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In this book, Chomsky builds a larger understanding of our educational needs, starting with the changing role of schools today, yet broadening our view toward new models of public education for citizenship.
The subject of education is a contentious issue in our world. The Politics of Education: An Introduction, critically examines the overt and covert political issues suffusing education. Questions of What is education?, What do we teach?, and How do we teach? are all political questions, the answers to which empower certain individuals, groups and viewpoints over others. This book explores the political contexts that shape our conceptions of education and guides our pedagogical practice. Contemporary educational theory and practice are taken to task for attempting to instill democratic values and a love of freedom anti-democratically with little to no freedom. For example, The Politics of Education considers the effects of standardized examinations on the individual and her ability to function in a democratic society. Critiques of contemporary educational theory and practice by Dewey, Foucault, Bourdeau, classical conservative thinkers and others are considered. This book examines education through historical and international lenses where appropriate. Alternative meanings and modes of education grounded in critical pedagogy are offered as steps in revolutionizing education. Tony Monchinski, a special education and social studies teacher in New York, has taught in the West Indies and Asia. He is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he studies the relationships between political ideologies and the uses of standardized exams. A freelance writer, Tony writes widely for a variety of publications, including a monthly column for MuscleMag International and frequent contributions to Cultural Logic, an online journal of Marxist theory and practice.
Noam Chomsky visited India in 1996 and 2001 and spoke on a wide range of subjects, from democracy and corporate propaganda to the nature of the world order and the role of intellectuals in society. He captivated audiences with his lucid challenge of dominant political analyses, the engaging style of his talks, and his commitment to social equality as well as individual freedom. Chomsky’s early insights into the workings of power in the modern world remain timely and compelling. Published for the first time, this series of lectures also provides the reader with an invaluable introduction to the essential ideas of one of the leading thinkers of our time.
This volume brings together important voices regarding constraints and potential possibilities for democracy in action. The book addresses various understandings of democracy and provides specific critiques. Connections between critique, critical literacy, and its potential for society and education are presented and organized smoothly and accessibly, facilitating easy engagement with the ideas within. These ideas have been carefully thought through so that the text becomes accessible, comprehensible and logical. Readers may benefit from this work through its synthetic, international and comparative approach to issues surrounding critical literacy and its relationship with the democratic process. Complementing the text with audio-visual content allows readers to engage with some of the foremost professionals in the field of critical literacy. Videos of Noam Chomsky add to this a definitive view of democratic practice. The authors have striven to make this “video-text” appropriate, interesting and innovative. Moreover, readers may particularly appreciate the informative summary at the end of every chapter, which is presented in more accessible terms for the uninitiated who may be interested in ways of dealing with critical literacy practices in social, political and educational contexts. This is a very personal book that surprises, represents a unique view of the interrelationship between democracy and literacy, reinterprets significant academic writings in critical pedagogy, offers an analysis of theoretical and empirical research, and provides in-depth narratives and portraits of stimulating scholars in education who have worked towards development of an engaged and empowered electorate.
Sponsored by the Institute for Educational Inquiry How are students going to function effectively in a democraticsociety? This collection of original essays outlines the criticalrole of our schools in helping create the conditions necessary fora democracy--and helping create in students the characteristics ordispositions critical to maintaining a democracy.
Using dialogues exchanged over the course of nine years, combined with heartfelt critical essays, Chomsky and Orelus analytically examine social justice issues - unbalanced relationships between dominant and subjugated languages, democratic schooling, neoliberalism, colonization, and the harmful effect of Western globalization on developing countries, and on the poor living in those countries.
In his national bestselling 1988 CBC Massey Lectures, Noam Chomsky inquires into the nature of the media in a political system where the population cannot be disciplined by force and thus must be subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control. Specific cases are illustrated in detail, using the U.S. media primarily but also media in other societies. Chomsky considers how the media might be democratized (as part of the general problem of developing more democratic institutions) in order to offer citizens broader and more meaningful participation in social and political life.
In this classic talk delivered at the Poetry Center, New York, on February 16, 1970, Noam Chomsky articulates a clear, uncompromising vision of social change. Chomsky contrasts the classical liberal, libertarian socialist, state socialist, and state capitalist world views and then defends a libertarian socialist vision as "the proper and natural extension . . . of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society." In his stirring conclusion Chomsky argues, "We have today the technical and material resources to meet man’s animal needs.We have not developed the cultural and moral resources or the democratic forms of social organization that make possible the humane and rational use of our material wealth and power. Conceivably, the classical liberal ideals as expressed and developed in their libertarian socialist form are achievable. But if so, only by a popular revolutionary movement, rooted in wide strata of the population and committed to the elimination of repressive and authoritarian institutions, state and private. To create such a movement is a challenge we face and must meet if there is to be an escape from contemporary barbarism."
The first volume to focus on the intersections of militarization, corporations, and education, Education as Enforcement exposed the many ways schooling has become the means through which the expansion of global corporate power are enforced. Since publication of the first edition, these trends have increased to disturbing levels as a result of the extensive militarization of civil society, the implosion of the neoconservative movement, and the financial meltdown that radically called into question the basic assumptions undergirding neoliberal ideology. An understanding of the enforcement of these corporate economic imperatives remains imperative to a critical discussion of related militarized trends in schools, whether through accountability and standards, school security, or other discipline based reforms. Education as Enforcement elaborates upon the central arguments of the first edition and updates readers on how recent events have reinforced their continued original relevance. In addition to substantive updates to several original chapters, this second edition includes a new foreword by Henry Giroux, a new introduction, and four new chapters that reveal the most contemporary expressions of the militarization and corporatization of education. New topics covered in this collection include zero-tolerance, foreign and second language instruction in the post-9/11 context, the rise of single-sex classrooms, and the intersection of the militarization and corporatization of schools under the Obama administration.
