Chomsky on Mis-Education: (Critical Perspectives Series: A Book Series Dedicated to Paulo Freire)

About the Book

Noam Chomsky's prolific writings have made him one of the most-quoted educators in history: the only living writer on a most-cited list that includes Plato, Shakespeare and Freud. Yet until now, no book has systematically offered Chomsky's influential writings on education. In Chomsky on MisEducation, Noam Chomsky builds a larger understanding of our educational needs, starting with the changing role of schools today, and then broadening our view toward new models of public education for citizenship. Chomsky weaves global technological change and the primacy of responsible media with the democratic role of schools and higher education. A truly democratic society, he argues, cannot thrive in a rapidly changing world unless our approach to education, formal and otherwise, is dramatically reformed. Chomsky's critique of how our current educational system "miseducates" students, and his prescriptions for change, are essential reading for the educational community and society at large.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Beyond a Domesticating Education: A Dialogue
Chapter 3 Democracy and Education
Chapter 4 The Craft of "Historical Engineering"
Chapter 5 Market Democracy in a Neo-Liberal Order: Doctrines and Reality
Chapter 6 Unmasking a Pedagogy of Lies: A Debate with John Silber

About the Author :
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of more than 80 books. Donaldo Macedo is professor of English and Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Review :
Chomsky and Macedo provide a brilliant analysis of schooling that draws upon a language of critique and possibility that reclaims the notion of schooling as a public good and a democratic force. At a time when teachers, students, and public life in general are under assault by the juggernaut of commodification and capital accumulation, it is crucial that educators, parents, youth, and others be offered a language in which politics, power, justice, and social change become central to any notion of educational reform. Chomsky and Macedo's book fulfills this task with great courage and penetrating wisdom. This is a book that should be read by everyone interested in education and the crisis of democracy. Judged in terms of power, range, novelty, and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today. [Chomsky] continues to challenge our assumptions long after other critics have gone to bed. He has become the foremost gadfly of our national conscience. [Chomsky has] a proud defensive independence, a good plain writer's hatred of expert mystification, a doctrine of resistance which runs against the melioristic and participatory current of most contemporary intellectual life. . . . Such men are dangerous; the lack of them is disasterous. Chomsky's intellect continues to be provocative and liberating. Excellent book. The first book to systematically offer all of this prolific writer and public intellectual's influential writings on education. Chomsky on MisEducation is a helpful addition to the literature on critical, cultural, and educational analysis. The collected essays are the work of a critical and independent mind and deserve a wide audience of educators and anyone concerned with the survival of democracy.