My Ideas

Menilik sejarah kemunculan Homeschooling atau home education yang ditulis oleh Mary Griffith dalam buku berjudul “The Unschooling handbook, how to use the whole world as your child’s classroom”, sekolah—rumah tidak menjadi sebuah gerakan sampai tahun 1970-an, saat pendidik bernama John Holt , mulai mengenalkan konsep sekolah-rumah pada publik. Holt yakin bahwa reformasi pendidikan yang terpusat pada anak-anak, yang dia percaya diperlukan, tidak akan- bahkan tidak bisa- terjadi di di dalam pemprograman wajib belajar di sekolah formal-konvensional.

Pada tahun 1977, Holt mulai mempublikasikan buletin berita yang dia namai “Growing Without Schooling”(tumbuh tanpa sekolah) untuk keluarga-keluarga yang mempunyai ide-ide untuk membantu anak-anak mereka belajar di luar sekolah.

Ide-ide Holt mempengaruhi banyak orang tua yang beraliran Puritan yang menganggap bahwa sekolah–sekolah formal di Amerika saat itu telah gagal mencetak siswa yang mempunyai kemandirian dalam belajar dan cenderung bobrok dalam moralitas. Menurut beberapa sumber diperkirakan di Amerika Serikat sekarang ini ada 1,5 juta sampai 2 juta anak yang bersekolah di rumah . Jumlah yang cukup besar tersebut merupakan data resmi jumlah sisiwa yang mengikuti kurikulum untuk bersekolah di rumah, karena para orang tua ingin agar sistem pendidikan mempunyai konsep dan visi yang jelas.

Di negeri kita konsep sekolah rumah sudah diterapkan lama oleh sebagian kecil masyarakat kita. Tengok saja di pondok-pondok pesantren para Kiai secara khusus telah mendidik anak-anaknya sendiri karena merasa lebih mengena dan puas bisa mengajarkan ilmu pada putra sendiri daripada sekadar mempercayakan pada orang lain.

Tokoh-tokoh terkenal seperti KH Agus Salim, Ki Hajar Dewantoro atau Buya Hamka juga mengembangkan cara belajar dengan sistem persekolahan di rumah ini. Metode ini dijalankan bukan sekedar agar anak didik lulus ujian kemudian mendapatkan ijazah, namun agar lebih mencintai dan punya semangat yang tinggi dalam mengembangkan ilmu yang dipelajari.

Bagi keluarga-keluarga yang telah menerapkan konsep ini, pendidikan yang mereka jalani adalah pendidikan yang penuh pemikiran, permainan bebas dan eksplorasi. Ini melepaskan kekakuan kalimat yang sering diucapkan guru di kelas seperti “Kalian seharusnya..”, “Kalian sebaiknya..” atau “Anak-anak, Pelajaran kita hari ini adalah..”. Kenapa demikian? Karena Homeschooling pada dasarnya merupakan metode pembelajaran yang menekankan pada masalah sikap dan pendekatan belajar yang lebih mandiri. Di Homeschooling pembelajar bisa memilih materi pelajaran apa yang mau dikaji tiap harinya sesuai dengan minatnya. Sederhananya sekolah-rumah menempatkan wewenang di tangan si pembelajar.

Salah satu contoh menarik adalah cerita yang dimuat di Kompas (13/3/2005) mengenai Wanti wowor (39) ibu empat anak yang berhasil mendidik dua anaknya Fini dan Fini sejak kecil belajar di rumah sampai akhirnya Fini melanjutkan sekolah desain mode di Esmond Jakarta, sedangkan Fina diterima di Universitas Indonesia program Internasional. Kelebihan yang ada pada mereka dibandingkan dengan mahasiswa yang sebelumnya telah terbiasa mengikuti sekolah formal-konvensional adalah kemandirian yang besar dalam belajar, kedisplinan yang tinggi dalam mengerjakan tugas-tugas perkuliahan dan juga lebih berani mengemukan pendapat dan berdebat.

