A. S.

Neill
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"Alexander Neill" redirects here. For other uses, see Alex Neil (disambiguation).

A. S. Neill

Born Alexander Sutherland Neill

17 October 1883

Forfar, Scotland

Died 23 September 1973 (aged 89)

Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England

Occupation Educator, author

Known for Founding Summerhill School, advocacy of personal

freedom for children, progressive education

Alexander Sutherland Neill (17 October 1883 23 September 1973) was a Scottish educator and
author known for his school, Summerhill, and its philosophies of freedom from adult coercion and
community self-governance. Neill was raised in Scotland, where he was a poor student but became
a schoolteacher. He taught in several schools across the country before attending the University of
Edinburgh from 1908 to 1912. He took two jobs in journalism before World War I, and taught at
Gretna Green Village School during the first year of the war, writing his first book, A Dominie's
Log (1915), as a diary of his life as headteacher. He joined the staff of a school in Dresden in 1921,
founding Summerhill upon his return to England in 1924. Summerhill received widespread renown in
the 1920s to 1930s and then in the 1960s to 1970s, due to progressive and counter-culture interest.
 Neill wrote 20 books in his lifetime, and his best seller was the 1960 Summerhill, a compilation of
four previous books about his school. The book was a common ancestor to activists in the
1960s free school movement.

Contents
[hide]

1Early life and career

2Summerhill School
3Philosophy
o 3.1Freedom, not license
o 3.2Self-governance
4Writings
o 4.1Summerhill
5Reception and legacy
6References
7External links

Early life and career[edit]

Alexander Sutherland Neill was born in Forfar,[1] Scotland, on 17 October 1883[2] to George and Mary
Neill.[3] He was their fourth son, one of the eight that survived of 13. He was raised in an
austere, Calvinist house with values of fear, guilt, and adult and divine authority, which he later
repudiated.[4] As a child, he was obedient, quiet, and uninterested in school.[3] His father was the
village dominie (Scottish schoolmaster) of Kingsmuir, near Forfar in eastern Scotland, and his
mother had been a teacher before her marriage. The village dominie held a position of prestige,
hierarchically beneath that of upper classes, doctors, and clergymen.[3] As typical of Scottish
methods at the time, the dominie controlled overcrowded classrooms with his tawse, as corporal
punishment. Neill feared his father, though he later claimed his father's imagination as a role model
for good teaching. Scholars have interpreted Neill's harsh childhood as the impetus for his later
philosophy, though his father was not shown to be harsher to Allie (as Neill was known[3]) than to
anyone else.[5]Neill's mother (ne Sutherland Sinclair[3]) held high standards for her family, and
demanded comportment to set the family apart from the townspeople.[6]
Children usually left the local school for Forfar Academy at the age of 14, and with his father a
teacher, Neill was especially expected to do so. Instead of wasting time and money,[7]Neill went to
work as a junior clerk in an Edinburgh gas meter factory. His parents took pity on his hatred of the
job, homesickness, and its low pay, and so Neill became an apprentice draper in Forfar. He found
the work stultifying and came home after a foot inflammation. Neill tried to take an examination that
would raise his pay grade, but could not bring himself to study. Now 15, his parents decided to make
him his father's assistant "pupil teacher".[1] The children liked Neill, though he received poor marks
from a school inspector. He taught a wider range of topics as his self-confidence grew, and he
developed an interest in mathematics from the Forfar Academy maths master. After four years, he
tried for teacher training college, but came nearly last in his class. He continued as a pupil teacher
in Bonnyrigg and Kingskettle, where he found the teachers' instruction militant and loathsome.[8] He
stayed in Kingskettle for three years, during which he learned Greek from a local priest, an
experience that increased his interest in academicism and sublimated his interest in priesthood into
a desire to attend university. After studying with the priest and the Forfar math master, Neill passed
his university entrance exam and preliminary teacher's certification.[9]
Neill became an assistant teacher at the Newport Public School in the wealthy Newport-on-Tay,
where he learned to dance and appreciate music and theatre. He also fell in love, and Margaret
became an obsession of his. He adopted progressive techniques at this school, and abandoned the
tawse for other forms of establishing discipline. Neill was friendly and relaxed with his pupils, and
described his two years there as "the happiest of [his] life thus far".[10] He finished his university
entrance exams and received his full teaching certification.[10]
In 1908, at the age of 25, Neill enrolled in the University of Edinburgh. He began as an agriculture
student, at his father's behest for a well-salaried career,[10] but switched to English literature by the
end of his first year.[11] Neill was excluded from cultural events due to his lack of funds, but
participated in sports, showed interest in the military, and wrote for The Student (the university
magazine) and the Glasgow Herald.[12] He became the student paper's editor during his last year,
which opened Neill to a world of culture. He also felt more confident to pursue women.[11] In his
editorials, Neill criticized the tedium of lectures and the emphasis on tests instead of critical
thinking.[11] He began to develop his thoughts about the futility of forced education, and the axiom
that all learning came from intrinsic interest.[13] Neill graduated in 1912 and began to edit
encyclopedias and similar reference books. He took a new job as art editor of the Piccadilly
Magazine, but its operations were halted by the 1914 onset of World War I,[14] in which he served as
an officer in the army. He returned to Scotland, working as a headteacher at Gretna Green School,
during the first year of the war. The diary he wrote for this year was published as a book, A
Dominie's Log, in November 1915 by Herbert Jenkins, and received good reviews for its humour and
narrative style.
Neill was invited to join a progressive school in Dresden in 1921. The school moved to a monastery
near Vienna in 1923, where the townspeople did not receive it well. He moved to England in 1924
and started Summerhill in Lyme Regis, where the name came from the estate.[15]

Summerhill School[edit]
Main article: Summerhill School

Summerhill, 1993

The school picked up some notoriety and the average enrolment was 40 pupils. In 1927, it moved
to Leiston, where it remained.[15]
Neill credited Summerhill's environment instead of himself for the school's reformatory
successes.[4] Neill used to offer psychoanalytic therapy ("private lessons", since he was not a
licensed therapist[16]) for children who arrived as delinquents from other institutions, but later found
love, affirmation, and freedom to be a better cure.[4]
The Summerhill classroom was popularly assumed to reflect Neill's anti-authoritarian beliefs, though
their classes were traditional in practice.[17] Neill did not show outward interest in classroom
pedagogy, and was mainly interested in student happiness.[18] He did not consider lesson quality
important,[18] and thus there were no distinctive Summerhillian classroom methods.[19] Leonard Waks
wrote that, like Homer Lane, Neill thought all teaching should follow student interest, and that
teaching method did not matter much once student interest was apparent.[19][20] In a review of an
algebra lesson taught by Neill as recounted through Herb Snitzer's Living at Summerhill, Richard
Bailey described Neill's teaching technique as "simply awful" for his lack of student engagement,
inarticulate explanations, and insults directed at students.[21] Bailey criticized Neill's absolution of
responsibility for his pupils' academic performance, and his view that charismatic instruction was a
form of persuasion that weakened child autonomy.[22] Ronald Swartz referred to Neill's method as
Socratic, about which Bailey disagreed.[17]
Neill was not religious and erred on the side of anti-religious. Despite his rejection of God, he would
flippantly remark that Summerhill was the only Christian school in England when comparing its
philosophy to that of Christ. Neill saw the doctrine of "original sin" as a means of control and sought
a world ruled by love and self-examination.[23] Like Freud, he felt that children denied sexuality in their
youth begot adults similarly fearful of their own sexuality.[24]

