你曾提出“知识分子是民众中思想被灌输得最多的一群人…是最容易轻信宣传的那群人”。你解释说受到良好教育的阶层是“意识形态的经理人”，“控制着信息传播” 的同谋。为什么存在这种现象？这种现象是如何出现的？如何能改变这种状况？

‘知识分子’这个词必然意味着他具有以下特点；即所谓的知识分子都是那些穿过了各种各样的门槛或滤网，最终充当文化经理人的人。除了这些人之外， 也有许多人同样聪明，或者更聪明，更独立，更有思想，但因为他们没有穿过这些门槛，因此我们不把他们叫做知识分子。事实上，这个过程从小学就已经开始了。

下面我们说具体点。你和我都上了很好的研究院，在顶尖的大学任教，我们之所以能这样，是因为我们很听话。也就是说，你和我，以及其他和我们类似的 人，能够到达今天的地位是因为我们从孩提时代开始就听从指挥。如果三年级时，老师让我们做某一件傻事，我们不会说“你看看，这件事情多么可笑，我才不做 呢。”相反，我们会按他说的去做，因为我们想顺利升到四年级。我们会说“看，去做，别管它，老师是个傻子，去做，你会有进展的，不用担心。”我们就是在这 样的背景下成长起来的。在整个学校教育的过程中，我们都这样，工作之后也是如此。在研究院，老师告诉你“看，不要研究那个东西，那个想法是错误的。你为什 么不研究这个呢？你会有进展的。”不论这种命令以何种形式出现，包括很含蓄的形式，你都已经让自己被业已存在并一直试图塑造你的权威所塑造了。

有些人就是这样做的。他们顺从、听话，他们接受并且执行了命令，最终爬到了很高的位置——经济经理人，文化经理人，政治经理人。但是，你我的班上 也有人没有这样做。三年级时，一旦老师要他们做某事，他们说“那样做太傻啦，我不会去做。” 这些人思想更为独立，对于这些人有一个专门的名词：“行为问题”。你不得不采取某种方法来对付他们，把他们送去看精神科，或者让他们接受特殊教育，或者把 他们踢出教室，最后他们只能贩毒或是干别的。事实上，整个教育系统满是这种形式的滤网，只有顺从和听话的人才能通过。

在职业生涯中，这种滤网也一直存在。假设你是个记者，你打算写一篇文章曝光某个身处高位的人物的问题，而另一个人写的文章则满足了那些身处高位的 人的需求，谁会成为办公室的头头立见分晓。过滤就是这样实现的。成功跻身于受尊敬的“知识分子”行列的当然不会是那些想要颠覆现有权力结构的人。他们只能 是那些以这样或那样的方式服务于现有权力结构的人，或者至少是保持中立的人。那些喜欢唱反调的不会被称作知识分子，他们被称作疯子，或癫子，或“边缘的狂 人”，正如麦克乔治.邦迪的用的词。 他说“有人明白我们必须去印度支那作战，只是在战术上意见有所不同，还有些边缘的狂人则认为侵略其他国家是错误的”（他的言论刊登在《外交事务》——一个 主流媒体上面）道理就是这样。有些两侧的狂人不愿意接受权威，因此他们一直是边缘的狂人，不是知识分子、受尊敬的知识分子。当然，情况并非百分之百是这 样，这只是趋势，很强的趋势，而且被其它趋势所强化。
（吴庄译，李行德校）

* 这个访问记录了乔姆斯基和南弗罗里达州大学奥尔孙和菲格里两位教授的对话，取自“语言、政治和作文”，愿文发表于《高级作文学刊》Journal of Advanced Composition 11.1, 4-35，收录于卡洛斯。奥特洛（主编），《乔姆斯基论民主和教育》，2003，洛特里奇法莫尔出版社。
[1] 麦克乔治.邦迪在二十世纪六十年代初期任美国国家安全顾问，参与制定美国对越南的政策。

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“Education” as filtering toward submissiveness and obedience
Noam Chomsky (1991)

[Excerpted from Chomsky on Democracy and Education，2003, ed. C. P. Otero. RoutledgeFalmer]
You have suggested that “intellectuals are the most indoctrinated part of the population…the ones most susceptible to propaganda.” You have explained that the educated classes are “ideological managers”, complicit in “controlling all the organized flow of information”. How and why is this so? What can be done to change this situation?
Well, there is something almost tautological about that; that is, the people we call intellectuals are those who have passed through various gates and filters and have made it into positions in which they can serve as cultural managers. There are plenty of other people just as smart, smarter, more independent, more thoughtful, who didn’t pass through those gates, and we just don’t call them intellectuals. In fact, this is a process that starts in elementary school.
Let’s be concrete about it. You and I went to good graduate schools and teach in fancy universities, and the reason we did this is because we are obedient. That is, you and I, and typically people like us, got to the positions we’re in because from childhood we were willing to follow orders. If the teacher in third grade told us to do some stupid thing, we didn’t say, “Look, that’s ridiculous. I’m not going to do it.” We did it because we wanted to get on to fourth grade. We came from the kind of background where we’d say, “look, do it, forget about it, so the teacher’s a fool, do it, you’ll get ahead, don’t worry about it.” That goes on all through school, and it goes on through your professional career. You’re told in graduate school, “Look, don’t work on that; it’s a wrong idea. Why not work on this? You’ll get ahead.” However it’s put, and there are subtle ways of putting it, you allow yourself to be shaped by the system of authority that exists out there and is trying to shape you.
Well, some people do this. They are submissive and obedient, and they accept it and make it through; they end up being people in the high places—economic managers, cultural managers, political managers. There are other people who were in your class and in my class who didn’t do it. When the teacher told them in the third grade to do X, they said, “That’s stupid, and I’m not going to do it.” Those are people who are more independent-minded, for example, and there’s a name for them: they’re called “behavior problems.” You’ve got to deal with them somehow, so you send them to a shrink, or you put them in a special program, or maybe you just kick them out and they end up selling drugs or something. In fact, the whole educated system involves a good deal of filtering of this sort, and it’s a kind of filtering toward submissiveness and obedience.
This goes on through professional careers as well. You’re a journalist, let’s say, and you want to write a story that’s going to expose people in high places, serves the needs of people in high places; you know which one is going to end up being the bureau chief. That’s the way it works. So in a way there is something all most tautological about your question. sure, the people who make it into positions in which they’re respected and recognized as intellectuals are the people who are not subversive of structures of power. They are the people who in one way or another serve those structures, or at least are neutral with respect to them. The ones who would be more subversive aren’t call intellectuals; they are called wackos, or crazies, or “wild men in the wings”, as McGeorge Bundy put it when he said, “There are people who understand that we have to be in Indochina and just differ on the tactics, and then there are the wild men in the wings who think there’s something wrong with carrying out aggression against another country.” (He said that in Foreign Affairs— a mainstream journal.) But that’s the idea. There are wild men in the wings who don’t accept authority, and they remain wild men in the wings and not intellectuals, not respected intellectuals. Of course, this isn’t 100 percent. These are tendencies, actually very strong tendencies, and they are reinforced by other strong tendencies.