systems, and very interesting, Aristotle talked mainly about Athens.…

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Education is really aimed at helping students get to the point where they can learn on their own. . .

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The reason academic disputes are so vicious is that so little is at stake.

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California is maybe the richest place in the world. They're destroying the best public education system in the world.

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More by Noam Chomsky

The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion - a major victory…

If you believe in democracy, why shouldn't you know what the government is doing?

It’s a shameful moment for U.S. media when it insists on being subservient to the grotesque propaganda agencies of a violent, aggressive state.

There are questions as to whether it should even exist. Who should corporations be responsive to, the management of a corporation? Theoretically they are…

Governments regard their own citizens as their main enemy, and they have to be - protect themselves. That's why you have state secret laws.…

I don't join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn't have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying…

The first thing you ought to do is verify what I present. Just because I say it doesn't make it true. So check it…

I wrote an article about the marine landing [in Haiti] right away, but barely mentioned the oil, because my article would come out two…

American society is now remarkably atomized. Political organizations have collapsed. In fact, it seems like even bowling leagues are collapsing. The left has a…

Discovery is the ability to be puzzled by simple things. Noam Chomsky

There's an interesting book about that called The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower, written by Stephen H. Norwood. It has a long discussion…

This is class war on an international scale, and power is in the hands of those who control the international economic system.

There are big, extremely irrational parts of the society, and they have now been mobilized politically by the Republican establishment, hoping that these people…

There's plenty to criticize about the mass media, but they are the source of regular information about a wide range of topics. You can't…

The 50,000 Korean mercenaries we had in Vietnam were professional killers and just massacred people outright. And the American army did plenty of that…