Philosophy[edit]
See also: Philosophy of Summerhill School
Neill felt that children (and human nature) were innately good, and that children became virtuous and
just naturally when allowed to grow without adult imposition of morality.[25]Children did not need to be
coaxed or goaded into desirable behavior, as their natural state was satisfactory and their natural
inclinations "in no way immoral".[26] If left alone, children would become self-regulating, reasonable
and ethical adults.[27] Together with Homer Lane, Neill supported personal freedoms for children to
live as they please without adult interference, and called this position "on the side of the
child".[25] Neill's practice can be summarized as providing children with space, time, and
empowerment for personal exploration and with freedom from adult fear and coercion.[28]
The aim of life, to Neill, was "to find happiness, which means to find interest."[29] Likewise, the
purpose of Neill's education was to be happy and interested in life,[30] and children needed complete
freedom to find their interests.[29] Neill considered happiness an innate characteristic that deteriorated
if children were denied personal freedom. Such unhappiness led to repressed and psychologically
disordered adults.[30] He blamed a "sick and unhappy" society for widespread unhappiness.[31] Neill
claimed that society harboured fears of life, children and emotions that were continually bequeathed
to the next generation. He felt that children turned to self-hate and internal hostility when denied an
outlet for expression in adult systems of emotional regulation and manipulation. Likewise, children
taught to withhold their sexuality would see such feelings negatively, which would fuel disdain for
self. Neill thought that calls for obedience quenched the natural needs of children. Moreover, their
needs could not be fulfilled by adults or a society that simultaneously prolonged their unhappiness,
although perhaps a school like Summerhill could help.[24]
Neill ... believed that the best thing teachers could do was to leave children alone to develop naturally.

Denis Lawton, Education and Social Justice, p. 78[32]

As for "interest", Neill felt it came organically and spontaneously as a prerequisite for learning. Neill
considered forced instruction (without pupil interest) a destructive waste of time.[33] Earlier in his
career, he wrote that human interest releases emotions that otherwise congests a person.[29] He
added that education's role is to facilitate that release, with Summerhill actualizing this
concept.[34] Neill never defines "true interest" and does not account for the social influences on child
interest.[35] Bailey felt that this omission discredits Neill's position against external influence. Bailey
also cited "adaptive preferences" literature, where human interests change based on their
surroundings and circumstances, as evidence of how intrinsic interest can be externally
influenced.[36] Bailey also dubbed Neill's views on intelligence as "innatist" and fatalist that children
had naturally set capabilities and limitations.[37] Neill saw contemporary interventionist practice as
doing harm by emphasizing conformity and stifling children's natural drive to do as they please.[16]
Neill did not identify with the progressive educators of his time.[38] They advocated far gentler
authority in child-rearing, which Neill considered more insidious than overt authority and altogether
unnecessary.[39] All imposed authority, even if meant well, was unjustified.[40] He felt that adults
asserted authority for its feelings of power, and that this motive was a type of repression.[40] In Neill's
philosophy, the goal was maintenance of happiness through avoidance of repressive habits from
society.[40] Despite Neill's common citation as a leader within progressive education, his ideas were
considerably more radical, and he was called an extremist by other radicals.[38] Unlike Friedrich
Frbel, Neill did not view children with romantic innocence. He saw their animalistic traits as qualities
to be "outgrown with time and freedom".[41] Neill also considered his role in providing emotional
support.[16]
Emotional education trumped intellectual needs, in Neill's eyes, and he was associated with anti-
intellectualism.[42] In actuality, he had a personal interest in scholarship and used his autobiography
near the end of his life to profess the necessity of both emotion and intellect in education,[43] though
he often took jabs at what he saw to be education's overemphasis on book-learning.[44] Neill felt that
an emotional education freed the intellect to follow what it pleased, and that children required an
emotional education to keep up with their own gradual developmental needs. This education usually
entailed copious amounts of play and distance from the adult anxieties of work and ambition.[45] Neill
was influenced by Sigmund Freud's theories of psychoanalysis, Homer Lane's interpretation of
Freud, and later, by the unorthodox sexual theories of Wilhelm Reich. The reverence for Reich
appears in the abundant correspondence between them.[46] Neill accepted Reich's claims
about cosmic energy and his utopian ideas on human sexuality. In Reich's view, "discharge" of
sexual energy leads to happiness, whereas lack of such discharge leads to unhappiness and
"rigidity". Although not a trained therapist, Neill gave psychoanalytic private lessons to individual
children, designed to unblock impasses in their inner energies. Neill also offered body massage, as
suggested by Reich. Neill later found that freedom cured better than this therapy.[16]
Richard Bailey placed Neill alongside William Godwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire,
and Robert Owen in Thomas Sowell's "unconstrained vision" tradition, where human potential is
naturally unlimited and human development is dependent on environment and not
incentives.[47] Bailey also compared Neill's thoughts on coercion to those of Godwin, who felt that
regulation through reward and punishment stunted growth. Neill saw moral instruction as a wedge
between natural instinct and conformity and thought children were best off without it.[25] Neill trusted
the natural inclinations of children and saw no need to externally and purposefully influence their
behavior.[26] Denis Lawton likened Neill's ideas to Rousseauan "negative education", where children
discover for themselves instead of receiving instruction.[32] Neill is commonly associated with
Rousseau for their similar thoughts on human nature, although Neill claimed to not have read
Rousseau's Emile, or On Education until near the end of his life.[48] John Cleverley and D. C. Phillips
declared Neill "the most notable figure in the Rousseauean tradition", and Frank Flanagan credited
Neill with actualizing what Rousseau envisioned.[4] Marc-Alexandre Prud-homme and Giuliano Reis
found the comparison "inappropriate" on the basis of Rousseau's views on gender.[49]
Peter Hobson found Neill's philosophy of education incomplete, oversimplified, without a "coherent
theory of knowledge", and too dependent on his experience instead of philosophical
position.[50][51] When presented with Hobson's position, four experts on Neill and Summerhill
considered his assertions "irrelevant".[51] Joel Spring likened Neill's views on the family to that
of Mary Wollstonecraft, in that the parents would share power equally.[52]
Freedom, not license[edit]
See also: Freedom versus license
When Neill said children should be free, he did not mean complete freedom, but freedom without
licensethat everyone can do as they like unless such action encroaches upon another's
freedom.[53] As such, adults could and should protect children from danger, but not trample their self-
regulation.[54] Neill emphasized that adult removal from child affairs was distinct from disregard for
their security.[55] He felt that children met their own limits naturally.[16] Neill believed in equal rights
between parents and children, and that undesirable "disciplined" or "spoiled" homes were created
when those rights were imbalanced.[56] He felt it unnecessary to fulfil all of childhood's requests and
had great disdain for spoiled children.[57] Summerhill children were naturally restricted by the school's
limited teaching expertise and low funds.[58]
Bailey wrote that Neill did not have full faith in self-regulation due to his emphasis on the necessity of
making specific environments for children.[55] Robin Barrow argued that Neill's idea of self-regulation
was contradictory, when its intent was, more simply, the extent to which children need to abide by
external restraints.[55] Bailey added that children cannot know the extent to which dull and unknown
subjects can be exciting without guidance.[59] He felt that Neill's belief in children's innate and realistic
wisdom did not accommodate human characteristics "such as error, prejudice, and ignorance",
ascribed genius-level intelligence to children, and did not consider social aspects in child decision-
making.[60]
Self-governance[edit]
Self-governance was a central idea to Summerhill, and is perhaps its "most fundamental
feature".[56] Summerhill held a weekly general meeting that decided the school's rules and settled
school disputes, where every member of the communitystaff and student alikehad a single
vote.[61] Almost everyone in the school attended the meeting, and children always held the
majority.[61] Meetings were managed by an elected Chairperson.[61] At times, the school had over 200
rules.[62]
Summerhill sought to produce individualists conscious of their surrounding social order, and Neill
chose the self-governance of Homer Lane's Little Commonwealth for the basis of that lesson.[63] The
general meeting replaced teacher authority with communal control, which freed teachers from their
roles as disciplinarians and instructed children in the role of democratic participation and the role of
rules.[64] Additionally, reports of teacherstudent disputes were rare.[65] Neill felt that the community's
authority never created resentment in those subject to sanctions.[61] Sven Muller contended that the
meeting was more useful than discipline for creating civic-minded citizens.[64] An ex-pupil recalled
some of the wild ideas Neill would propose at the meeting, and while the students would vote him
down, she later recounted how the exercise was also intended as a lesson for the staff on the power
of the meeting and communal authority.[66] Neill considered self-governance "the most valuable asset
in education and life" and the general meeting "more important than all the textbooks in the world".[64]
On occasion, Neill exercised unilateral decision-making as the owner of the school, despite his
emphasis on the authority figure-less nature of the school.[65] Instances include when he once made
a decision after the group's discussion protracted, and when he once asserted himself
dictator.[65] Ultimately, the school's freedom was Neill's to structure.[65]

