https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnRrzf6ZjM8
Noam Chomsky new talk
uh Justice Powell was a corporate lawyer corporate lobbyist appointed by richard nixon
to the court had published a very significant memorandum called the powell memorandum
which was private secret but discovered by uh journalists and leaked it was i think maybe 1971 or so
uh it was written to the chamber of commerce and it said uh business is not only losing its power and authority which is bad enough but the business world is being beaten down and destroyed uh we're losing everything the country has been taken over by wild radicals and i'm paraphrasing as
you can guess but this is the essence of the universities are run by uh herbert Marcuse and marxists
the ralph nader is destroying the economy by imposing all kind of crazy rules on business
we can barely survive under this uh hideous attack
and then he [Powell] said but this is a strange situation because we have the money they don't have the money we have the money so therefore we should organize get together use the fact that we control the
resources and make sure that business is back running the country of course this was a totally paranoid vision a business was always running the country but there was a slight decline as a result of the activism of the 60s and it's a little bit like a spoiled three-year-old who has all the toys but uh one of them's taken away from him so he has to have a tantrum because he doesn't have that one that's basically the powell memorandum it was very significant
it did was one of the factors that helped mobilize the business world to a major assault on the general society was one factor it's part of the transition from what was called a regimented uh liberalism
embedded liberalism the sort of new deal style of uh the early post-war period a period when
a conservative like dwight eisenhower would say that anyone who does not accept new deal
policies anyone who does not believe in the right of working people to organize freely doesn't belong within our political system you don't hear those words today even from so-called progressives it's a sign of how things have changed in the last 40 45 years of a concentrated class war
that's called neo-liberalism basically class war power memorandum was one of the factors that led to it
turning to education that was on the right-wing side let's turn to the liberal side which is often much more revealing about the same time a little after the powell memorandum a very important study was released which i urge you to read if you haven't done so it's called the crisis of democracy it was
the first publication of the trilateral commission trilateral commission is uh institute of uh liberal internationalists from the three major uh democratic centers united states europe and japan
get the tenor of the trilateral commission that virtually staffed the carter administration
that's the trilateral commission so what's the crisis of democracy that
they were concerned with
well it was kind of a more polite version of the power memorandum they said in the 1960s sectors of the population that are usually passive and quiescent started to enter the political arena to press their demands and that posed a created a crisis there was too much pressure on the state couldn't meet all these demands notice this who was the uh they were they went on to talk about what they called the special interests like uh young people old people women farmers workers in short the general population
there's one group they didn't talk about they represent the national interest they didn't say this i'm adding it the national interest is extreme wealth in the corporate sector the ones that powell was mobilizing but they no longer are pursuing their interests without interference so we have a crisis of democracy now we have to have what they called more moderation in democracy special interests should go back to passivity and quiescence and leave it to the better types like us to make sure that we take care of things for them
they talked about education they were concerned that the educational institutions the schools the universities the churches were not properly doing their job of indoctrination of the young
it's their phrase not mine they're not pursuing their job of indoctrination of the young effectively
that's why we have these see these people out in the streets demonstrating posing the war in vietnam
calling for women's rights uh racial justice and so on and causing all this turmoil this is what's called the time of troubles of the 1960s which greatly civilized the society
that's the liberal side of the spectrum well this is part of the intellectual background for the business assault that began with the late carter years uh escalated with reagan in the united states
thatcher in england what's called the neoliberal period which is in effect a period of bitter
class war the question raised the question mentioned that we seem to have abandoned the public
good it's not quite accurate we didn't abandon the public good the leadership of the country
responding to the power of concentrated wealth and corporate power they abandoned the public good
and we've seen it very clearly there are some
one way we see it is the destruction of the educational system the funding of schools the funding of colleges state challenges known very well here also all over the country uh the effort to shift the public education to privatize the public education system essentially to destroy it the leaders of this movement the neo-liberal economists like milton friedman who was the economic guru he was quite open and frank about it in these years
Jonathon Kozol:
they also put children into isolation rooms for minor misbehaviors i i saw one which was in a
