Ignorant Schoolmaster Research Articles

Bookshelf: Kappan authors on their favorite reads

In this regular column, Kappan authors recommend books that have influenced their thinking about education. In this issue, James Paul Gee recommends The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation by Jacques Rancière, and Ayesha Hashim recommends Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and Inequality by Erica O. Turner.

The Emancipated Amateur: Rancierian Reviewing Practices and New Models of Theatre Criticism

The current proliferation of digital platforms and the reduction of arts coverage in mainstream media outlets in Canada has given rise to many theatre reviewers whose contributions to critical discourse are often dismissed because they lack professional legitimization. This article uses Jacques Rancière’s formulations of the ignorant schoolmaster and the emancipated spectator to interrogate the distinction between professional and amateur critics. It argues that participants and practices typically understood as amateur provide models of criticism that are pluralistic, affective, and inclusive. Analyzing three central case studies—a newspaper column featuring “regular” spectators, reviews by children and youth, and mentorship initiatives for emerging Black, Indigenous, and people of colour critics—the article demonstrates how amateurs challenge the notion of expertise as exclusive knowledge possessed by the elite. It highlights the benefits of opening up critical conversations during this crucial moment when the Canadian theatre industry is confronting its complicity in systemic injustices and seeking to attract new audiences.

Class matters in class matters: Education and emancipation in working-class culture: A conversation between Frank and Rita

This article is on education and emancipation in working-class culture, examining the use of illustrative language (particularly working-class dialect), as a tool to generate higher (or at least wider) educational exchange. Taking the form of a play script, or as an imagined sequel to Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita ([), this article utilizes the easily digestible format of conversation to explore and illustrate Mikhail Bahktin’s complex ideas on dialogism, and the ideological pedagogical position of Jacques Rancière’s novel The Ignorant Schoolmaster ([1989] 1999). We see Rita become academically educated, and as the narrative develops, the idea of what is meant when we say the word ‘culture’ is constantly challenged. Through exploring social culture in working-class communities, this narrative examines how a ‘lack’ of academic awareness has the potential to lead to a social state of intellectual undress: one that disarms and excites information exchange.

Practising democratic equality: overcoming hierarchy alongside Rancière’s schoolmaster and Phillips’ psychoanalyst

This article tackles the problem of how to transcend affinities for hierarchy and in their place generate desires for equality. Drawing from Jacques Rancière’s (1991) paradoxical treatment of equality in his The Ignorant Schoolmaster as something that is verified by unequal subjects, I show that Rancière treats equality as something only possible in the context of a false authority, the teacher, encircling students in a political boundary out of which they must break. Turning to Adam Phillips’ (2002) writing on the relationship between democracy, equality and psychoanalysis in his book Equals, I argue that uncovering internal desires for dominance and hierarchy is a prerequisite for cultivating different desires. As Phillips shows, we must become equal with ourselves in order to cultivate appetites for democracy, and to do the work that democracy requires. Taken together, these two texts demonstrate the necessity of two interrelated steps for transcending dominant structures: cultivating desires and exercising capacities for democratic equality.

The ignorant tallerista: toward a community of practice in the representation of the literary workshop in the Southern Cone

ABSTRACT This study reflects on the idea of community of practice in a corpus of contemporary Latin American texts that address literary workshops as a learning space. Thus, it is intended to demonstrate how the idea of community of practice, such as that of pedagogical identity or repertoire, appears in contemporary texts as an established, recognisable practice and, in general, linked to the idea of an ignorant schoolmaster (Rancière). For this reason, the study reviews the classes of Hebe Uhart compiled by Liliana Villanueva; the chronicles of Villanueva on the workshops of renowned Latin American authors such as Abelardo Castillo and Liliana Heker; and essays by Tamara Kamenzsain, Fabián Casas, and Luis López-Aliaga. Lastly, the study highlights texts by prominent Latin American writers in which they reflect on the practice of writing as a community exercise of the creation of knowledge developed and reproduced by practitioners.