Writings[edit]
Neill wrote 20 books in his lifetime.[67] His style was simple and friendly, unlike didactic literature from
the era.[68] His topics included the balance of authority and the thoughtsfeelings relationship.[69]
Summerhill[edit]
Main article: Summerhill (book)
The 1960 release of Summerhill catapulted Neill into the public view. Richard Bailey described its
result as "an American cult" of Summerhillian schools and their support organizations. The book sold
well and made Neill into a figurehead of new interest in education. Bailey added that the
unpretentious book's message was easier to impart than Deweyan thought, and that its release
inspired Neill's education critic contemporaries as to the viability of their ideas.[70]

Reception and legacy[edit]

Critics regard Neill's influence and importance with mixed opinion.[71] Supporters counted Neill
amongst the world's most influential educationists.[71] UNESCO listed Neill within its 100 most
important educationists worldwide. The Times Educational Supplement listed him in its 12 most
important British educationists of the millennium. Herb Kohl declared Neill "one of the greatest
democratic educators of the last century" in 2005. Academics and teachers cited Summerhill as the
common ancestor for free schools, and Neill was poised to become a public figure during
Summerhill's heyday in the 1970s.[71] Its detractors do not classify Summerhill as a school. Max
Rafferty called Summerhill "a caricature of education" and felt threatened by the implications of "the
spread of Neill's hedonism to the majority of the next generation".[72] Others criticized Neill for his
progressive ideals despite agreement on his critique of traditional schools, and bemoaned his
"outdated radicalism" and "dangerously enthusiastic following in teaching training institutions".[73]
Richard Bailey wrote that Summerhill received most of its public attention in the 1920s to 1930s and
in the 1960s to 1970s, which were milieux of social change (progressivism and the counterculture,
respectively). Neill was known in British education circles by the 1920s and was "probably Britain's
first educational celebrity" in the 1930s, though he was not driven by his reception. Journal reviews
called Neill "the most popular writer on education today" and said of his works, "Nearly all the more
alive and up-to-date teachers in Britain have read and argued about his notions". He was known via
his books as a figure in the new psychoanalysis.[68] The accessible 1960 Summerhill crowned Neill
the leader of a new avant-garde education and he became symbolic of the rebel decade.[69]
Neill is generally associated with democratic schools as a leader in its tradition.[74] H. A. T. Child
associated Summerhill with the Bedales School, Alfred the Great, and Child's Dartington Hall
School, and David Gribble wrote about schools around the world following Neill's teachings in
1998.[citation needed] Timothy Gray linked the release of Summerhill with the rise of writers Herb
Kohl, Jonathan Kozol, Neil Postman, and Ivan Illich. Scholars debate whether Neill fits best in a
progressive or more radical tradition.[74]
Few of Neill's acolytes continued his work after his death.[74] His family maintained Summerhill, with
Neill's daughter as its headmaster as of 2013. Others influenced by Neill included John
Aitkenhead, Michael Duane, and R. F. Mackenzie. Richard Bailey wrote that Maria
Montessori and Rudolf Steiner's followers were more evangelical in character, and that Neill deterred
would-be devotees. He specifically discouraged American association with his school in both name
and likeness.[74] By 1972, Ray Hemmings wrote that Neill's ideas were misinterpreted in the hands of
other schools.[68] Hemmings found Neill to have moderate influence on state schools in areas such as
teacherstudent interactions. Neill's views on sexuality and non-compulsory lessons did not have
widespread acceptance.[68] Herb Snitzer said that Neill "influenced thousand of teachers".
Both George Dennison and Bailey felt Neill's influence to not be easily measurable, with Dennison
adding that non-Summerhill schools continue to adopt Neillian thought.[75]
Neill was awarded three honorary degrees: a master's and two honorary doctorates.[43] One
doctorate was from the Newcastle University in 1966.[43] He was reportedly very proud of the
awards.[43]

Idealism is when you envision or see things in an ideal or perfect manner. Realism, on the
other hand, tends toward a more pragmatic and actual view of a situation. ... In philosophy,
when discussing the issues of perception, idealism is a theory that states that our reality is
shaped by our thoughts and ideas.
Anna Freud
A child psychoanalyst and theorist who identified defense mechanisms.