John Holt

Main article: John Holt (educator)

In 1964, John Caldwell Holt, a former World War II submariner with no professional training in education, published a book entitled How Children Fail which criticized traditional schools. The book was based on a theory he had developed as a teacher and an observer of children and education; that the academic failure of schoolchildren was caused by pressure placed on children in schools. The book became controversial^{[citation needed]}, and Holt began making appearances on major TV talk shows and writing book reviews for Life magazine. He also appeared as a guest on the To Tell The Truth TV game show.^[4] In his follow-up work, How Children Learn, 1967, he tried to demonstrate the learning process of children and why he believed school short circuits this process.

In these books, Holt had not suggested any alternative to institutional schooling; he had hoped to initiate a profound rethinking of education to make schools friendlier toward children. As the years passed he became convinced that the way schools were was what society wanted, and that a serious re-examination was not going to happen in his lifetime.

Leaving teaching to publicize his ideas about education full time, he encountered books by other authors questioning the premises and efficacy of compulsory schooling, like Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, 1970, and No More Public School by Harold Bennet, 1972. Then, in 1976, he published Instead of Education; Ways to Help People Do Things Better. In its conclusion he called for a “Children’s Underground Railroad” to help children escape compulsory schooling.^[4] In response, Holt was contacted by families from around the U.S. to tell him that they were educating their children at home. In 1977, after corresponding with a number of these families, Holt began producing a magazine dedicated to home education: Growing Without Schooling.^[5]

Holt later wrote a book about homeschooling, Teach Your Own, in 1981, and continued to hope for more expansive reform within education until his death in 1985.

Holt’s said: “… the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don’t need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it.”^[6]. Holt later said, in 1980, “I want to make it clear that I don’t see homeschooling as some kind of answer to badness of schools. I think that the home is the proper base for the exploration of the world which we call learning or education. Home would be the best base no matter how good the schools were.”^[6]

[edit] Raymond and Dorothy Moore

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.

They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8—12 not only lacked the anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency, nearsightedness increased enrollment of students in special education classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier enrollment of students.^[7] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent, with superior long term effects – even though the mothers were mentally retarded teenagers – and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical western children, by western standards of measurement.^[7]

Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional development made at home with parents during these years produced critical long term results that were cut short by enrollment in schools, and could neither be replaced nor afterward corrected in an institutional setting.^[7] Recognizing a necessity for early out-of-home care for some children — particularly special needs and starkly impoverished children, and children from exceptionally inferior homes — they maintained that the vast majority of children are far better situated at home — even with mediocre parents — than with the most gifted and motivated teachers in a school setting (assuming that the child has a gifted and motivated teacher). They described the difference as follows: “This is like saying, if you can help a child by taking him off the cold street and housing him in a warm tent, then warm tents should be provided for all children — when obviously most children already have even more secure housing.”^[8]

Similar to Holt, the Moores embraced homeschooling after the publication of their first work, Better Late Than Early, 1975, and went on to become important homeschool advocates and consultants with the publication of books like Home Grown Kids, 1981, Home School Burnout, and others.^[7]

One common theme in the homeschool philosophies of both Holt and the Moores is that home education should not be an attempt to bring the school construct into the home, or a view of education as an academic preliminary to life. They viewed it as a natural, experiential aspect of life that occurs as the members of the family are involved with one another in daily living.

More infos: Wikipedia.org

Islamic Home-Schooling (Selanjutnya akan disingkat IHS) adalah Home-Schooling yang diselenggarakan bertitik tolak dari pertimbangan syar’i, yakni kewajiban orangtua untuk mengasuh dan mendidik anak, serta dijalankan dengan mengikuti tuntunan AlQuran dan AsSunnah sebagaimana dipahami dan diamalkan para pendahulu ummat ini yang shalih (AsSalafush Sholih).

Tujuannya adalah :

1. Terciptanya keluarga sakinah; yang di dalamnya semua hak dan kewajiban tertunaikan dengan sebaik-baiknya

2. Terbentuknya generasi penerus yang bertauhid, berpegang kepada sunnah, berakhlaq mulia, berbadan sehat, multi-cerdas, kreatif dan mandiri serta memiliki semangat untuk membela Islam dan kaum muslimin

SUBYEK IHS

IHS PERMATA HATI dimaksudkan bagi anak usia 0 - 13 tahun secara umum. Atau sampai anak berusia 16 tahun bagi orangtua yang memiliki kemampuan mengajarkan gramatika Bahasa Arab (kitab gundul) dan ilmu-ilmu syar’i tingkat menengah. Adapun setelah anak memasuki usia baligh maka anak harus diarahkan untuk melakukan rihlah ilmiyyah guna menimba ilmu dari para ulama, jika hal itu memungkinkan (dan memang harus diupayakan).

