ABSTRACT
Noam Chomsky is known for championing the classical idea of innate mental mechanisms and for hypothesizing a universal human grammar, a genetically determined species-specific unconscious knowledge about language. The ideas of Chomsky have had a profound affect on the academy and probably will for decades to come. Undervalued in the collection is Chomsky's work on the mind and how it might inform teaching practices. Chomsky made clear how his work in cognitive science affects his view on education, and politics, in a lecture given in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1986 and published in a collection entitled Language and Problems of Knowledge. Chomsky's work on human language and the mind-brain naturally informs his view on education. Chomsky expects that what is true for language learning would apply to learning in other cognitive domains. Questions of education have to do with how to support children in their natural development.
