Noam Chomsky Interview, "Work, Learning and Freedom."
In this little interview, Chomsky assesses one of the main problems with society, and education today. The fact that people are not free to do the work that they want to, they are more or less doing what others want us to do.
"if an artisan produces a beautiful object on command we may admire what he did but we despise what he is -- he's a tool in the hands of others. If on the other hand he creates that same beautiful object out of his own will we admire it and him and he's fulfilling himself. It's kind of like study at school"
"Children for example are naturally curious -- they want to know about everything, they want to explore everything but that generally gets knocked out of their heads. They're put into disciplined structures, things are organised for them to act in certain ways so it tends to get beaten out of you. That's why school's boring."
"the social system is taking on a form in which finding out what you want to do is less and less of an option because your life is too structured, organised, controlled and disciplined."
"what happened in the 60s is that it was too democratic, there was a lot of popular activism, young people trying things out, experimentation -- it's called 'the time of troubles'. The 'troubles' are that it civilised the country: that's where you get civil rights, the women's movement, environmental concerns, opposition to aggression. And it's a much more civilised country as a result but that caused a lot of concern because people were getting out of control. People are supposed to be passive and apathetic and doing what they're told by the responsible people who are in control. That's elite ideology across the political spectrum -- from liberals to Leninists, it's essentially the same ideology: people are too stupid and ignorant to do things by themselves so for their own benefit we have to control them. And that very dominant ideology was breaking down in the 60s."
You can read the whole interview here: http://chomsky.info/interviews/20121224.htm
I have only included enough to whet your appetite for the entire thing!
