CHAPTER 1
THE FUNCTION OF SCHOOLS
Subtler and Cruder Methods of Control
Noam Chomsky
Woman: How is it that the schools end up being an indoctrination system? Can you describe the process in more detail?
Well, the main point I think is that the entire school curriculum, from kindergarten through graduate school, will be tolerated only so long as it continues to perform its institutional role. So take the universities, which in many respects are not very different from the media in the way they functionâthough theyâre a much more complex system, so theyâre harder to study systematically. Universities do not generate nearly enough funds to support themselves from tuition money alone: theyâre parasitic institutions that need to be supported from the outside, and that means theyâre dependent on wealthy alumni, on corporations, and on the government, which are groups with the same basic interests. Well, as long as the universities serve those interests, theyâll be funded. If they ever stop serving those interests, theyâll start to get in trouble.
So for example, in the late 1960s it began to appear that the universities were not adequately performing that serviceâstudents were asking questions, they were thinking independently, they were rejecting a lot of the Establishment value-system, challenging all sorts of thingsâand the corporations began to react to that, they began to react in a number of ways. For one thing, they began to develop alternative programs, like IBM began to set up a kind of vocational training program to produce engineers on their own: if MIT wasnât going to do it for them the way they wanted, theyâd do it themselvesâand that would have meant theyâd stop funding MIT. Well, of course, things never really got out of hand in the 1960s, so the moves in that direction were very limited. But those are the kinds of pressures there are.
And in fact, you can even see similar things right now. Take all of this business about Allan Bloom and that book everybodyâs been talking about, The Closing of the American Mind. Itâs this huge best-seller, I donât know if youâve bothered looking at itâitâs mind-bogglingly stupid. I read it once in the supermarket while my ⌠I hate to say it, while my wife was shopping I stood there and read the damn thing; it takes about fifteen minutes to read.
Man: You read two thousand words a minute?
I mean, âreadââyou know, sort of turn the pages to see if thereâs anything there that isnât totally stupid. But what that book is basically saying is that education ought to be set up like a variant of the Marine Corps, in which you just march the students through a canon of âgreat thoughtsâ that are picked out for everybody. So some group of people will say, âHere are the great thoughts, the great thoughts of Western civilization are in this corpus; you guys sit there and learn them, read them and learn them, and be able to repeat them.â Thatâs the kind of model Bloom is calling for.
Well, anybody whoâs ever thought about education or been involved in it, or even gone to school, knows that the effect of that is that students will end up knowing and understanding virtually nothing. It doesnât matter how great the thoughts are, if they are simply imposed on you from the outside and youâre forced through them step by step, after youâre done youâll have forgotten what they are. I mean, Iâm sure that every one of you has taken any number of courses in school in which you worked, and you did your homework, and you passed the exam, maybe even you got an âAââand a week later you couldnât even remember what the course was about. You only learn things and learn how to think if thereâs some purpose for learning, some motivation thatâs coming out of you somehow. In fact, all of the methodology in education isnât really much more than thatâgetting students to want to learn. Once they want to learn, theyâll do it.
But the point is that this model Bloom and all these other people are calling for is just a part of the whole method of imposing discipline through the schools, and of preventing people from learning how to think for themselves. So what you do is make students go through and sort of memorize a canon of what are called âGreat Books,â which you force on them, and then somehow great things are supposed to happen. Itâs a completely stupid form of education, but I think thatâs why itâs selected and supported, and why thereâs so much hysteria that itâs been questioned in past yearsâjust because itâs very functional to train people and discipline them in ways like this. The popularity of the Bloom thing, I would imagine, is mostly a reaction to the sort of liberating effect that the student movement of the 1960s and other challenges to the schools and universities began to have.
Woman: All of Allan Bloomâs âgreat thoughtsâ are by elite white males.
Yeah, okayâbut it wouldnât even matter if he had some different array of material, it really wouldnât matter. The idea that thereâs some array of âthe deep thoughts,â and we smart people will pick them out and you dumb guys will learn themâor memorize them at least, because you donât really learn them if theyâre just imposed on youâthatâs nonsense. If youâre serious about, say, reading Plato, itâs fine to read Platoâbut you try to figure out whatâs right, whatâs wrong, whatâs a better way of looking at it, why was he saying this when he should have been saying something else, what grotesque error of reasoning did he make over here, and so on and so forth. Thatâs the way you would read serious work, just like you would in the sciences. But youâre not supposed to read it that way here, youâre supposed to read it because itâs the truth, or itâs the great thoughts or something. And thatâs kind of like the worst form of theology.
The point is, it doesnât matter what you read, what matters is how you read it. Now, I donât mean comic books, but thereâs a lot of cultural wealth out there from all over the place, and to learn what it means to be culturally rich, you can explore almost anywhere: thereâs no fixed subset that is the basis of truth and understanding. I mean, you can read the âGood Books,â and memorize what they said, and forget them a week laterâif it doesnât mean anything to you personally, you might as well not have read them. And itâs very hard to know whatâs going to mean something to different people. But thereâs plenty of exciting literature around in the world, and thereâs absolutely no reason to believe that unless youâve read the Greeks and Dante and so on, youâve missed thingsâI mean, yeah, youâve missed things, but youâve also missed things if you havenât learned something about other cultural traditions too.
Just take a look at philosophy, for example, which is a field that I know something about: some of the best, most exciting, most active philosophers in the contemporary world, people whoâve made a real impact on the field, couldnât tell Plato from Aristotle, except for what they remember from some freshman course they once took. Now, thatâs not to say that you shouldnât read Plato and Aristotleâ sure, there are millions of things you should read; nobodyâs ever going to read more than a tiny fraction of the things you wished you knew. But just reading them does you no good: you only learn if the material is integrated into your own creative processes somehow, otherwise it just passes through your mind and disappears. And thereâs nothing valuable about thatâit has basically the effect of learning the catechism, or memorizing the Constitution or something like that.
Real education is about getting people involved in thinking for themselvesâand thatâs a tricky business to know how to do well, but clearly it requires that whatever it is youâre looking at has to somehow catch peopleâs interest and make them want to think, and make them want to pursue and explore. And just regurgitating âGood Booksâ is absolutely the worst way to do itâthatâs just a way of turning people into automata. You may call that an education if you want, but itâs really the opposite of an education, which why people like William Bennett [Reaganâs Secretary of Education] and Allan Bloom and these others are so much in favor of it.
Woman: Are you saying that the real purpose of the universities and the schools is just to indoctrinate peopleâand really not much else?
Well, Iâm not quite saying that. Like, I wouldnât say that no meaningful work takes place in schools, or that they only exist to provide manpower for the corporate system or something like thatâthese are very complex systems, after all. But the basic institutional role and function of the schools, and why theyâre supported, is to provide an ideological service: thereâs a real selection for obedience and conformity. And I think that process starts in kindergarten, actually.
Let me just tell you a personal story. My oldest, closest friend is a guy who came to the United States from Latvia when he was fifteen, fleeing from Hitler. He escaped to New York with his parents and went to George Washington High School, which in those days at least was the school for bright Jewish kids in New York City. And he once told me that the first thing that struck him about American schools was the fact that if he got a âCâ in a course, nobody cared, but if he came to school three minutes late he was sent to the principalâs officeâand that generalized. He realized that what it meant is, whatâs valued here is the ability to work on an assembly line, even if itâs an intellectual assembly line. The important thing is to be able to obey orders, and to do what youâre told, and to be where youâre supposed to be. The values are, youâre going to be a factory worker somewhereâmaybe theyâll call it a universityâbut youâre going to be following somebody elseâs orders, and just doing your work in some prescribed way. And what matters is discipline, not figuring things out for yourself, or understanding things that interest youâthose are kind of marginal: just make sure you meet the requirements of a factory.
Well, thatâs pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and they punish independence of mind. If you happen to be a little innovative, or maybe you forgot to come to school one day because you were reading a book or something, thatâs a tragedy, thatâs a crimeâbecause youâre not supposed to think, youâre supposed to obey, and just proceed through the material in whatever way they require.
And in fact, most of the people who make it through the education system and get into the elite universities are able to do it because theyâve been willing to obey a lot of stupid orders for years and yearsâthatâs the way I did it, for example. Like, youâre told by some stupid teacher, âDo this,â which you know makes no sense whatsoever, but you do it, and if you do it you get to the next rung, and then you obey the next order, and finally you work your way through and they give you letters: an awful lot of education is like that, from the very beginning. Some people go along with it because they figure, âOkay, Iâll do any stupid thing that asshole says because I want to get ahead,â others do it because theyâve internalized the valuesâ but after a while, those two things tend to get sort of blurred. But you do it, or else youâre out: you ask too many questions and youâre going to get in trouble.
Now, there are also people who donât go alongâand theyâre called âbehavior problems,â or âunmotivated,â or things like that. Well, you donât want to be too glib about itâthere are children with behavior problemsâbut a lot of them are just independent-minded, or donât like to conform, or just want to go their own way. And they get into trouble right from the very beginning, and are typically weeded out. I mean, Iâve taught young kids too, and the fact is there are always some who just donât take your word for it. And the very unfortunate tendency is to try to beat them down, because theyâre a pain in the neck. But what they ought to be is encouraged. Yeah: why take my word for it? Who the heck am I? Figure it out for yourself. Thatâs what real education ought to be about, in fact.