MENGAPA “ISLAMIC HOME-SCHOOLING” ?

Menyelenggarakan IHS membutuhkan motivasi yang luar biasa besar dari pihak orangtua. Motivasi akan muncul ketika seseorang dengan sadar dan yakin memahami alasan mengapa dia melakukan sesuatu. Maka kita dituntut untuk memiliki prinsip.

Ada beberapa pertimbangan yang dapat dijadikan prinsip dalam menyelenggarakan IHS :

1. Pertimbangan syar’i. Dalam syari’at, kewajiban mendidik anak adalah tanggung jawab orangtua.

“Hai orang-orang yang beriman, peliharalah dirimu dan keluargamu dari api neraka yang bahan bakarnya adalah manusia dan batu; penjaganya malaikat-malaikat yang kasar, keras, dan tidak mendurhakai Allah terhadap apa yang diperintahkan-Nya kepada mereka dan selalu mengerjakan apa yang diperintahkan.” (QS. At Tahrim : 6)

“Setiap anak yang dilahirkan berada di atas fithroh (Islam), maka kedua orangtuanyalah yang menjadikan dia yahudi atau nasrani atau majusi.” (HSR. Malik, Ahmad, AlBukhori, Muslim, Abu Daud, AtTirmidzi)

2. Pertimbangan fakta sejarah. Banyak kisah dalam AlQuran yang menggambarkan peran orangtua dalam mengasuh dan mendidik anak-anak mereka. (Baca : Qs. Maryam 54-55, QS. Luqman : 13) Interaksi Rasulullah shallallaahu ‘alaihi wasallam dengan cucu beliau, Hasan dan Husain, atau dengan sepupu beliau, Ibnu Abbas, atau dengan putera asuhnya yang berkhidmat kepada beliau, Anas bin Malik juga dapat kita jadikan referensi. Dari kalangan ulama Islam, tercatat misalnya Ibnul jauzi yang menulis kitab khusus untuk puteranya yang berisi petunjuk menuntut ilmu secara lengkap, Laftatul kabid fi nashihatil walad (Kitab ini patut menjadi rujukan dalam IHS).

3. Pertimbangan naturalitas. Perhatikanlah, anak ayam belajar tentang hidup kepada induknya. Anak kucing belajar tentang hidup kepada induknya. Bayi ikan paus belajar tentang hidup berpuluh tahun pada induknya. Tapi lihatlah si ujang dan si nyai. Kepada siapa mereka belajar tentang hidup ? Ah kasihan sekali, mereka belajar tentang hidup kepada orang lain yang tidak benar-benar mengenalnya !

4. Pertimbangan orisinalitas dan individualitas anak. Orisinalitas (keaslian) seorang anak adalah : fithroh, keingintahuan dan kreatifitasnya. Sedangkan individualitas (ke-diri-an), meliputi qolb dan jasad (contoh yang jelas : sidik jari, suara dan DNA). Orisinalitas dan individualitas menyebabkan tiap anak unik dalam segala hal, termasuk cara belajar mereka. Agar mereka dapat menemukan cara belajar mereka yang unik, anak wajib mendapatkan kebebasan. [4]

DARI MANA KITA MEMULAI ?
Klik yang ini ya: Islamic homeschooling ,how to begin

Jaringan homeschooling berbasis agama sangat banyak. Diantara situs-situs Internet yang membahas homeschooling berdasarkan nilai-nilai Islam antara lain:

http://www.missionislam.com/homed/

http://www.ourseeds- islamiclinks

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/

by John Taylor Gatto

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I’ve known over the years who’ve struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word “education” should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.

We live in a time of great school crisis. Our children rank at the bottom of nineteen industrial nations in reading, writing and arithmetic. At the very bottom. The world’s narcotic economy is based upon our own consumption of the commodity, if we didn’t buy so many powdered dreams the business would collapse - and schools are an important sales outlet. Our teenage suicide rate is the highest in the world and suicidal kids are rich kids for the most part, not the poor. In Manhattan fifty per cent of all new marriages last less than five years. So something is wrong for sure.

