Abstract:
French philosopher Jacques Ranciere based the premise of his book ‘The Ignorant Schoolmaster’ on a groundbreaking experiment led by Joseph Jacotot in the early nineteenth century. Jacotot was forced into exile by the counter revolutionary forces in 1815 and went on to teach at a Dutch university. While his Dutch-speaking students were eager to hear what the French-speaking scientist could teach them, language became simultaneously what prevented them from communicating and, more importantly, the inadvertent precursor to a great experiment in emancipation. To attempt to understand each other, Jacotot gave his students a bilingual version of a book, asking those truly interested in his science to come back a few weeks later, once they had mastered the French language. To his surprise, a few weeks later, many students came back with an impressive level of French. This left the teacher with revolutionary questions: ‘Was will more important than ability? Was every man virtually able to understand what others had done and understood?’
Details / PDF:
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