Noam Chomsky Quotes

I think there's so much negative influence on children in school settings. It becomes learning by rote to pass a test. It's not contextualized.

Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests - not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life.

Education today is a process of filling the mind with the contents of books, emptying the contents in the examination hall and returning empty-headed.

We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.

He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him, he could not imagine a greater detterent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it on demand.

If kids are studying for a test, they're not going to learn anything. We all know that from our own experience.

The problem I have with schools is, people are taught, 'This is how you do this.' They're not taught about why you do this.

Schools still operate as if all knowledge is contained in books, and as if the salient points in books must be stored in each human brain - to be used when needed. The political and financial powers controlling schools decide what these salient points are.

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

People who've been through our educational system, they think they're thinking, when they're just repeating like parrots.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

In our education system, we are taught to munch figures and remember them for lifetime. But does it help? We are not taught how to make decisions.

Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.

I delight sometimes in saying to - as when I'm a teacher, I love saying, 'This is really important, so don't write it down.' To me, what you retain is a very important filter.

They don't like thinking in medical school. They memorize - that's all they want you to do. You must not think.

I don't really get things very... intuitively. I mean, I don't immediately understand things. The only way I really get it is by writing it down.

A diploma only proves that you know how to look up answers.

What are we promoting in society? Well-behaved automatons that spew back what they learned in a book. That's not science. You can get a parrot to do that.

In most schools, we measure children on what they know. By and large, they have to memorize the content of whatever test is coming up. Because measuring the results of rote learning is easy, rote prevails. What kids know is just not important in comparison with whether they can think.

The first time you say something, it's heard. The second time, it's recognized, and the third time it's learned.

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

To know the rules of the game, you have to be educated.

People go to school and get educated, but most people who go to school and become a graduate in eduation still don't know what the word 'education' means... 'Educo' means to bring out.

I've never understood cheating, probably because I never cared much about my grades. I instinctively knew that the grades didn't measure anything meaningful - usually just my ability to quickly memorize information I'd just as quickly forget.