Asking WHY is a taboo in most of the school education.
Taboo or just that the teachers haven't the slightest?
Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#32I left a link to this article in a comment a few hours ago, and it's a great feeling to then see it lead to the front page where hundreds of people can read about something I think is of great interest and importance.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love the idea that Chomsky fills the Coulter niche for a certain audience.
> the Coulter niche for a certain audience Michael Moore is the closest I could come up with. What makes Coulter unique is that she actively tries to offend liberals. I can't really think of anyone famous for trying to offend conservatives (although lots of people have become "almost famous" that way.)
They're not alike in their tones or most famous aspects -- but their appeal to their ardent fans is similar. "Here's truth that the [corporate|liberal] media contrives to obscure." Each offers a mostly self-consistent (but in other ways bizarro) world to make their audiences feel among the enlightened minority.
I happen to think both sometimes make useful and thought-provoking points, though followup conversations about them are prone to derailment into all sorts of superficial reactions and over-rehearsed ideological set-pieces.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#34Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the Coulter niche for a certain audience Michael Moore is the closest I could come up with. What makes Coulter unique is that she actively tries to offend liberals. I can't really think of anyone famous for trying to offend conservatives (although lots of people have become "almost famous" that way.)
They're not alike in their tones or most famous aspects -- but their appeal to their ardent fans is similar. "Here's truth that the [corporate|liberal] media contrives to obscure." Each offers a mostly self-consistent (but in other ways bizarro) world to make their audiences feel among the enlightened minority. I happen to think both sometimes make useful and thought-provoking points, though followup conversations ab…
I agree with "both sometimes make useful and thought-provoking points".
The problem is that these people create true believers. The world could really use sane alternate viewpoints -- and we mainly get lots of conspiracy theorists unable to change viewpoints.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
"People who fume inside are people who are already pretty sure they're right about everything" How does that follow?
They're fuming because the rest of the word doesn't recognise that they're right.
Isn't that just an assumption? There are other reasons to fume.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#37CHOMSKY: First of all, I'm usually fuming inside, so what you see on the outside isn't necessarily what's inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff they do I do find irritating. Oh, the irony
He suffers as the protagonist in xkcd/386 does, except not just about the Internet.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#38CHOMSKY: First of all, I'm usually fuming inside, so what you see on the outside isn't necessarily what's inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff they do I do find irritating. Oh, the irony
Only ironic if you take it out of context:
BARSAMIAN: ....You're very patient with people,
particularly people who ask the most inane kinds of
questions. Is this something you've cultivated?
CHOMSKY: First of all, I'm usually fuming inside, so
what you see on the outside isn't necessarily what's
inside. But as far as questions, the only thing I ever
get irritated about is elite intellectuals, the stuff
they do I do find irritating. I shouldn't. I should
expect it. But I do find it irritating. But on the
other hand, what you're describing as inane questions
usually strike me as perfectly honest questions. People
have no reason to believe anything other than what
they're saying. If you think about where the
questioner is coming from, what the person has been
exposed to, that's a very rational and intelligent
question. It may sound inane from some other point of
view, but it's not at all inane from within the
framework in which it's being raised. It's usually
quite reasonable. So there's nothing to be irritated
about.
Interviewer: Do you get angry when people ask you inane
questions?
Chomsky: Only when the person asking it should know
better.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not alike in their tones or most famous aspects -- but their appeal to their ardent fans is similar. "Here's truth that the [corporate|liberal] media contrives to obscure." Each offers a mostly self-consistent (but in other ways bizarro) world to make their audiences feel among the enlightened minority. I happen to think both sometimes make useful and thought-provoking points, though followup conversations ab…
I agree with "both sometimes make useful and thought-provoking points". The problem is that these people create true believers. The world could really use sane alternate viewpoints -- and we mainly get lots of conspiracy theorists unable to change viewpoints.
I would be interested in a citation for this observation as far as Coulter goes.
Re: Noam Chomsky: Education is Ignorance (1995)
#40So, you go back to the mid-nineteenth century and these so-called "factory girls," young girls working in the Lowell [Massachusetts] mills, were reading serious contemporary literature. They recognized that the point of the system was to turn them into tools who would be manipulated, degraded, kicked around, and so on. Source? My impression was that the point of the system was to make money, and that the girls were a…
>> It's basically court decisions and lawyers' decisions, which created a form of private tyranny which is now more massive in many ways than even state tyranny was.
> That's simply false. And the massive corporations that seem most soulless and Dilbert-like, often are basically arms of the state ( ie, government contractors like IBM).
No, wrong.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/index.html
Corporate personhood is not in the constitution, and being a 'natural person' came out as an unofficial side-effect of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, 1886 - A judge verbally said he thought that corporations had 14th amendment 'natural person' rights, that got added to the header by a clerk, and got quoted and treated as though it was caselaw. Perhaps you think we're arguing past each other, 'natural personhood' != tyranny, but without 'the right to petition govt', free speech, and be free from 'unreasonable search' etc, they wouldn't have nearly the legal protection & power that they do.