coat closet in the hallway of the school the children are locked into these rooms and uh a child is locked in and uh you know the children scream and cry for their mother uh corporal punishment is also familiar in nearly half the states and where it's used far more common with black and latino children
the um in fact in case of girls it's four times as likely for black girls as it is for white girls
and i'll just add again that the issue of corporal punishment also went to the supreme court
also in the 1970s and um again it was justice powell who wrote the uh the majority opinion
in which he said that the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the eighth amendment
does not protect this does not does not grant children a um a right to be protected from
physical abuse in school
just leave it there for now but that's why i say it's it's not just physical segregation but it's an entire different it's a it's a it's a notably different level of autocracy
NOAM:
well the concept of privatization is part of the general system of class war goes back to shifting
the society from commitment to the public good to looking out for yourself things are privatized it's part of what jonathan was just describing with the managerial emphasis imposition of the managerial business model in the school setting that's part of driving the children to saying what matters is what's what i can get not what we can do not what we can do together it's what i can get for myself
extreme version of that is Ayn rand
but it's the basic neoliberal doctrine and it's not just in schools it goes back to the whole framework of
class war initiated roughly 40 45 years ago it was evident right away in the first comments by ronald reagan and margaret thatcher the two spokespersons for this uh movement if you look back at reagan's inaugural address you'll recall the famous line government is the problem not the solution
let's translate that what does that mean exactly govern government makes decisions but that's not the solution that's the problem well the decisions don't go away so if government doesn't make them
who does make them well it's shifted to the private sector decisions are shifted from government which
to some extent reflects and is influenced by the general population to the private sect concentrations of
private power which are completely unaccountable to the public their institutionally determined goal
is to enrich themselves
and if they didn't understand that they could go back to the leading economic figure of the movement milton again published a famous article in which the sole responsibility of a corporation is to maximize
profit which means also a paymen salary op stock options and so on to the management incorporating is actually a gift from the public it's a gift you don't want to take the gift you can have a partnership
but there's no responsibility that accrues to this gift
we take the gift from the public then we enrich ourselves that's reagan go to thatcher there is no society
just individuals cast into the marketplace actually she didn't really mean that that's not true for the rich there is ample complex society all sorts of extensive business associations chamber of commerce business roundtable american legislative exchange council similar things in england the government
largely under the control works for them and subsidizes them so for the rich there's a rich society but
for the rest no society
you're on your own subject to the ravages of the market well it's not a big it's not very difficult to predict 45 years ago where this was going to lead we now see that the prediction was verified in fact
we even have measures of it the rand corporation was respectable just did a study of the transfer of wealth i would say robbery but they're polite the transfer of wealth from the lower ninety percent of the
population to the top basically one percent or fraction of one percent their estimate is about 50 trillion
dollars of robbery of the working class in the middle class to the very top
meaning a fraction of one percent mostly uh during this 40-year period of class war that's only part of it
but imposing discipline in the schools the privatization uh the elimination of public uh participation is just private uh all of the discipline that jonathan talked about all fits together it's all a unit not a word about segregation uh
the first reaction immediate reaction to the supreme court decision banning segregation but in the 50s
the first reaction to it was privatization yes i had pioneer in virginia by policy initiated policies
to have publicly funded private schools which would enable a white population that didn't want to
be in mixed schools to leave the public school system and to go to publicly subsidized private segregated schools uh this was shot down by the supreme court in 1968
and it's at this point that milton friedman and other neo-liberal economists came into the game
and developed means to propose to develop the same ideas but without overt mention of race using other kinds of notions like markets or choice or parents rights or some other thing so re restructure it
so that you could in fact privatize the system at public expense
and again friedman to his credit was very frank about it he made it very clear that in his he
said that in his ideal society there would be no such thing as public education or taxes to pay for it that's right each person somehow to take care of the child's education
which is okay if you're very rich and privileged doesn't help a lot if you're one of that by now majority of the population who's getting by from paycheck to paycheck but that's the shape of class war
using the kinds of terminology.