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent - nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic - it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98% and after it the figure never again reached above 91% where it stands in 1990. I hope that interests you.

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” - that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic - because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead. The products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.

More information: click here! or
here!

Homeschooling ( also called home education), home learning or homeschool – is the education of children at home, typically by parents or professional tutors, rather than in a public or private school.

Although prior to the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws, most childhood education occurred within the family or community^[1], homeschooling in the modern sense is an alternative in developed countries to formal education.

In many places homeschooling is a legal option for parents who wish to provide their children with a different learning environment than exists in nearby schools. These motivations range from a dissatisfaction with the schools in their area to the dissatisfaction of modern schools in general. It is also an alternative for families living in isolated rural locations and those who choose, for practical or personal reasons, not to have their children attend school.

Homeschooling may also refer to instruction in the home under the supervision of correspondence schools or umbrella schools. In some places, an approved curriculum is legally required if children are to be home-schooled. A curriculum-free philosophy of homeschooling may be called unschooling, a term coined in 1977 by American educator John Holt in his magazine Growing Without Schooling
Sumberipun niki nggih: Wikipedia.org/homeschooling,Yes!

Penelitian Alwasilah meski sudah lewat beberapa tahun yang lalu masih layak untuk dijadikan bahan kajian pengajaran bahasa Inggris di Perguruan Tinggi. Penelitian tersebut mengambil sampel sebanyak 111 responden yang mewakili tiga universitas di Bandung dan universitas lainnya terungkap bahwa 65,8% responden menganggap mata kuliah bahasa Inggris tidak memenuhi harapan mereka, dan sebagian besar responden (56,8%) tidak mengetahui silabus perkuliahan. Sebanyak 45,9% mengharapkan agar mata kuliah bahasa Inggris diberi bobot 4-6 SKS, dan ditawarkan pada semester 1 atau 2 (57,4%). Data statistik ini merupakan lampu kuning bahwa mata kuliah bahasa Inggris belum dikelola secara professional, dan belum berfungsi sebagaimana mestinya.

by Tina Blue
July 8, 2005

In “Who, That, Which” I explain which of these pronouns are appropriate for different kinds of antecedents. But another problem people often have when using relative pronouns is deciding when a relative clause is restrictive or nonrestrictive.

Whether a relative clause is restrictive or nonrestrictive matters for two reasons:

1. Restrictive relative clauses are not set off by commas, while nonrestrictive relative clauses are.

2. As a general rule, the pronoun “that” should be used for restrictive relative clauses, and “which” should be used for nonrestrictive relative clauses.*

In “The Loyal Apposition” I offer guidelines for determining whether an appositive is restrictive or nonrestrictive. These guidelines are equally valid for identifying restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses.

A. NONRESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSES

If a relative clause adds parenthetical, nondefining information, it is nonrestrictive. A nonrestrictive (parenthetical) element is set off by commas, as in these examples.

~Mr. Smith, who is a well-respected lawyer, has just retired from active practice.
~Professor James, who is an expert in Victorian poetry, will be giving a lecture tonight.

MORE EXAMPLES:

~Your task, which is to seek out new civilizations and boldly go where no man has gone before, will probably occupy the rest of your adult life.

~Kofi Annan, who is the current U.N. Secretary General, has spent much of his tenure working to promote peace in the Third World.

~This is Jennifer, who is my college roommate’s youngest daughter.

~That book, which is the novel I was reading last week, is the one I meant for you to take to the beach with you.

B. RESTRICTIVE RELATIVE CLAUSES

When the relative clause limits or restricts the noun or noun substitute (substantive) it modifies, it is restrictive, and it is not set off by commas.

~My brother that lives in Arizona is named Pat.

In this sentence the clause “that lives in Arizona” is needed to specify which brother, since the reader has no other way of knowing how many brothers the writer has or which brother is being referred to. (One way to think of the issue of restrictive and non-restrictive elements is that a restrictive element provides information that is necessary to narrow the field of candidates down to one.)

But check out this example:

~My other brother, who lives in Texas, is named Sam.

