Noam Chomsky’s brilliant Whole Language English instruction single-handedly reduced the literacy skills of black children from almost on a par with white children, to illiterate, in a little more than a single decade, insuring failure in school and perpetual impoverishment for millions of black people.
Thus Noam Chomsky has done more than any other person, alive or dead, to “Keep the black man down”. So much for his “bright idea”.
But this being said, pronouncements about what children need and what they do not need from such academics has lost so much credibility, that it will take 500 or more years before *anything*, *any* of them say should even be considered as possible.
And that nonsense is perpetuated by the Education Depts. — which do not teach anything that is useful for the classroom. (I know there are those who will screech about “classroom management” but they don’t teach that either and the lack of discipline in a classroom is a problem that is multi-faceted.)