you talked about private parent choice but not working together not working together for the common good that has to be sacrificed now probably thatcher was unaware of of it but in here talk about no society for the general population she was actually paraphrasing marx and karl marx mid-19th century
marx condemned the autocratic leaders of his day for dtrying to turn the population into what
he called a sack of potatoes atomized individuals
facing power alone no interaction among them no mutual aid no commitment to the common good
just you're out you're on your own somehow manage facing the ravages of market society unlike the rich who get plenty of protection uh that's what's called neoliberalism
okay now that the uh there are many devices for it many terminologies but it all translates essentially into this and it's a way of ensuring the indoctrination of the young from a very early age
making them passive quiescent follow orders uh take orders from above don't ask any
questions try to get by as best you can yes for that
NOAM:
well let me see if i can start but let's start with virginia uh now the victor in the governor's race his applause line the line that he used over and over to get support was as soon as he gets into office he's
going to ban critical race theory crt big applause and that's all over the country uh states are republican states surpassing laws banning crt all kinds of parents are being aroused into hysteria because of what crt is doing to their children and so on so what's crt well it's been pointed out over and over that
the people talking about it haven't the slightest idea what it is
but the people who are pushing it do know what they mean and they've said so you've perhaps seen
the uh description of what they're doing by the leader of the uh of this offensive uh uh christopher ruffo from the manhattan institute i don't want to paraphrase his word so i type them out because it's important to know just what's going on this is the leadership of the crt offensive
we have successfully frozen their brand critical race theory into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions we will eventually turn it toxic as we put all of the various cultural
insanities meaning anything about social justice under that brand category the goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory
we have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions
that are unpopular with americans he's talking from the far right by americans he means people
who are offended by calls for social justice for women's rights for the rights of minorities who want to pay attention to the reality of american history instead of just applauding ourselves for a magnificence
this is uh eileen you want to get your you want to get your instrument i think his first name is christopher rufo of the manhattan institute there are others who have already given lists of
rufo or ufo uh the lists of books that have to be banned
part of the virginia onslaught was banning tony morrison's beloved you recall that was a major issue
because it deals with slavery you're not supposed to make certain groups of people feel bad by
talking about the fact that virginia was the major slave state in fact you go back to the early 19th
century virginia was actually in favor of banning the slave trade supported britain when britain banned
the slave trade the reason was that virginia was producing so many slavess that they didn't want the competition they wanted to be able to fulfill the need of the expanding slave society by
ensuring that virginia would be able to produce the slaves for that no competition from slave traders
uh this is as you know the most vicious system of slavery that has ever existed in human history
nothing like it and a major part of the basis for our wealth cheap cotton was the
oil of the 19th century
but we're not supposed to talk about this this is not part of our history it makes uh we have to ban that we have to ban books like tony morrison's that talk about it uh we're not there but we might think
back i can think back to things of my childhood i'm old enough to remember the 1930s for example 1933 which i was old enough to remember when joseph goebbels led the massive book burning
in germany mass of books that were not were not sufficiently pro-german jewish books all of them
many other books by authors who were not sufficiently uh supportive of
the magnificence of german nationalism
we're not there but we're moving in that direction and if we allow that to continue this to continue we don't know how far it'll go so these these are this is what critical race theory is the way it's been
it's intended to be used to take the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with the right wing anything involving social justice anything involving women's rights black rites the hideous legacy of 400 years of racism uh the rights of people of color of uh disabled people anything any of these
terrible uh insanities as he calls it we've got to put them in the framework of cultural race theory
and that's how we will recodify it to annex the entire range of such cultural constructions
it's being done very consciously at least at the top level by people like roofo the one i'm quoting from the manhattan institute and taken over one form or another at various other levels and at the very