Ego Defense Mechanism

Are unconscious strategies used by the ego to minimize distress caused by the
conflicting demands of the id and superego.

Mature Ego
Typically meets the conflicting demands of the id and superego through a process of
acknowledging the demands and developing a way of meeting these challenges as
much as possible.

Immature Ego
Is apt to resort to the frequent use of defense mechanisms, which involves self-
deception and deception to others.

Defense Mechanisms identified by Anna Freud:

Compensation, Conversation, Denial, Displacement, Identification, Isolation of Affect,
Intellectualization, Projection, Rationalization, Reaction Formation, Regression,
Repression, Sublimation, Substitution, Undoing.

Defense Mechanisms not identified by Anna Freud:

Acting Out, affiliation, Aim Inhibition, Altruism, Anticipation, Autistic Fantasy, Avoidance,
Deflection, Devaluation, Dissociation, Fixation, Help-rejecting Complaining, Humor,
Idealization, Imitation, Incorporation, Introjection, Isolation, Omnipotence, Passive
aggression, Projective Identification, Resistance, Restitution, Self-Assertion,
Somatization, Splitting, Suppression, Symbolization.

Compensation
Is the seeking of success in one area of life as a substitution for success in another area
of life that has been limited because of personal or environmental barriers.
Example of Compensation
A disabled athlete becoming a computer expert.

Conversion
Is the transformation of anxiety into a physical dysfunction, such as paralysis or
blindness, which does not have a physiological basis.

Example of Conversion
An individual who was abused and became blind as a defense against further abuse.

Denial
Is a refusal to acknowledge an aspect of reality, including one's experience, because to
do so would result in overwhelming anxiety.
Example of Denial
An individual who manifested symptoms of cancer but refused to accept the diagnosis
because he or she could not face the truth.

Displacement
Is a shifting of negative feelings one has about a person or situation onto a different
person or situation.

Example of Displacement
A husband who was angry with his boss and then berated his wife when he came
home.

Identification
A mechanism by which anxiety is handled through identifying with a person or thing
producing the anxiety, such as "identifying with a kidnapper."

Isolation of Affect
Is a mechanism by which painful feelings are separated from the incident that triggered
them initially.

Example of Isolation of Affect

An individual who was in a serious automobile accident but expressed no emotion
regarding the accident.

Intellectualization
Is a mechanism by which reasoning is used to block difficult feelings and it involves
removing one's emotions from a stressful event.

Example of Intellectualization
A wife who refers to her husband's heart attack in medical terminology rather than
expressing her emotions.

Projection
One's own characteristics are denied and instead seen as being characteristics of
someone else.

Example of Projection
An individual who criticizes her mother for being a perfectionist when she herself is
extremely compulsive about having every detail correct.

Rationalization
Is a mechanism by which a person substitutes a more socially acceptable, logical
reason for an action rather than identifying the real motivation.

Example of Rationalization
An individual who states that she is unable to attend a family outing because she has a
work project that she has to complete, when she doesn't really want to attend.
Reaction Formation
Is adopting a behavior that is the antithesis of the instinctual urge.

Example of Reaction Formation

An individual who expresses support for a particular racial group when the individual
actually has strong negative feelings towards the group.

Regression
Is reverting to more primitive mode of coping associated with earlier and safer
developmental periods.

Example of Regression
An individual who, when upset, clutches her blanket for security.

Repression
Is the unconscious pushing of anxiety-producing thoughts and issues out of the
conscious and into the unconscious.

Example of Repression
An individual who cannot remember being sexually abused as a child because she has
pushed those memories into her unconscious. The memories may not be recalled
except through psychoanalysis or hypnosis.

Sublimation
Is a mechanism by which intolerable drives or desires are diverted into activities that are
acceptable.

Example of Sublimation
An individual who has strong sexual urges and redirects those urges into sports
activities.

Substitution
Is a mechanism by which a person replaces an unacceptable goal with an acceptable
one.

Example of Substitution
An individual who wanted to be a tattoo artist but decided instead to become an oil
painter instead because of pressure by his family.

Undoing
Is a mechanism by which an individual engages in a repetitious ritual in an attempt to
reverse an unacceptable action previously taken.

Example of Undoing
An individual who ritualistically washes his hands in attempt to symbolically wash off
blood that was on his hands when he got into a fight.
Thorndikes Law of Effect

Law of effect is the belief that a pleasing after-effect strengthens the action that produced it.[8]
The law of effect was published by Edward Thorndike in 1905 and states that when an S-R
association is established in instrumental conditioning between the instrumental response and the
contextual stimuli that are present, the response is reinforced and the S-R association holds the sole
responsibility for the occurrence of that behavior. Simply put, this means that once the stimulus and
response are associated, the response is likely to occur without the stimulus being present. It holds
that responses that produce a satisfying or pleasant state of affairs in a particular situation are more
likely to occur again in a similar situation. Conversely, responses that produce a discomforting,
annoying or unpleasant effect are less likely to occur again in the situation.
Psychologists have been interested in the factors that are important in behavior change and control
since psychology emerged as a discipline. One of the first principles associated with learning and
behavior was the Law of Effect, which states that behaviors that lead to satisfying outcomes are
likely to be repeated, whereas behaviors that lead to undesired outcomes are less likely to recur.[9]

Thorndike's Puzzle-Box. The graph demonstrates the general decreasing trend of the cat's response times with
each successive trial

Thorndike emphasized the importance of the situation in eliciting a response; the cat would not go
about making the lever-pressing movement if it was not in the puzzle box but was merely in a place
where the response had never been reinforced. The situation involves not just the cat's location but
also the stimuli it is exposed to, for example, the hunger and the desire for freedom. The cat
recognizes the inside of the box, the bars, and the lever and remembers what it needs to do to
produce the correct response. This shows that learning and the law of effect are context-specific.
In an influential paper, R. J. Herrnstein (1970)[10] proposed a quantitative relationship between
response rate (B) and reinforcement rate (Rf):
B = k Rf / (Rf0 + Rf)
where k and Rf0 are constants. Herrnstein proposed that this formula, which he derived from
the matching law he had observed in studies of concurrent schedules of reinforcement, should be
regarded as a quantification of the law of effect. While the qualitative law of effect may be a
tautology, this quantitative version is not.