Jacques Rancière and Care Ethics: Four Lessons in (Feminist) Emancipation

This paper proposes a conversation between Jacques Rancière and feminist care ethicists. It argues that there are important resonances between these two bodies of scholarship, thanks to their similar indictments of Western hierarchies and binaries, their shared invitation to “blur boundaries” and embrace a politics of “impropriety”, and their views on the significance of storytelling/narratives and of the ordinary. Drawing largely on Disagreement, Proletarian Nights, and The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, I also indicate that Rancière’s work offers crucial and timely insights for care ethicists on the importance of attending to desire and hope in research, the inevitability of conflict in social transformation, and the need to think together the transformation of care work/practices and of dominant social norms.

Radical Equality in Ghanaian Market Fiction for Children

This article situates Ghana’s popular market fiction for children in relation to British colonial and official Ghanaian children’s literature and, following Rancière’s model of the ‘ignorant schoolmaster’, presses for an expectation of intelligence from the rowdy genre, toward ‘radical equality’. Joshua Kojo Sey’s Wonders Shall Never End (c. 2017) serves as a central case of how a text that may seem to lack control over its own abundance of ideas offers up vital imaginary constructs.

Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Poetic Virtue and the Method of Equality

AbstractJacques Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster confronts its reader with an intellectual adventure. In this article, Michael McCreary interrogates why Rancière might have chosen to share Joseph Jacotot's pedagogical ideas with us and how the method in which he casts them might be internal to their teaching. In the first section, McCreary directs his attention to the end of the book, where Rancière chronicles the ways in which Jacotot's educational vision proved difficult to share with his nineteenth‐century contemporaries — both his critics and his supposed disciples. In the second, he suggests that recent interpretations of The Ignorant Schoolmaster by philosophers of education have, in their turn, tended to miss the adventure of Rancière's text in uncannily similar ways. In the third and final section, he returns to the question of what we stand to learn from Jacotot's story by considering how Rancière's text teaches us to read it. To do so McCreary looks at the pedagogical role of literary texts within Jacotot's teaching: Jacotot situates reading these texts as an act of “translation” by which one human intelligence makes itself known to another on the basis of their fundamental equality. McCreary concludes by suggesting some potential avenues for verifying the intelligence of The Ignorant Schoolmaster in a way that does not reduce the imaginative process of verification to a standardized pedagogical model.

Using Chinese and First Nations philosophies about time and history to reimagine transcultural doctoral education

ABSTRACT Transcultural doctoral education has become a space to create opportunities for candidates to construct transcultural knowledge from the Global South. Rancière’s ideas about the ignorant schoolmaster and the role of dissensus have created cosmopolitan pedagogies in doctoral education. However, the role of history in transcultural doctoral education remains unexplored and draws principally on Western theorists. This article explores Chinese and First Nations philosophies about time and history to reframe transcultural doctoral education. We argue that these philosophies can create spaces for innovative approaches to doctoral research. They can also rehumanise doctoral education and assist First Nations and transcultural doctoral candidates to connect their micro histories with macro cultural, cosmic understandings of what it means to be a researcher in the twenty-first century. This is vital if the dominant fast, linear timescapes of contemporary doctoral education are to be made more inclusive for First Nations and transcultural doctoral candidates.

Sobre partos y nacimientos: derivas ético-políticas de la figura del “maestro-partero” en filosofía con/para niñxs.

In this paper, I endeavor to evaluate the ethical-political consequences of the metaphor of "teacher-midwife" awarded to Plato’s Socrates in Theaetetus and its use by different scholars to describe the role of teacher in a Philosophy with/for children (Pf/wC) context. The paper is divided into three sections: first (1) an approach is made to the figure of Socrates in Meno, to the critique of his method as expressed by Jacques Rancière in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and to the echoing of that critique by Walter Kohan in his evaluation of the pedagogy of Pf/wC. Next, (2) different descriptions of the teacher’s role in Pf/wC are reviewed, emphasizing the elements that emphasize the Socratic figure. For Matthew Lipman, one of the keys to turning classrooms into communities of philosophical inquiry was to substantially modify the teaching role. Because, on Lipman’s account, the teacher should not teach in the traditional sense, different metaphors have been sought to describe her role. In section (3), I argue that a description of the teacher as "guide" can be applied to many features that characterize Socrates. I analyze in depth the metaphor of the "teacher-midwife" establishing the links with those developed in (1) and (2). Emphasis is placed on the ethical-political consequences of equating the teacher with a "teacher-midwife", especially if we take into account Plato's complete description of pedagogical maiusis in Theaetetus, and the centrality of the metaphor in Pf/wC pedagogical practice. Finally, I consider the very different image of the “birth” metaphor that is suggested by Hannah Arendt’s concept of “natality,” and explore its implications for a pedagogical alternative to the Socratic.

Event, currere, and the ignorant schoolmaster.

The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the higher education systems in ways that make visible problems that already existed but that previously were not fully noticed. The pandemic can be understood as an event that inspired social and subjective reflection aimed at a redefinition of the university curriculum. The closure of universities, which began as a preventive measure, has forced professors to reorganize their work through virtual methods and environments. The teaching methods required during the pandemic have eliminated professors’ centrality at the university. However, the change from a face-to-face model to a virtual one is not the core problem; rather, the problem is how professors and students can turn the new forms for their relationship into opportunities for emancipation.

Can The Teacher as a Learner be “The Ignorant Schoolmaster”?

Can The Teacher as a Learner be “The Ignorant Schoolmaster”?

“Exercícios emancipatórios” para uma aprendizagem da filosofia no ensino médio a partir de O mestre ignorante de Jacques Rancière

Tomamos emprestado o termo “exercícios emancipatórios” de Walter Kohan (2003) para pensar a aprendizagem na Filosofia a partir de O Mestre Ignorante de Jacques Rancière (2002). Desse modo, o presente artigo analisa os temas “exercícios espirituais” em Pierre Hadot (2014), seus desdobramentos na Hermenêutica do Sujeito de Michel Foucault (2006) e “igualdade e emancipação” em O Mestre Ignorante para, a partir dessa última obra, se perguntar: como e quais “exercícios de pensamento” podem ser “exercícios emancipatórios” no qual a aprendizagem na Filosofia desperta o aluno para aquilo de que ele é capaz?

A avaliação em filosofia na perspectiva da igualdade e da emancipação: “vontade”, “atenção” e “busca”

Fruto da pesquisa feita no Mestrado Profissional em Filosofia (PROF-FILO), Núcleo da Universidade do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (UERN), o artigo tem por objetivo apresentar a parte teórico-filosófica e os resultados da ação educativo-filosófica que aconteceu na Escola Estadual Professora Calpúrnia Caldas de Amorim (EECCAM). Utilizamos como aporte teórico principal O mestre ignorante de J. Rancière. Apesar de considerar a experiência docente do pesquisador e as perspectivas pedagógicas (HOFFMANN, 2009; 2010; LUCKESI, 2010; 2011), a abordagem filosófica do tema exigiu direcionar a pesquisa para uma questão inicial “O que é a Filosofia?”, pois as escolhas didáticas, metodológicas, os conteúdos e as abordagens no ensino-aprendizagem da Filosofia decorrem e devem estar ligadas às possíveis e subjetivas respostas que o/a professor/a de Filosofia dá a essa questão inicial (BOAVIDA, 1996; CERLETTI, 2003; 2009; TOMAZETTI, 2014). As metodologias utilizadas na pesquisa foram a bibliográfica, com análise da obra principal e de obras secundárias e, para a ação educativo-filosófica, a qualitativa, com pesquisa-ação como abordagem (LAVILLE, 1999; SEVERINO, 2007; GHEDIN; FRANCO, 2011; MINAYO, 2012). Foi possível constatar, na ação educativa-filosófica, que mais do que compreender as ideias contidas em O mestre ignorante, os/as participantes puderam aprender sobre o ensino, a aprendizagem e a avaliação da Filosofia no nível médio; puderam também aprender sobre os papéis dos/as professores/as e alunos/as, principais personagens da ação educativa; e, acima de tudo, a ação educativa-filosófica possibilitou aos/às participantes da pesquisa, cada um à sua medida, reconhecer alguns aspectos de suas próprias capacidades intelectuais.

Una mirada hacia los procesos horizontales y emancipatorios en el acto educativo

Este texto presenta una reflexión sobre el papel del acto educativo como elemento de comprensión en la formación de ciudadanos críticos y propositivos de su ser y estar en el mundo. Para dicha reflexión, se constituye como punto de encuentro el libro: El maestro ignorante del profesor francés Jacques Rancière. Así es que, en la primera parte del texto se expone la discusión conceptual que existe en dicho libro, como lo son las relaciones docentes y estudiante, enseñanza y aprendizaje, atontamiento y emancipación. Seguidamente, se abordan las concepciones sobre una educación que se propenda por espacios horizontales, humanistas y emancipatorios. El punto central da importancia a pensar los procesos de aprendizaje desde la mirada del profesor Rancière, inquiriendo en otros textos significativos de reflexión como los de Bauman y Bourdieu. Finalmente, se aborda la necesidad de propiciar en el contexto educativo una pedagogía emancipadora, que construya procesos de aprendizaje a partir del diálogo, la capacidad de asombro y la cooperación, partiendo de otras enunciaciones filosóficas y pedagógicas, como las de Gadamer y Freire.

Días de ira (1930) de Helios Gómez: La encrucijada del artista revolucionario de entreguerras

Helios Gomez (Seville 1905-Barcelona 1956), versatile artist and man of action, was, according to his biographer Ursula Tjaden, “the best-known political graphic artist of the Spanish State” (27). His ink drawings, xylographs and posters were a reference point for the progressive forces of the inter-war period, combining avant-garde art, popular tradition, and political message. Exiled in Berlin in 1930 due to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Helios publishes his portfolio entitled Dias de ira. That same year, he abandoned his anarchist militancy and joined several communist organizations until finally being expelled in 1938 and returning to the libertarian ranks. This portfolio, therefore, appears at an ideological and aesthetic turning point in the life of the artist. In this article, we will examine how this transition (from anarchism to communism) is translated, in the case of Helios, into a more direct and explicit type of drawing, and into a new idea of the leading role of the artist in the processes of social change. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere’s contrast between the “ignorant schoolmaster” and the “stultifying pedagogue”, we will explore how the aesthetic tension that characterizes the drawings in Dias de ira responds, fundamentally, to the artist´s degree of confidence in the interpretative capacity of the popular classes.

The Rediscovery of Teaching by Gert J. J. Biesta

Reviewed by: The Rediscovery of Teaching by Gert J. J. Biesta Xenia Coulter and Alan Mandell Gert J. J. Biesta. The Rediscovery of Teaching. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. 111 pp. Softcover: $39.50. ISBN 978-1-138-67070-9 Gert Biesta is a highly respected European philosopher of education who deserves to be better known in the United States. His recent book, The Rediscovery of Teaching (2017), the 4th book of a previous trilogy, could be said to play a similar role to that of John Dewey's Experience and Education (1938) in that it focuses upon the nature of teaching and its critical role in the schools of purportedly free societies. Moreover, both books were written rather late in their authors' careers, and as relatively short texts, they seem to serve well as accessible descriptions of their philosophies for readers not yet familiar with their earlier works. In addition, although both men wrote primarily about the education of children, their conception of the goals and methods of education is readily applicable not only to younger students but to traditional-aged college students (those 18–25), and also to older adults seeking a college degree. For both men, progressive education, with its emphasis upon student independence and individualization, is singularly well-suited for life in an ever-changing, and thus uncertain, democratic world. For Biesta, such a world needs adults who are assertive "grown up" "subjects," rather than objects of someone else's attention, a perspective that is quite comparable to Dewey's insistence that learners be their own "agents." For both Biesta and Dewey, students need space to think for themselves about the subject matter they are considering, and teachers must trust their students' ability to do so. Thus, the teacher's activities as an educator and the student's activities as a learner are clearly separate–the teacher's role is to invite students to learn, to provide stimulation ("to arouse the desire in the student," p. 95) and support, and to interrogate and assess the student's knowledge during this process. For their part, students "encounter" (p. 98) a kind of freedom that permits them to learn for themselves. As Biesta notes, not only are teachers not "sages on the stage" (who, like Freire's knowledge bankers, pour knowledge into the heads of students [1972]), but they are also not "guides on the side" (who learn along with their students), nor are they "peers in the rear" (who let students learn whenever they wish). Thus, like Dewey, he knows how important teachers are to the learning process and champions the complex and challenging task that they face. Biesta thus sharply criticizes contemporary attempts to reduce teaching to that of a mirror image of what is to be learned–which he refers to as "the learnification" of education (p. 27). All told, Biesta, and probably Dewey too, seek to remind the reader, especially now in an age in which education is becoming increasingly mechanized, that true teaching is a deeply human endeavor–and badly needed. At first glance, this kind of teaching may seem appropriate only for unsettled content areas that allow for student speculation. But even in seemingly rigid forms of technical or professional education, the teacher at some point must relinquish control and allow students to perform on their own (i.e., to learn from their mistakes, practice, or even experiment) whether learning to ride a bike, play bridge, wire a house, or even solve mathematical problems. Indeed, in a recent TedX talk, math educator Finkel (2015) uses almost the same language as does Biesta. Rather than telling students what they need to know, he emphasizes instead the importance of inviting them into mathematical discussions where the learners' efforts to find out for themselves are [End Page E-15] taken seriously. Biesta uses an example of language learning to make the same point. Borrowing from French philosopher Rancière (1991), he offers the story of an "ignorant schoolmaster" who was able to successfully "teach" Flemish students the French language even though the teacher was unable to speak Flemish. To us, Dewey's view of teachers as creators of educative experiences rather than lecturers or...

Reflexiones en torno a la emancipación intelectual desde El Maestro Ignorante de Jacques Rancière

La disonancia vivida por el pedagogo francés Joseph Jacotot en 1818 y recogida por Jacques Rancière en El Maestro Ignorante en 1987, más que la propuesta de un nuevo paradigma educativo o la crítica a diferentes modelos pedagógicos, podría considerarse como una invitación para pensar la emancipación y para prestar más atención a los supuestos que entrañan algunas apuestas emancipatorias. Acogiendo esta invitación lanzada por Rancière/ Jacotot, en el presente trabajo se persigue un doble objetivo: por un lado, a partir de una lectura exegética de Rancière, enunciar su crítica hacia una forma dominante a través de la cual se ha pensado la emancipación; y por otro, poner en evidencia aquello que según Rancière, se juega en el proceso emancipatorio.

Educação como percurso: por uma mestria ativa, criativa e inventiva na educação de surdos

RESUMO O presente artigo objetiva trazer uma reflexão sobre o aprender e a relação com o mestre em salas de aulas em que alunos surdos aprendem por processos de interpretação, ou seja, com a presença de intérpretes educacionais. O artigo se desenvolve a partir de aportes teóricos da filosofia francesa alinhados a questões postas sobre o campo da educação, mais especificamente na educação de surdos em espaços inclusivos. As cenas escolares serão trazidas como componentes articuladores da teoria, dessa forma, as análises foram desenvolvidas ao longo de toda a produção textual. Duas obras literárias, O mestre ignorante de Jacques Rancière e O mestre inventor de Walter Kohan, foram apresentadas como forma de ilustrar figuras de mestres que alçam produzir encontros criativos com seus alunos, nos quais aprendem, ensinam, criam e constroem-se. Esses dois experimentos de mestrias anunciados, alinhados ao lugar híbrido que o intérprete educacional ocupa na escola, foram usados como espaço de diálogo para repensar o processo educacional, e o aprender como sendo da ordem da singularidade.

Finding a Way: More Tales of Dyslexia and Dyspraxia in Psychophysical Actor Training

ABSTRACT This article proposes a radical paradigm shift for actor training and voice training. Using heuristic practice-based research findings, the article highlights how progressive education methods at the heart of psychophysical actor training dysconsciously discriminate against students who are dyslexic and/or dyspraxic learners. It discusses the psychological and cognitive impact of experiential learning models on neurodiverse acting students and challenges the widely held “truths” in this training. The article draws on the philosophical framework proposed by Jacques Rancière in his discussion of the emancipatory pedagogy of Joseph Jacotot, The Ignorant Schoolmaster, to offer an alternative perspective on actor training that starts from an assumption of equality, rather than a position where equality is a distant objective. The author argues that it is possible to reject a hierarchical expert–novice approach to training and implement a process of collaboration with students as fellow artists. The article reviews the position of knowledge within psychophysical training, and the author rejects the use of a universal language of experiences. The author proposes that, by trusting the student’s ability to learn what is needed, actor trainers can adopt a position of ignorance in relation to a student’s own self-knowledge. Finally, the author incorporates this work into a revised vocal pedagogy that embraces neurodiversity and effectively engages all students’ will to learn with full attention.