In this sentence the first substantive, the noun phrase “My other brother,” conveys the information that the writer has only two brothers, and it also specifies which of those two brothers is being referred to, so the fact that he lives in Texas is extra information–not necessary for specifying which of two brothers is being referred to. In fact, although the brother’s name is given in this sentence, the name itself isn’t actually needed to narrow the field of candidates to one: the phrase “my other brother” indicates that the writer has only two brothers, and it also specifies which of thoise two brothers he is referring to. (Obviously, the would not say “my other brother” except in a context where he has just referred to the first brother.)

If the relative clause “who lives in Texas” were treated as restrictive, then the sentence would convey the information that the writer has two brothers who live in Texas, and that would only make sense if another brother living in Texas had already been mentioned:

~I have two brothers that live in Texas. One is named Eric. My other brother who lives in Texas is named Sam.

Judgment Calls

Sometimes whether to treat a relative clause as restrictive or nonrestrictive is simply a judgment call.

~My sister, who is even deafer than I am, is named Linda.

In this example, the information that Linda “is even deafer than I am” is extra. Since the main clause names the sister as Linda, the information in the relative clause is not necessary to identify which of the writer’s sisters he is referring to.

But this relative clause could be treated as restrictive, giving the sentence a slightly different meaning:

~My sister who is even deafer than I am is named Linda.

This version of the sentence indicates that the purpose is to call the reader’s attention to a specific sister–the one “who is even deafer than I am,” as opposed to one or more other sisters who are not.

This is an important point: sometimes whether a clause is restrictive or nonrestrictive is determined by subtleties of meaning, and it is up to the writer to make sure that the sentence says exactly what he means.

~My youngest sister, who has three children, is named Carol.

In this example, the phrase “my youngest sister” doesn’t tell exactly how many sisters I have (though it does indicate three or more, because “youngest” is in the superlative form). But it does specify exactly which one I am referring to, as there can be only one “youngest sister,” so the information about the three children is extra information, not needed to specify which one of however many sisters I am referring to.

~My daughter recently attended a Shakespearean play that was being performed at the rebuilt Globe Theater in London.

In this case, the relative clause “that was being performed at the rebuilt Globe Theater in London” is restrictive because it is being used to specify which Shakespearean play she attended. There are many Shakespearean plays, and they are being performed all the time in many places. The relative clause narrows the field of candidates down to one.

But this is another sentence where the relative clause could be treated as nonrestrictive, giving a slightly different meaning to the sentence:

~My daughter recently attended a Shakespearean play, which was being performed at the rebuilt Globe Theater in London.

This version of the sentence emphasizes the fact that the play was being performed in the rebuilt Globe Theater, not which play she attended.

Sumber aslinipun niki:http://grammartips.homestead.com/nonrestrictivecommas.html

Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist, whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. He is especially known for his book Language (1933), describing the state of the art of linguistics at its time.

Bloomfield was the main founder of the Linguistic Society of America.

Bloomfield’s thought was mainly characterized by its behavioristic principles for the study of meaning, its insistence on formal procedures for the analysis of language data, as well as a general concern to provide linguistics with rigorous scientific methodology. Its pre-eminence decreased in the late 1950s and 1960s, after the emergence of Generative Grammar.

Bloomfield also began the genetic examination of the Algonquian language family with his reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian; his seminal paper on the family remains a cornerstone of Algonquian historical linguistics today.

Avram Noam Chomsky (lahir 7 Desember 1928 di Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) adalah seorang profesor linguistik dari Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Salah satu reputasi Chomsky di bidang linguistik terpahat lewat teorinya tentang tata bahasa generatif.

Kepakarannya di bidang linguistik ini mengantarkannya merambah ke studi politik. Chomsky telah menulis lebih dari 30 buku politik, dengan beragam tema. Dan sejak 1965 hingga kini, dia menjelma menjadi salah satu tokoh intelektual yang paling kritis terhadap kebijakan luar negeri Amerika Serikat. Buku-buku bertema politiknya kerap dianggap terlalu radikal untuk diresensi atau ditampilkan media AS.

Selama lima dasawarsa ini, Chomsky telah menjalin kontrak secara langsung dengan lebih dari 60 penerbit di seluruh dunia dan sudah menulis lebih dari 30 buku bertema politik. Dan baris-baris kalimat dalam tulisannya muncul di lebih dari 100 buku, mulai dari karya ilmiah tentang linguistik, politik, hingga kumpulan kuliah, wawancara dan esai.