Actually, I happen to have been very lucky myself and gone to an experimental-progressive Deweyite school, from about the time that I was age one-and-a-half to twelve [John Dewey was an American philosopher and educational reformer]. And there it was done routinely: children were encouraged to challenge everything, and you sort of worked on your own, you were supposed to think things through for yourselfâit was a real experience. And it was quite a striking change when it ended and I had to go to the city high school, which was the pride of the city school system. It was the school for academically-oriented kids in Philadelphiaâand it was the dumbest, most ridiculous place Iâve ever been, it was like falling into a black hole or something. For one thing, it was extremely competitiveâbecause thatâs one of the best ways of controlling people. So everybody was ranked, and you always knew exactly where you were: are you third in the class, or maybe did you move down to fourth? All of this stuff is put into peopleâs heads in various ways in the schoolsâthat youâve got to beat down the person next to you, and just look after yourself. And there are all sorts of other things like that too.
But the point is, thereâs nothing necessary about them in education. I know, because I went to an alternative to itâso it can certainly be done. But given the external power structure of the society in which they function now, the institutional role of the schools for the most part is just to train people for obedience and conformity, and to make them controllable and indoctrinatedâand as long as the schools fulfill that role, theyâll be fine.
Now, of course, it doesnât work a hundred percentâso you do get some people all the way through who donât go along. And as I was saying, in the sciences at least, people have to be trained for creativity and disobedienceâbecause there is no other way you can do science. But in the humanities and social sciences, and in fields like journalism and economics and so on, thatâs much less trueâthere people have to be trained to be managers, and controllers, and to accept things, and not to question too much. So you really do get a very different kind of education. And people who break out of line are weeded out or beaten back in all kinds of ways.
I mean, itâs not very abstract: if youâre, say, a young person in college, or in journalism, or for that matter a fourth grader, and you have too much of an independent mind, there are a whole variety of devices that will be used to deflect you from that errorâand if you canât be controlled, to marginalize or just eliminate you. In fourth grade, youâre a âbehavior problem.â In college, you may be âirresponsible,â or âerratic,â or ânot the right kind of student.â If you make it to the faculty, youâll fail in whatâs sometimes called âcollegiality,â getting along with your colleagues. If youâre a young journalist and youâre pursuing stories that people at the managerial level above you understand, either intuitively or explicitly, are not to be pursued, you can be sent off to work at the Police desk, and advised that you donât have âproper standards of objectivity.â Thereâs a whole range of these techniques.
Now, we live in a free society, so you donât get sent to the gas chambers and they donât send the death squads after youâas is commonly done, and not far from here, say in Mexico. But there are nevertheless quite successful devices, both subtle and extreme, to insure that doctrinal correctness is not seriously infringed upon.
Subtler Methods of Control
Let me just start with some of the more subtle ways; Iâll give you an example. After I finished college, I went to this program at Harvard called the âSociety of Fellowsââwhich is kind of the elite finishing school, where they teach you to be a Harvard or Yale professor, and to drink the right wine, and say the right things, and so on and so forth. I mean, you had all of the resources of Harvard available to you and your only responsibility was to show up at a dinner once a week, so it was great for just doing your work if you wanted to. But the real point of the whole thing was socialization: teaching the right values.
For instance, I remember there was a lot of Anglophilia at Harvard at the timeâ you were supposed to wear British clothes, and pretend you spoke with a British accent, that sort of stuff. In fact, there were actually guys there who I thought were British, who had never been outside of the United States. If any of you have studied literature or history or something, you might recognize some of this, those are the places you usually find it. Well, somehow I managed to survive that, I donât know how exactlyâbut most didnât. And what I discovered is that a large part of education at the really elite institutions is simply refinement, teaching the social graces: what kind of clothes you should wear, how to drink port the right way, how to have polite conversation without talking about serious topics, but of course indicating that you could talk about serious topics if you were so vulgar as to actually do it, all kinds of things which an intellectual is supposed to know how to do. And that was really the main point of the program, I think.
Actually, there were much more important cases, tooâand theyâre even more revealing about the role of the elite schools. For example, the 1930s were a period of major labor strife and labor struggle in the U.S., and it was scaring the daylights out of the whole business community hereâbecause labor was finally winning the right to organize, and there were other legislative victories as well. And there were a lot of efforts to overcome this...