popular level probably reflects genuine feelings which you can sympathize with i don't want my child to go to school and be told that because of his white skin he's uh an oppressor and a traitor to humanity of course nothing like that is happening but you can conjure it up with effective propaganda
Jonathon Kozol:
NOAM:
some don't even have bank accountsmedium net worthof black families in the boston areaaccording to the federal reserveis an almost unbelievable eight dollars
a comparable figure forum white families is a quarter milliondollars
so umyou know i don't think this bodes wellfor thepublic good
NOAM:
i don't know the detailed answer but i suspect that they didn't need the power memorandum to
discover that idea i think the parallel memorandum was a important phenomenon which galvanized
efforts that were already underway in many circles to reverse the uh new deal programs actually business strongly had opposed them all the way and i'd finally gotten to the point where they were able
they felt powerful enough to reverse them and to return to a system of overwhelming dominance of the society by the very rich and the corporate sector
koch brothers had their own motivations should not just in education we should bear in mind that the
koch brothers are responsible for the one of the most dangerous developments in modern society in fact in human history namely the conversion of the republican party to its climate denialist party that's very important to recognize it's not built into the party
when john mccain was running for president in 2008 he had a mild environmental program as part of his platform republicans in congress were thinking of minor activities too late but nevertheless significant koch brothers went berserk they had worked for years to try to ensure that the republican republican party would be pure denialist
they launched that david cook recently died launched a huge juggernaut bribing senators threatening them with primaries a huge lobbying campaign uh astroturf organizations major effort turned the party to a climate denialist party well they still are we're seeing it right in front of our eyes that's one of the reasons why even mild efforts to try to deal something to deal with an impending catastrophe even mild efforts are blocked
in fact we're seeing it right now in washington and also in glasgow from the republican party that may doom us
that may doom human society unless it's reversed well that's one of the contributions of the koch energy system along with what they've done to the educational system this is unmitigated class war no no holds barred.
NOAM:
NOAM:
yeah in fact jonathan mentioned the teacher strike in chicago here in arizona tucson we had a very inspiring still ongoing teachers strike calling not only for better wages which teachers greatly deserve after this period of imposed austerity and destruction of education but also calling for decent schools for the children decent services kind of things that jonathan was mentioning got enormous public support
you know drive around tucson you saw signs supporting the teachers all over the place uh storefronts and so on managed to get the population to support the general population to support real reform effort and funding for desperately needed reforms in the schools blocked in the legislature have to keep
fighting for it
but that's a very exciting development right here and if i can take a leaf from jonathan's book and give a specific example it's one of many but one that i found my wife and i found very inspiring here in tucson
we were taken by a friend of eris sally morrison professor at the university to a school in south tucson
poor mostly mexican area the school in the past we were told had been the kind of place which jonathan was describing lots of students packed into a room the teacher's responsibility was basically to
make sure that uh you know they didn't hurt each other try to keep it quiet no possibility of doing anything the idea of going to college was non-existent discipline control that was the school
not the ONE we went to it we went to the school we were greeted by two young girls maybe 10 or 11 years old who were gonna take us through and show what was there they they took us to a very
elaborate uh vegetable garden and fish what you call [AQUACULTURE] it keeping fish they were they showed us how
they explained to us how they were integrated how they uh they explained the biology the chemistry of the integration of the fish population and fertilization turned out that the school by now didn't have what happened is that a couple of activists sally was one uh start moved into the school started a
small vegetable garden got the kids interested in taking care of it
built it up from there until it was a elaborate structure brought in science math no more discipline problems nobody goes to the principal's office kids are going to college this it's extended into the neighborhood many of much of the population is maybe a generation away from being uh
compassino's uh selling fruit in the neighborhood bringing parents in who have their own skills and
a background
it's changed the neighborhood and radically changed the schools in a very poor much underserved neighborhood there are things like that around the country you mentioned one other one which i
happen to know of in massachusetts another friend a very good uh serious uh scientist native scientist
got interested in a poor schools in a poor neighborhood