Example[edit]
An example is often portrayed in drug addiction. When a person uses a substance for the first time
and receives a positive outcome, they are likely to repeat the behavior due to the reinforcing
consequence. Over time, the person's nervous system will also develop a tolerance to the drug.
Thus only by increasing dosage of the drug will provide the same satisfaction, making it dangerous
for the user.[11]
Thorndike's Law of Effect can be compared to Darwin's theory of natural selection in which
successful organisms are more likely to prosper and survive to pass on their genes to the next
generation, while the weaker, unsuccessful organisms are gradually replaced and "stamped out". It
can be said that the environment selects the "fittest" behavior for a situation, stamping out any
unsuccessful behaviors, in the same way it selects the "fittest" individuals of a species. In an
experiment that Thorndike conducted, he placed a hungry cat inside a "puzzle box", where the
animal could only escape and reach the food once it could operate the latch of the door. At first the
cats would scratch and claw in order to find a way out, then by chance / accident, the cat would
activate the latch to open the door. On successive trials, the behaviour of the animal would become
more habitual, to a point where the animal would operate without hesitation. The occurrence of the
favourable outcome, reaching the food source, only strengthens the response that it produces.
Colwill and Rescorla for example made all rats complete the goal of getting food pellets and liquid
sucrose in consistent sessions on identical variable-interval schedules.[12]

Noam Chomsky
AMERICAN LINGUIST
WRITTEN BY:
James A. McGilvray
See Article History

Alternative Title: Avram Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky
AMERICAN LINGUIST
 ALSO KNOWN AS

Avram Noam Chomsky

BORN

December 7, 1928 (age 88)

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

NOTABLE WORKS

Syntactic Structures
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory

SUBJECTS OF STUDY

language
philosophy of language
rationalism
innate idea
transformational grammar

VIEW BIOGRAPHIES RELATED TOCATEGORIES

linguistics
philosophy
DATES
December 7
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Noam Chomsky, in full Avram Noam Chomsky (born Dec. 7,
1928, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.), American theoretical linguist whose work from
the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a
uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Through his
contributions to linguistics and related fields, including cognitive
psychology and the philosophies of mind and language, Chomsky helped to
initiate and sustain what came to be known as the cognitive revolution.
Chomsky also gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his
analyses of the pernicious influence of economic elites on U.S. domestic
politics, foreign policy, and intellectual culture.

Life And Basic Ideas

Born into a middle-class Jewish family, Chomsky attended an experimental
elementary school in which he was encouraged to develop his own interests
and talents through self-directed learning. When he was 10 years old, he
wrote an editorial for his school newspaper lamenting the fall of Barcelona in
the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism in Europe. His research then
and during the next few years was thorough enough to serve decades later as
the basis of Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (1969), Chomskys critical
review of a study of the period by the historian Gabriel Jackson.
When he was 13 years old, Chomsky began taking trips by himself to New
York City, where he found books for his voracious reading habit and made
contact with a thriving working-class Jewish intellectual community.
Discussion enriched and confirmed the beliefs that would underlie his political
views throughout his life: that all people are capable of comprehending
political and economic issues and making their own decisions on that basis;
that all people need and derive satisfaction from acting freely and creatively
and from associating with others; and that authoritywhether political,
economic, or religiousthat cannot meet a strong test of rational justification
is illegitimate. According to Chomskys anarchosyndicalism, or
libertarian socialism, the best form of political organization is one in which all
people have a maximal opportunity to engage in cooperativeactivity with
others and to take part in all decisions of the community that affect them.
In 1945, at the age of 16, Chomsky entered the University of Pennsylvania but
found little to interest him. After two years he considered leaving the university
to pursue his political interests, perhaps by living on a kibbutz. He changed his
mind, however, after meeting the linguist Zellig S. Harris, one of the American
founders of structural linguistics, whose political convictions were similar to
Chomskys. Chomsky took graduate courses with Harris and, at Harriss
recommendation, studied philosophy with Nelson Goodman and Nathan
Salmon and mathematics with Nathan Fine, who was then teaching
at Harvard University. In his 1951 masters thesis, The Morphophonemics of
Modern Hebrew, and especially in The Logical Structure of Linguistic
Theory (LSLT), written while he was a junior fellow at Harvard (195155) and
 published in part in 1975, Chomsky adopted aspects of Harriss approach to
the study of language and of Goodmans views on formal systems and
the philosophy of science and transformed them into something novel.
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 Whereas Goodman assumed that the mind at birth is largely a tabula
rasa (blank slate) and that language learning in children is essentially a
conditioned response to linguistic stimuli, Chomsky held that the basic
principles of all languages, as well as the basic range of concepts they are
used to express, are innately represented in the human mind and that
language learning consists of the unconscious construction of a grammar from
these principles in accordance with cues drawn from the childs
linguistic environment. Whereas Harris thought of the study of language as
the taxonomic classification of data, Chomsky held that it is the discovery,
through the application of formal systems, of the innate principles that make
possible the swift acquisition of language by children and the ordinary use of
language by children and adults alike. And whereas Goodman believed that
linguistic behaviour is regular and caused (in the sense of being a specific
response to specific stimuli), Chomsky argued that it is incited by
social contextand discourse context but essentially uncausedenabled by a
distinct set of innate principles but innovative, or creative. It is for this reason
that Chomsky believed that it is unlikely that there will ever be a full-
fledged science of linguistic behaviour. As in the view of the 17th-century
French philosopher Rne Descartes, according to Chomsky, the use of
language is due to a creative principle, not a causal one.
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Harris ignored Chomskys work, and Goodmanwhen he realized that

Chomsky would not accept his behaviourismdenounced it. Their reactions,
with some variations, were shared by a large majority of linguists,
philosophers, and psychologists. Although some linguists and psychologists
eventually came to accept Chomskys basic assumptions regarding language
and the mind, most philosophers continued to resist them.

TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

New or Old: Fact or Fiction?

Chomsky received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in

1955 after submitting one chapter of LSLT as a doctoral dissertation
(Transformational Analysis). In 1956 he was appointed by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology(MIT) to a teaching position that required him to spend
half his time on a machine translation project, though he was openly skeptical
of its prospects for success (he told the director of the translation laboratory
that the project was of no intellectual interest and was also pointless).
Impressed with his book Syntactic Structures (1957), a revised version of a
series of lectures he gave to MIT undergraduates, the university asked
Chomsky and his colleague Morris Halle to establish a new graduate program
in linguistics, which soon attracted several outstanding scholars, including
Robert Lees, Jerry Fodor, Jerold Katz, and Paul Postal.
Chomskys 1959 review of Verbal Behavior, by B.F. Skinner, the dean of
American behaviourism, came to be regarded as the definitive refutation of
behaviourist accounts of language learning. Starting in the mid-1960s, with
the publication of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) and Cartesian
Linguistics (1966), Chomskys approach to the study of language and mind
gained wider acceptance within linguistics, though there were many
theoretical variations within the paradigm. Chomsky was appointed full
professor at MIT in 1961, Ferrari P. Ward Professor of Modern Languages
and Linguistics in 1966, and Institute Professor in 1976. He retired as
professor emeritus in 2002.
Linguistics
Platos problem
A fundamental insight of philosophical rationalism is that human creativity
crucially depends on an innate system of concept generation and
combination. According to Chomsky, children display ordinary creativity
appropriate and innovative use of complexes of conceptsfrom virtually their
first words. With language, they bring to bear thousands of rich
and articulate concepts when they play, invent, and speak to and understand
each other. They seem to know much more than they have been taughtor
even could be taught. Such knowledge, therefore, must be innate in some
sense. To say it is innate, however, is not to say that the child is conscious of
it or even that it exists, fully formed, at birth. It is only to say that it is produced
by the childs system of concept generation and combination, in accordance
with the systems courses of biological and physical development, upon their
exposure to certain kinds of environmental input.
 CONNECT WITH BRITANNICA

