The great rebel linguist Chomsky on language, school and children.

Chomsky is such an Einstein in linguistics. The same scandalous reputation and rebelliousness, the same intransigence in views, the same genius of his era and the main intellectual of our time.

Abraham Noam Chomsky is one of the most cited scientists, a great linguist, public figure, publicist and political anarchist. The Americans gave him the nickname “Our Socrates” and “the conscience of the nation.”

At 93, Chomsky continues to actively teach the science of language at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which he has been doing for more than half a century), readily giving interviews, writing cheeky essays, and holding public lectures.

Chomsky is not just a major figure in modern linguistics, he is a style of thinking.

In general, it can be said without prejudice that all linguistics is divided into two eras: before Chomsky and after Chomsky.

No, we still have not learned the whole truth about the appearance of different languages ​​​​on our planet and we can well be content with the legend of the Tower of Babel. But it is thanks to Chomsky that linguistics has acquired the status of a science, and not a tool of classification.

In 1957 Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures shook the world of language science. All that linguistics did before Chomsky was the accumulation of knowledge about the means and norms of a particular language; maximum – by combining languages ​​into language groups and their comparative characteristics. No one before Chomsky perceived language as an innate feature; language was not evaluated as the same system of knowledge of the world as, say, visual or visual perception.

Indeed, how to explain the crazy speed with which young children learn the language spoken by their environment? How does a child distinguish speech from other sounds? How do they feel the difference between “burn in the sun” and “burn to the ground”? Why do children of all countries of the world learn their native language in approximately the same period of time, and no language differences that have been studied by seasoned linguists for so long do not affect this process?

A child, learning speech (and this is about five years old) receives very fragmentary information about the language and its rules; nevertheless, he seizes them. Obviously not from experience, since the experience of the child is not yet enough. This means that knowledge about the grammar of a language is a priori, and each person has a kind of built-in module of some universal linguistic principles. This is not about the principles of the Russian language or Chinese; the concept of “universal grammar” appears.

Chomsky proposed a radical change in our ideas about language: he began to consider it as part of the genetic program inherent in man.

This is how the theory of “generative (generative) grammar” was created.

According to this theory, language consists of an infinite number of interpretable expressions. These expressions are organized using grammatical rules and structures, the number of which is just limited. In other words, speaking the language, we seem to be wielding Lego bricks: there are not so many varieties of parts, but they allow us to build an infinite number of structures. We are not aware of the algorithms that we use in the generation of native speech, we use them automatically, and this is the greatest economy of our mental resources.

Chomsky, as a teacher with fifty years of experience, devotes a lot of energy to the development of ideas about education and sharply criticizes the existing system, especially the system of testing and assessing knowledge.

If you think about it, a lot of the educational system is aimed at fostering submission and passivity. Since childhood, a person is prevented from showing an independent and creative look. If you allow yourself free-thinking in your school years, be prepared for trouble.

Chomsky is a prominent representative of the radical far left, so his attacks on modern American education are very politically tinged.

“We are losing our childhood. The education programs created under Bush and Obama are most like training for the Navy. Teachers are shackled to the limits of instructions. Children are chained to tests and examinations.”

If all learning is about preparing for and passing an exam, no one will learn anything. Everything you said in the exam is forgotten immediately after it is over. I am absolutely sure that such an approach is dictated consciously, and that independence and creativity are considered dangerous at the highest level of management.

In the privatization of many public services (for example, science and education), he sees the desire to privatize the feelings and mind of a person, to gain complete control over him.

He illustrates his conclusion that the modern taxpayer does not receive any benefits for his deductions – neither in the field of education, nor in the field of health care, nor in the field of social protection, he illustrates with a story:

“In the 1950s, I worked in a research lab that was fully funded by the Pentagon. The laboratory was engaged in the creation of those information technologies that have now become familiar: the Internet, computers, microelectronics. It existed at the expense of public money. What happened after 30 years? It has been transferred to private ownership.

And in 1977, Apple introduced its first desktop computer. After almost thirty years of state research at the expense of the money of its citizens. In an ideal capitalist system, the principle works: long-term investments always pay off. In this case, citizens invested, and this principle did not work. Taxpayers have contributed and what have they received? Nothing. Money flows like water into the pockets of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who use the achievements of decades of budget research.

If those people living in the fifties were asked: “Where would you like to send your taxes – to develop technology that will allow your grandchildren to play with the iPad, or to develop health care, education, providing a comfortable life?”. Whatever our predecessors answered, it does not matter, because they had no choice. They paid taxes.

This is how our society works: the money received by the state from taxation is used to enrich private corporations.

On the latest US education reform, No Child Left Behind: “This reform keeps teachers from teaching. She turns teachers into trainers who feed the material to the children and test their assimilation. This is not teaching, this is a sign of disrespect for teachers. This means that the teacher cannot do interesting things with the children, because it distracts them from studying for exams.”

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In his book, The Language Instinct, Chomsky argues that “the language faculty is a complex system of mental abilities and that this system is not learned from experience.” He also discusses the importance of having a proper education for children.

He states that “schools are designed to teach you to be obedient, docile and subservient” and that “the purpose of school is to teach you how to obey orders.”

He believes in the importance of schools but feels they are not always doing their job properly. He thinks they should be more focused on teaching children how to think critically and creatively.