happens to be in cape cod not far from boston uh he was interested in working with children who are considered so impossible that they can't even keep them in a classroom they just form them out somewhere in the school put them somewhere because they're too incorrigible to teach so he started working with looking into them and working with them
first thing that he discovered is that they have a very low sugar level when they come to school these are kids who came from poor homes where they didn't have breakfast they traveled on a school bus for an hour they finally get into school very low glucose level uh they are out of their minds just don't know what to do with themselves
but they used to be put right into a an arithmetic class they couldn't handle it and they had to throw them out well what he did instead was give them candy gave him a couple pieces of candy gave him a half an hour to run around in the school yard get rid of their excess energy then come in and start some activities
not the kind of teaching that jonathan was describing which was ridiculed in the 18th century [Wilhelm von Humboldt] as being the most absurd imaginable point kind of education it was ridiculed as pouring water into a vessel and then letting it come out in tests absolutely worse kind of education regarded as a total absurdity in the 18th century it's now called teach to test that's what's imposed
not that kind of education so this friend of mine gave real education entry getting the kids interested in a
topic letting them pursue it helping them shape the way they were pursuing it won't go through the details but the end result is after a couple of years that these kids who were so incorrigible that
they couldn't be kept in classrooms are now outperforming the better schools in massachusetts
there's a lot of things that can be done there's a lot of resistance of this kind all over the country all over the world it has to be as jonathan said organized integrated working together on a broader scale but it
can be the way to bring about that peaceful revolution that jonathan was envisioning
NOAM:
it's it's a good way of trying to turn people into automata it's almost totally meaningless i mean uh
every one of us i'm sure has had the experience of taking a course which we had in the slightest interest
in at the last minute studying hard for the exam uh acing it you know doing fine uh two weeks later forgetting what to forgot what the course was about that's not learning furthermore what you learn is what you do yourself
i should say this was deeply understood in the 18th century it was understood that the purpose of education is to awaken and kindle the child's interests and concerns not to pour something into the child
you want to see what can a child or an adult achieve on their own there's no ranking i mean i could never make it into the math school of arts they don't have a test to show that you know i could never make it into a school for skilled mechanics because i screw up everything the minute i tried to do anything again you don't need us i just don't have that kind of talent and ability that doesn't need any standardized tests to show that if you let people explore if you encourage them stimulate them to
explore their own interests concerns they will sort themselves out find what they want to do without any ranking without any tests
i should maybe add that i happen to have some personal experience with this as a kid from actually
two years old till high school i was in a progressive school run by temple university which had a
progressive education department i never knew then i went off into the city's academic high school you know for kids who are aiming for college until i got to high school i never knew i was a good student
there was no such concept each kid was encouraged to do what they wouldn't do best in their own
way to flourish in their own manner
actually i was skipped a year in sixth grade nobody even paid any attention the only thing anyone noticed is i was the smallest kid in the class but nothing else you know there would we were a lot of joint common work work on common projects mutual aid mutual support very much encouraged to pursue my case my own interests other interests for others
i got into high school regimented high school uh testing and so on in my memory it's a kind of black hole i don't remember anything from high school my room except a couple of friends i met i remember
the elementary school vividly a lot of things i did and learned well
you don't need standardized testing prevents that actually i should say i was shocked with my own children in a good school in a boston suburb when they were in third grade talking about the smart kids and the dumb kids meaning the ones who had passed some tests and not some other test never had any such concept when i was in school it's a crazy idea
and it's imposed by this rigid system of trying to turn everyone into standardized robots who will not think for themselves who will accept orders who won't who will be properly indoctrinated and
not raise any problems for those who want to rule and run the world actually they themselves
get more progressive education
but so i think all of this just it's a highly it's the kind of system that was ridiculed in the 18th century
and the fact that we're and it's by no means necessary for ourselves school i mentioned in tucson
it's not at all like this and it's a school where children don't need standardized tests to get into college
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