Education- Biographical Sketch on Noam Chomsky and his views and impacts on education - Essay Example

Biography Noam Chomsky is one of America's foremost public intellectuals. Born in 1928 in Philadelphia, his father was a Jewish intellectual and wasknown for his book Hebrew: The Eternal Language (1958). His father provided the springboard for Chomsky's studies into mathematics and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, and later at Harvard University from 1951 to 1955. Chomsky concentrated his studies in the area of linguistics and today is known for his theories in generative linguistics.

He studied under the leading thinkers in his area, including the behavior empiricist and linguist Leonard Bloomfield and later under linguist Zellig Harris. After Harvard, Chomsky became known for his theories in linguistics with the publication his book Syntactic Structures in 1957. He continued to develop his theories with the publication of Lectures on Government and Binding in 1979 and Minimalist Program in 1995. Through his years Chomsky has been an influential political activist. His father was member of the activist union organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as a radical union during the time of President Franklin D.

Roosevelt and the Great Depression. As a youth Chomsky wrote a piece against the fascist movement in Spain. In his mature period he became known as well published essayist against the Vietnam War. Today Chomsky is wide known for his criticisms of the American corporate complex, the media, and the use of the military. In a recent article, Chomsky criticizes the principle of neoliberalism, the way in which developed countries invest in developing countries. He writes: "It is not a good term. The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy" (Chomsky, 2010).

Linguistic Theory Chomsky is a rationalist, which means he follows some of the principles of the Enlightenment philosophers such as Descartes and Leibniz as opposed to the empiricists Locke and Hume. Chomsky explained his rationalist position in his book Cartesian Linguistics in 1966. The rationalists are nativists, such that they believe the mind has some kinds of structured content. Their position is usually seen to oppose the empiricists who believed that such content came from the external world.

The position of the empiricists later led to today's behaviorists. Chomsky's basic position is that “. . . language has an innate biological basis” (Chomsky, 2003, p. 60). Addressing his Universal Grammar Theory (UGT), the language-user has inside the mind, innate components that provide transformational rules which are finite and describable. These rules give the user competence and the ability to generate structures or grammar from a deep structure that is semantic to a surface structure that is phonetic.

It is possible to say that the origin of language comes not from external sources, as the cognitive psychologists such as Piaget would say, but it comes from individuals themselves. This entails the poverty of the stimulus theory, that a child will already have the basic concepts of language inside her and is able to produce a rich linguistic exchange from little stimulus. Chomsky’s innovation was concentration on transformational grammar and the way in which it can invoke rules from a finite set.

These rules help enable the other two types of grammar structures, finite state grammar and phrase structure grammar generate sentences resulting in his Chomsky’s generative linguistics theory. Educational Theory Chomsky explains that most judgments on educational policy are determined by ideological commitment. But his observations are also derived from his linguistic theories. A system of education based on stimulus and response cannot explain how something is learned because this in a way presupposes what has already been learned.

Learning involves a combination of maturational processes that are innately determined, combined with interactions with the environment. Language involves innate components that result in free thought and expression and it is not acquired through training. These innate properties of mind are built on elaborate mental structures. There are two notions from Chomsky's linguistic theory that he wants to keep clear and separate, the rule making capacity of the innate structures and the "free creative use of language" (Chomksy, 2003, p. 169). Hence there are the rules and restraints on one side and the creative behavior on the other.

Learning by conditioning, the behavior model of stimulus and response, would entail merely using instruction and guidance with the purpose of producing mechanical exactness. For Chomsky one must be taught to learn so that imaginative and creative results may be produced. This involves "coming to grips with interesting, complex problems" which may not be related to incremental step by step learning but are at least challenging and attractive (Chomsky, 2003, p. 171). Hence schools should have rich and challenging learning environments.

Chomsky promotes the values of creativity and an independent freedom toward a humanistic view of education as opposed to the values of obedience and punctuality indoctrinated in future factory workers. Bibliography Bovitch, S. et al. (2011). The Educational theory of Noam Chomsky. Accessed at http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Chomsky.html Chomsky, N. (2010). Another world is possible. The New Statesman, June 2010, p. 28-30 Chomsky, N. and Otero, C.P. (2003). Chomsky on democracy & education.

New York: Routledge Falmer. Accessed at http://books.google.com/books?id=z8oJlTEoNUsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=chomsky+education&source=bl&ots=I6hs4t-tEk&sig=x0tpY5US8tjTnuOjQvJ22sXGclM&hl=en&ei=ljqFTe7ACbS80QHb_qzECA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q&f=false Leche, John. (1994). Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to postmodernity . Noam Chomsky, pp. 49-53 london: Routledge McGilvray, James. (2005). The Cambridge companion to Chomsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.