The ignorant schoolmaster, by Rancière, is a provocation to any educator. Through the story of Jacotot, a schoolmaster who claimed that no knowledge is needed to teach, Rancière wrote a treatise on equality based on a critique of the pedagogical relationships produced by modernity. His critique is twofold: on the one hand, in contrast with the pedagogical myth that always thought of itself as emancipating and egalitarian, he describes the teacher and professor education as stultifying. On the other, he sees the critical intellectuals as reproducers of the very inequality they criticize. This intervention of Rancière is welcome in an educational debate less and less politicized, dominated by technocratic pedagogies, and where the urgency of hunger and violence makes it difficult to think about renewing the educational policies.
Rancière; Pedagogy; Equality; Critical intellectual; Jacotot