It has frequently been observed that children acquire both concepts and
language with amazing facility and speed, despite the paucity or even
absence of meaningful evidence and instruction in their early years.
The inference to the conclusion that much of what they acquire must be innate
is known as the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. Specifying
precisely what children acquire and how they acquire it are aspects of what
Chomsky called in LSLT the fundamental problem of linguistics. In later work
he referred to this as Platos problem, a reference to Platos attempt (in
his dialogue the Meno) to explain how it is possible for an uneducated child to
solve geometrical problems with appropriate prompting but without any
 specific training or background in mathematics. Unlike Plato, however,
Chomsky held that solving Platos problem is a task for natural science,
specifically cognitive science and linguistics.

Principles and parameters

Chomskys early attempts to solve the linguistic version of Platos problem
were presented in the standard theory of Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax and the subsequent extended standard theory, which was developed
and revised through the late 1970s. These theories proposed that the mind of
the human infant is endowed with a format of a possible grammar (a theory
of linguistic data), a method of constructing grammars based on the linguistic
data to which the child is exposed, and a device that evaluates the relative
simplicity of constructed grammars. The childs mind constructs a number of
possible grammars that are consistent with the linguistic data and then selects
the grammar with the fewest rules or primitives. Although ingenious, this
approach was cumbersome in comparison with later theories, in part because
it was not clear exactly what procedures would have to be involved in the
construction and evaluation of grammars.
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In the late 1970s and early 1980s Chomsky and others developed a better
solution using a theoretical framework known as principles and parameters
(P&P), which Chomksy introduced in Lectures on Government and
Binding (1981) and elaborated in Knowledge of Language (1986). Principles
are linguistic universals, or structural features that are common to all natural
languages; hence, they are part of the childs native endowment. Parameters,
also native (though not necessarily specific to language, perhaps figuring
elsewhere too), are options that allow for variation in linguistic structure. The
P&P approach assumed that these options are readily set upon the childs
exposure to a minimal amount of linguistic data, a hypothesis that has been
supported by empirical evidence. One proposed principle, for example, is that
phrase structure must consist of a head, such as a noun or a verb, and a
complement, which can be a phrase of any form. The order of head and
complement, however, is not fixed: languages may have a head-initial
structure, as in the English verb phrase (VP) wash the clothes, or a head-
final structure, as in the corresponding Japanese VP the clothes wash.
Thus, one parameter that is set through the childs exposure to linguistic data
is head-initial/head-final. The setting of what was thought, during the early
development of P&P, to be a small number of parametric options within the
constraints provided by a sufficiently rich set of linguistic principles would,
according to this approach, yield a grammar of the specific language to which
the child is exposed. Later the introduction of microparameters and certain
nonlinguistic constraints on development complicated this simple story, but
the basic P&P approach remained in place, offering what appears to be the
best solution to Platos problem yet proposed.
The phonological, or sound-yielding, features of languages are also
parameterized, according to the P&P approach. They are usually set early in
developmentapparently within a few daysand they must be set before the
child becomes too old if he is to be able to pronounce the language without an
accent. This time limit on phonological parameter setting would explain
why second-languagelearners rarely, if ever, sound like native speakers. In
contrast, young children exposed to any number of additional languages
before the time limit is reached have no trouble producing the relevant
sounds.
In contrast to the syntactic and phonological features of language, the basic
features out of which lexically expressed concepts (and larger units of
linguistic meaning) are constructed do not appear to be parameterized:
different natural languages seem to rely on the same set. Even if semantic
features were parameterized, however, a set of features detailed enough to
provide (in principle) for hundreds of thousands of root, or basic, concepts
would have to be a part of the childs innate, specifically linguistic
endowmentwhat Chomsky calls Universal Grammar, or UGor of his
nonlinguistic endowmentthe innate controls on growth, development, and
the final states of other systems in the mind or brain. This is indicated, as
noted above, by the extraordinary rate at which children acquire lexical
concepts (about one per waking hour between the ages of two and eight) and
the rich knowledge that each concept and its verbal, nominal, adverbial, and
other variants provide. No training or conscious intervention plays a role;
lexical acquisition seems to be as automatic as parameter setting.
Of course, people differ in the words contained in their vocabularies and in the
particular sounds they happen to associate with different concepts. Early in
the 20th century, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure noted that there is
nothing natural or necessary about the specific sounds with which a concept
may be associated in a given language. According to Chomsky, this
Saussurean arbitrariness is of no interest to the natural scientist of language,
because sound-concept associations in this sense are not a part of UG or of
other nonlinguistic systems that contribute to concept (and sound)
development.
A developed theory of UG and of relevant nonlinguistic systems would in
principle account for all possible linguistic sounds and all possible lexical
concepts and linguistic meanings, for it would contain all possible
phonological and semantic features and all the rules and constraints for
combining phonological and semantic features into words and for combining
words into a potentially infinitenumber of phrases and sentences. Of course,
such a complete theory may never be fully achieved, but in this respect
linguistics is no worse off than physics, chemistry, or any other science. They
too are incomplete.
It is important to notice that the semantic features that constitute lexical
concepts, and the rules and constraints governing their combination, seem to
be virtually designed for use by human beingsi.e., designed to serve human
interests and to solve human problems. For example, concepts such as give
and village have features that reflect human actions and interests: transfer of
ownership (and much more) is part of the meaning of give, and polity (both
abstract and concrete) is part of the meaning of village. Linguists and
philosophers sympathetic to empiricism will object that these features are
created when a community invents a language to do the jobs it needs to
dono wonder, then, that linguistic meanings reflect human interests and
problems. The rationalist, in contrast, argues that humans could not even
conceive of these interests and problems unless the
necessary conceptual machinery were available beforehand. In Chomskys
view, the speed and facility with which children learn give and village and
many thousands of other concepts show that the empiricist approach is
incorrectthough it may be correct in the case of scientific concepts, such as
muon, which apparently are not innate and do not reflect human concerns.
The overall architecture of the language faculty also helps to explain how
conceptual and linguistic creativity is possible. In the P&P framework in its
later minimalist forms (see below Rule systems in Chomskyan theories of
language), the language faculty has interfaces that allow it to communicate
with other parts of the mind. The information it provides through
sensorimotor interfaces enables humans to produce and
perceive speech and sign language, and the information it provides through
conceptual-intentional interfaces enables humans to perform numerous
cognitive tasks, ranging from categorization (thats a lynx) to understanding
and producing stories and poetry.
Rule systems in Chomskyan theories of language
Chomskys theories of grammar and language are often referred to as
generative, transformational, or transformational-generative. In a
mathematical sense, generative simply means formally explicit. In the case
of language, however, the meaning of the term typically also includes the
notion of productivityi.e., the capacity to produce an infinite number of
grammatical phrases and sentences using only finite means (e.g., a finite
number of principles and parameters and a finite vocabulary). In order for a
theory of language to be productive in this sense, at least some of its
principles or rules must be recursive. A rule or series of rules is recursive if it
is such that it can be applied to its own output an indefinite number of times,
yielding a total output that is potentially infinite. A simple example of a
recursive rule is the successor function in mathematics, which takes a number
as input and yields that number plus 1 as output. If one were to start at 0 and
apply the successor function indefinitely, the result would be the infinite set of
natural numbers. In grammars of natural languages, recursion appears in
various forms, including in rules that allow for concatenation, relativization,
and complementization, among other operations.
Chomskys theories are transformational in the sense that they account for
the syntactic and semantic properties of sentences by means of modifications
of the structure of a phrase in the course of its generation. The standard
theory of Syntactic Structures and especially of Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax employed a phrase-structure grammara grammar in which the
syntactic elements of a language are defined by means of rewrite rules that
specify their smaller constituents (e.g., S NP + VP, or a sentence may be
rewritten as a noun phrase and a verb phrase)a large number of
obligatory and optional transformations, and two levels of structure: a
deep structure, where semantic interpretation takes place, and a surface
structure, where phonetic interpretation takes place. These early grammars
were difficult to contrive, and their complexity and language-specificity made it
very difficult to see how they could constitute a solution to Platos problem.
In Chomskys later theories, deep structure ceased to be the locus of
semantic interpretation. Phrase-structure grammars too were virtually
eliminated by the end of the 1970s; the task they performed was taken over
by the operation of projecting individual lexical items and their properties into
more complex structures by means of X-bar theory. Transformations during
this transitional period were reduced to a single operation, Move (Move
alpha), which amounted to move any element in a derivation anywhere
albeit within a system of robust constraints. Following the introduction of the
minimalist program (MP) in the early 1990s, deep structure (and surface
structure) disappeared altogether. Move , and thus modification of structure
from one derivational step to another, was replaced by Move and later by
internal Merge, a variant of external Merge, itself a crucial basic operation
that takes two elements (such as words) and makes of them a set. In the early
21st century, internal and external Merge, along with parameters and
microparameters, remained at the core of Chomskys efforts to construct
grammars.
Throughout the development of these approaches to the science of language,
there were continual improvements in simplicity and formal elegance in the
theories on offer; the early phrase-structure components, transformational
components, and deep and surface structures were all eliminated, replaced by
much simpler systems. Indeed, an MP grammar for a specific language could
in principle consist entirely of Merge (internal and external) together with some
parametric settings. MP aims to achieve both of the major original goals that
Chomsky set for a theory of language in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax: that
it be descriptively adequate, in the sense that the grammars it provides
generate all and only the grammatical expressions of the language in
question, and that it be explanatorily adequate, in the sense that it provides a
descriptively adequate grammar for any natural language as represented in
the mind of a given individual. MP grammars thus provide a solution to Platos
problem, explaining how any individual readily acquires what Chomsky calls
an I-languageI for internal, individual, and intensional (that is, described
by a grammar). But they also speak to other desiderata of a natural science:
they are much simpler, and they are much more easily accommodated to
another science, namely biology.