Tidak banyak barangkali sosok penulis best seller yang bersikap seperti seperti Noam Chomsky. Bagi dia, menulis buku adalah perpanjangan dari aktivitas politiknya. Bila sebagian besar penulis menghabiskan energinya mencemaskan tentang promosi dan penjualan buku mereka, tidaklah demikian dengan Chomsky. Kritikus yang aktif mengomentari kebijakan politik luar negeri AS ini, selalu menolak melakukan tur standar untuk mempromosikan bukunya. Chomsky bahkan tidak begitu peduli dengan urusan uang muka royalti, pasal-pasal dalam kontrak, dan hak-hak yang diberikan penerbit.

Noam Chomsky yang kemudian sering disebut Chomsky dikenal sebagai tokoh intelektual yang berani “melawan arus” mapan (atau istilah populernya sebagai antikemapanan), baik terhadap kalangan kolega yang disebut-sebutnya sebagai “pembebek garis resmi kebijakan Amerika Serikat” ataupun para elit pemerintahan di Amerika Serikat. Tulisan dan artikelnya serta pendapatnya yang sering menyentakkan publik dan elit pemerintahan Amerika Serikat terutama dalam perspektif dia yagn berbeda seputar peran Amerika Serikat di berbagai tempat di dunia mulai dari Nikaragua, Amerika Tengah, Vietnam hingga Timur Tengah.

Pendapatnya yang sering berbeda dengan opini umum dan memberikan perfektif dan arti baru berbagai istilah dan peristiwa, mengundang serangan dari kalangan tertentu, dan pemahaman baru terhadap hal-hal yang tak terbayangkan sebelumnya pada kalangan lainnya. Semua gagasannya yang mengundang kalangan penentang dan pendukung selalu ditampilkan secara berbobot (powerfull).

Masalah antara jarak dan realitas dan pemaknaan media besar dalam berbagai kasus seperti “Perang Dingin“, Tatanan Dunia Baru,Demokrasi dan lainnya merupakan objek utama Chomsky. Motivasinya adalah rasa ingin tahu yang besar. Ia selalu terjud dalam berbagai opini yang selalu bertentangan dan berbeda, lalu mencari makna sebenarnya dalam gagasan yang saling bertentangan dan berbeda dan bahkan saling bertabrakan itu. Menurut guru besar linguistik MIT ini, pandangan monolitik media-media besar yang tampil secara konsisten harus dicurigai sebagai upaya untuk mempertahankan status quo yang ada.

Bagi saya,Abudira alias Pa’e dira yang sangat menarik dalam pandangan politiknya Chomsky adalah statementnya yang sangat keras menentang kebijakan politik amerika…coba baca ungkapannya berikut ini:

• Kritik yang sangat kuat pada kebijakan luar negeri Amerika Serikat. Secara khusus, dia melihat adanya standar ganda (yang dia sebut sebagai “standar tunggal”) pada kebijakan luar negeri yang menceramahi tentang demokrasi dan kebebasan untuk semua orang, ketika pada saat yang sama mempromosikan, mendukung, dan menyekutukan dirinya dengan negara dan organisasi nondemokratis dan represif. Chomsky berargumen bahwa hal tersebut berakibat pada pelanggaran berat hak asasi manusia. Dia juga sering berargumen bahwa campur tangan Amerika pada negara-negara asing, termasuk bantuan rahasia terhadap Contras di Nikaragua, salah satu peristiwa yang Chomsky telah sangat kritis terhadapnya, masuk ke dalam deskripsi standar terorisme.

• Dia berargumen bahwa media massa di Amerika Serikat banyak yang berpraktik sebagai pasukan propaganda dan “keulamaan bayaran” oleh pemerintahan dan perusahaan-perusahaan Amerika Serikat, dengan tiga pihak tersebut yang secara luas saling berkait-kelindan melalui kepentingan yang sama. Dalam referensi terkenal yang merujuk pada Walter Lippmann, Chomsky bersama Edward S. Herman menulis media Amerika memproduksi consent (imaji lewat media untuk memberikan sekutunya semacam hak untuk melakukan sesuatu yang salah secara hukum tapi berhak untuk tidak dituntut) ke dalam benak masyarakat.

More info bisa baca selanjutnya di :

http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky