IGNORANT SCHOOLMASTER

Jacques Rancière's Theory of 'Ignorant Schoolmaster'

Jacques Rancière's Theory of 'Ignorant Schoolmaster'

Introduction

Jacques Rancière's in his book on theory of the 'ignorant schoolmaster' presented a thought provoking concept related to intelligence and equality. Relationship intelligence and equality is detrimental to the ignorance of people and their role in life. Jacques Rancière addressed this issue by diverting the attention of reader towards dimensional concepts related to intelligence and attention.

The component of intellectual emancipation in one's life has a unique relationship with the knowledge of the individual and ability to adjust in situations. The concept of ignorant schoolmaster has pedagogical basis for ensuring the relationship between these concepts. It revolves around the experiences of a French teacher that particularly implies certain considerations related to the action and its significance. Ignorant schoolmaster is a creative approach to derive the fundamentals of knowledge and action considering the decisive issue of mistakes and self-evaluation towards positive change (White 2006, 23). This theory diametrically presents opposed conceptions that are now widely used in schools as a function to assess things in life.

Fundamentals of Theory

Jacques Rancière has presented the story of a French teacher of 19th century, named Joseph Jacotot, in The Ignorant Schoolmaster. The theory of Ignorant Schoolmaster discusses different aspects of an individual's life. Jacotot discovered an eccentric way of teaching that accentuate the relation of education, ignorance, intelligence, pedagogy, human nature, equality, contempt, and emancipation. These factors have reflective implications on the concept of research and schooling including the role of teachers and scholars in mentoring and students guiding (Ranciere 1991, 16).

Subject matter of the theory is the role of teachers in developing the intellectual capacity of students. Arguments presented in forming the theory are often misunderstood by people as Ranciere has used an unconventional approach to address the issue and its causes. Basically, main objective of the theory is to convince readers that every individual has same intellectual capacity and no distinction should be made in people on the basis of their learning capacity as role of teacher is crucial in directing the learning path of students (Walwin 2010, 49). Jacotot, main character that formed the basis of theory, had to teach Flemish students in language which he did not understand; similarly, his students were also unable to understand the language which Jacotot could speak. Therefore, he recommended them a bilingual edition of a book and asked them to refer to words comparison in both books. Ultimately, after sometime, his students started understanding the French language in which Jacotot was fluent.

This situation created a perplexity for Jacotot to understand his role in transferring knowledge and intellectual capacity of his students that enabled self-learning in them. This leaded to the presentation of three concepts, which states that intelligence level of all people is same and no distinction should be made for classifying them on this basis. Another concept that is derived from the theory of ignorant schoolmaster is that intelligence and intellectual capacity are the gift of God to ...