Philosophy Of Mind And Human Nature

Human conceptual and linguistic creativity involves several mental faculties
and entails the existence of some kind of mental organization. It depends on
perceptual-articulatory systems and conceptual-intentional systems, of
course, but on many others too, such as vision. According to Chomsky, the
mind comprises an extensive cluster of innate modules, one of which is
language. Each module operates automatically, independently of individual
control, on the basis of a distinct, domain-specific set of rules that take
determinate inputs from some modules and yield determinate outputs for
others. In earlier work these operations were called derivations; more
recently they have been called computations. The various modules interact
in complex ways to yield perception, thought, and a large number of other
cognitive products.
The language module seems to play a role in coordinating the products of
other modules. The generativespecifically, recursiveproperties of
language enable humans to combine arbritary concepts together in indefinitely
many ways, thereby making the range of human thought virtually unlimited.
When concepts are paired with sounds in lexical items (words), humans can
say virtually anything and cooperate and make plans with each other. The fact
that the language faculty yields this kind of flexibility suggests that the
emergence of language in human evolutionary history coincided with the
appearance of other cognitive capacities based on recursion, including
quantification.

In a 2002 article, The Language Faculty, Chomsky and his coauthors Marc
Hauser and W. Tecumseh Fitch divided the language faculty in a way that
reflected what had been Chomskys earlier distinction between competence
and performance. The faculty of language in the narrow sense (FLN)
amounts to the recursive computational system alone, whereas the faculty in
the broad sense (FLB) includes perceptual-articulatory systems (for sound
and sign) and conceptual-intentional systems (for meaning). These are the
systems with which the computational system interacts at its interfaces.
Regarding evolution, the authors point out that, although there are
homologues and analogs in other species for the perceptual-articulatory and
conceptual-intentional systems, there are none for the computational system,
or FLN. Conceivably, some cognitive systems of animals, such as the
navigational systems of birds, might involve recursion, but there is no
computational system comparable to FLN, in particular none that links sound
and meaning and yields unbounded sentential output. FLN is arguably what
makes human beings cognitively distinct from other creatures.
As suggested earlier, UG, or the language faculty narrowly understood (FLN),
may consist entirely of Merge and perhaps some parameters specific to
language. This raises the question of what the biological basis of FLN must
be. What distinctive fact of human biology, or the human genome, makes FLN
unique to humans? In a 2005 article, Three Factors in Language Design,
Chomsky pointed out that there is more to organic development and growth
than biological (genomic) specification and environmental input. A third factor
is general conditions on growth resulting from restrictions on possible physical
structures and restrictions on data analysis, including those that might figure
in computational systems (such as language). For example, a bees genome
does not have to direct it to build hives in a hexagonal lattice. The lattice is a
requirement imposed by physics, since this structure is the most stable and
efficient of the relevant sort. Analogous points can be made about the growth,
structure, and operation of the human brain. If the parameters of UG are not
specified by the language-specific parts of the human genome but are instead
the result of third factors, the only language-specific information that the
genome would need to carry is an instruction set for producing a single
principle, Merge (which takes external and internal forms). And if this is the
case, then the appearance of language could have been brought about by a
single genetic mutation in a single individual, so long as that mutation were
transmissible to progeny. Obviously, the relevant genes would provide great
advantages to any human who possessed them. A saltational account such
as this has some evidence behind it: 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, humans
began to observe the heavens, to draw and paint, to wonder, and to develop
explanations of natural phenomenaand the migration from Africa began.
Plausibly, the introduction of the computational system of language led to this
remarkable cognitive awakening.

Politics
Chomskys political views seem to be supported to some extent by his
approach to the study of language and mind, which implies that the capacity
for creativity is an important element of human nature. Chomsky often notes,
however, that there is only an abstract connection between his theories of
language and his politics. A close connection would have to be based on a
fully developed science of human nature, through which fundamental human
needs could be identified or deduced. But there is nothing like such a science.
Even if there were, the connection would additionally depend on the
assumption that the best form of political organization is one that maximizes
the satisfaction of human needs. And then there would remain the question of
what practical measures should be implemented to satisfy those needs.
Clearly, questions such as this cannot be settled by scientific means.
Although Chomsky was always interested in politics, he did not become
publicly involved in it until 1964, when he felt compelled to lend his voice to
protests against the U.S. role in the Vietnam War (or, as he prefers to say, the
U.S. invasion of Vietnam), at no small risk to his career and his personal
safety. He has argued that the Vietnam War was only one in a series of cases
in which the United States used its military power to gain or consolidate
economic control over increasingly larger areas of the developing world. In the
same vein, he regards the domestic political scene of the United States and
other major capitalist countries as theatres in which major corporations and
their elite managers strive to protect and enhancetheir economic privileges
and political power.
In democracies like the United States, in which the compliance of ordinary
citizens cannot be guaranteed by force, this effort requires a form of
propaganda: the powerful must make ordinary citizens believe that vesting
economic control of society in the hands of a tiny minority of the population is
to their benefit. Part of this project involves enlisting the help of
intellectualsthe class of individuals (primarily journalists and academics)
who collect, disseminate, and interpret political and economic information for
the public. Regrettably, Chomsky argues, this task has proved remarkably
easy.
As a responsible (rather than mercenary) member of the intellectual class,
Chomsky believes that it is his obligation to provide ordinary citizens with the
information they needed to draw their own conclusions and to make their own
decisions about vital political and economic issues. As he wrote in Powers
and Prospects (1996),
The responsibility of the writer as a moral agent is to try to bring the truth about matters of human
significance to an audience that can do something about them.

In one of his first political essays, The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967),

Chomsky presented case after case in which intellectuals in positions of
power, including prominent journalists, failed to tell the truth or deliberately
lied to the public in order to conceal the aims and consequences of the United
States involvement in the Vietnam War. In their two-volume work The Political
Economy of Human Rights (1979) and later in Manufacturing Consent: The
Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Chomsky and the
economist Edward Herman analyzed the reporting of journalists in the
mainstream (i.e., corporate-owned) media on the basis of statistically careful
studies of historical and contemporary examples. Their work provided striking
evidence of selection, skewing of data, filtering of information, and outright
invention in support of assumptions that helped to justify the controlling
influence of corporations in U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics.
The studies in these and other works made use of paired examples to show
how very similar events can be reported in very different ways, depending
upon whether and how state and corporate interests may be affected. In The
Political Economy of Human Rights, for example, Chomsky and Herman
compared reporting on Indonesias military invasion and occupation of East
Timor with reporting on the behaviour of the communist Khmer Rouge regime
in Cambodia. The events in the two cases took place in approximately the
same part of the world and at approximately the same time (the mid- to late
1970s). As a proportion of population, the number of East Timorese tortured
and murdered by the Indonesian military was approximately the same as the
number of Cambodians tortured and murdered by the Khmer Rouge. And yet
the mainsteam media in the United States devoted much more attention to the
second case (more than 1,000 column inches in the New York Times) than to
the first (about 70 column inches). Moreover, reporting on the actions of the
Khmer Rouge contained many clear cases of exaggeration and fabrication,
whereas reporting on the actions of Indonesia portrayed them as
essentially benign. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, however, exaggerated
reports of atrocities aided efforts by the United States to maintain the Cold
War and to protect and expand its access to the regions natural resources
(including East Timorese oil deposits) through client states. Indonesia, on the
other hand, was just such a state, heavily supported by U.S. military and
economic aid. Although ordinary Americans were not in a position to do
anything about the Khmer Rouge, they were capable of doing something
about their countrys support for Indonesia, in particular by voting their
government out of office. But the medias benign treatment of the invasion
made it extremely unlikely that they would be motivated to do so. According to
Chomsky, this and many other examples demonstrate that prominent
journalists and other intellectuals in the United States function essentially as
commissars on behalf of elite interests. As he wrote in Necessary
Illusions (1988):
The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing
their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and
discussion accordingly.

Some of Chomskys critics have claimed that his political and media studies
portray journalists as actively engaged in a kind of conspiracyan extremely
unlikely conspiracy, of course, given the degree of coordination and control it
would require. Chomskys response is simply that the assumption of
conspiracy is unnecessary. The behaviour of journalists in the mainstream
media is exactly what one would expect, on average, given the power
structure of the institutions in which they are employed, and it is predictable in
the same sense and for the same reasons that the behaviour of the president
of General Motors is predictable. In order to succeedin order to be hired and
promotedmedia personnel must avoid questioning the interests of the
corporations they work for or the interests of the elite minority who run those
corporations. Because journalists naturally do not wish to think of themselves
as mercenaries (no one does), they engage in what amounts to a form of self-
deception. They typically think of themselves as stalwartdefenders of the truth
(as suggested by the slogan of the New York Times, All the news thats fit to
print), but when state or corporate interests are at stake they act otherwise, in
crucially important ways. In short, very few of them are willing or even able to
live up to their responsibility as intellectuals to bring the truth about matters of
human significance to an audience that can do something about them.

Definition of Instructional Planning

Preparation for teaching and learning, including ; construction of goals, objectives, andinstructional
and assessment methodology.Systematic planning, developing, evaluating,and managing the
instructional process basedon principles of learning and instruction.The big picture of what to
teach and how toteach it.

Functions of planning

Makes learning purposeful.Reduces the impact of intrusions.Economizes time.Provides

documentation of instruction.Guides substituted teachers.Makes learner success more measurable,
which assists in re-teaching.Gives an overview of instruction.

Types :1. Selected Response Testing:

select the correct or best answer (e.g., multiple-choice, true-false, matching questions).

2. Supply Response Testing:

respond to a question with a word, phrase, or essayanswer (e.g., short answer, essay questions).

3. Restricted Performance Assessment:

complete a limited task that is highlystructured (e.g., selecting the appropriate tool for a task,
determining the area of given rectangle, writing a brief paragraph on a given topic).

4. Extended Performance Assessment:

comprehensive task that is lessstructured (e.g., writing a research report, drawing the water cycle,
creating astructure out of Lego's that will support 10 pounds).