The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Hardcover)

by Jacques Ranciere (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'An extremely provocative, original, and engaging book, it raises questions of great relevance and urgency about the process of cultural selection and canonization.'Denis Hollier, Yale University

Review

“An extremely provocative, original, and engaging book, it raises questions of great relevance and urgency about the process of cultural selection and canonization.”–Denis Hollier, Yale University

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 148 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press (November 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804718741
• ISBN-13: 978-0804718745
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,163,889 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishing work: a manifesto for pedagogy and politics, August 6, 2004

By	Anonymous (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Paperback)

I'm constantly amazed that more people haven't read this book, or even heard of it; it should be considered among the new classics of Continental political thought.

Rancière's text does several things at once: most simply, it tells the story of the eighteenth-century revolutionary pedagogue Joseph Jacotot, who developed a method of "panecastic" education which he considered the universal route to mental emancipation. But at the same time Rancière resurrects Jacotot's doctrine. Through a marvelous, sustained sleight-of-hand Rancière plays with its tone and narrative voice, this whole book works as a twentieth-century political manifesto at the same time as a work of history. It is radically egalitarian -- in fact, after reading the book I am not sure that anyone other than Jacotot and Rancière has fully understood the meaning of real, radical egalitarianism. And it is a real book on teaching, all the same, as part of its goal is to evangelize "panecastic" teaching and summarize this general method for teaching.

Not to take anything away from Rancière's other important work, which also deserves more exposure, but this book is incredible, maybe his best, and should be read by a much wider audience.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Parallels of Pedagogy and Production, May 26, 2007

By	Stephen Dewyer - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Paperback)

Rancière in The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation traces two paths: intellectual emancipation discovered through the retelling of Jacoto's "universal teaching" method that was happened upon by chance; and, stultification by institutionalized teaching meant to impart knowledge and increase intelligence. The stultifying methods include the testing for a capacity of knowledge by widespread examination and the belief that pedagogy has explication as its end. The method of stultification supports itself by imposing a hierarchy on intelligence. As Rancière demonstrates, capacity does not equal intelligence; pedagogy has nothing as its end; and to teach is to teach nothing.

Rancière's theory of intellectual emancipation challenges conservative approaches to education. With emphasis by curricula for K-12 directed toward teaching for the "No Child left behind" examinations enacted under the Bush Administration, one need only look at the concrete reality of its stultifying presence in public education. Yet, if we are to take up the cause for intellectual emancipation, critical questions arise regarding the division of labor by entrance into colleges and universities of higher education.

The Ignorant Schoolmaster challenges the institutionalization of learning that reiterates the system of class domination that tells the poor that they are incapable of learning beyond what the system gives them, that to learn is to reiterate that same system that tells them they have less intelligence than the middle-class that exploits them.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Knowing is half the battle...the other half is Ignorance..., March 8, 2009

By	Lost Lacanian (Lost-in, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Paperback)

I want to add my voice to the other two reviews. I also want to register my amazement that this book remains in relative obscurity.

Ranciere's Ignorant Schoolmaster is a serious philosophical work on the question of education and pedagogy that explores the connection between education and emancipatory politics. As a serious work of philosophy, it is rigorous and a quite demanding read. However, it advances an elegant thesis: all intelligences are equal. Thus, the intellectual emancipation of the students occurs when the holder of knowledge, the teacher, claims ignorance.

This book is made more important due to the lack of real books on the philosophy of education. The last serious book was Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written in the late sixties--a book with which Ranciere's has much affinity. It is strange that education has been drained of philosophy. Especially since Plato saw it as the key to maintain order in the Republic. Perhaps, philosophical thought on education represents a real danger to the powers that be, so much so that they systematically separated it from philosophy.

On a personal note. I teach Ranciere's book at the University where I am at. You could not believe the amount of controversey it stirs every time. Students, young and old, refuse to accept Ranciere's thesis that all intelligences are equal. They hold fast to the notion that some minds are superior. On a brighter note, one student admitted to me that he decided not to become a teacher because of this book.