And now, a summary for those who are not caught up :) While chapter one focuses largely on how to foster student "will" (or as @nick_dressler wrote last week, student "want to") to "emancipate" them (rather than "stultify" via "explication"), chapter two is concerned with how to do that. For teachers, Rancière highlights the benefits of universal teaching, intellectual freedom, and playing the role of the "ignorant master." For students, Rancière praises focusing attention, researching deeply, and achieving a growth mindset.
Throughout this chapter, I couldn't stop comparing Rancière's words to an elective I taught this year called "Passion-Based Learning thru Social Media." I suppose Rancière is right that "there's always something the ignorant one knows that can be used as a point of comparison, something to which a new thing to be learned can be related." (28) When friends, colleagues, or strangers ask what the course is about, I always feel strange describing it as, "a contentless course" where "I just teach students how to use social media to learn about something they care about (a passion)." Obviously, there is content, it's just the students choose it, not the teacher.
I pitched the class as a unique course that leans into the way the internet and social media are drastically changing our ability to learn. What I didn't know until this week, was that Rancière beat me to it. While the contentless course works well for me and Rancière, it's not for everyone. I have presented on this course at several conferences, and (as far as I know) no one has ever tried to replicate it. Teachers and administrators articulate a lot of the same hangups about a course like this one. In reading this chapter, I learned Rancière had already understood, analyzed, and overcame these hangups back in 1987! Below, I use Rancière's words and pedagogy to change the minds of those who are afraid to teach a contentless course.
1) How can the teacher teach if he/she is not an expert on what the student chooses to study?
Rancière answers this one with his title "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" or perhaps better with one of his section headings in chapter two, "The Power of the Ignorant" (31). He prefers a teacher who begins his journey with a student on equal intellectual footing rather than one who is an expert in his subject area. "Whoever wishes to emancipate someone must interrogate him in the manner of men and not in the manner of scholars, in order to be instructed, not to instruct" (29).
Perhaps most succinctly, Rancière writes, "to teach what one doesn't know is simply to ask questions about what one doesn't know" (30). He opens the chapter by showing the power of students teaching a teacher content. "'But I'm confused. Did you all, then, know chemistry?' 'No, but we learned it, and we gave [the teacher] lessons in it. That's universal teaching. It's the disciple that makes the master" (19).
2) What does class look like on a day-to-day basis? What does the teacher do if he/she does not explicate?
According to Rancière, a teacher must "interrogate" and "verify" (31). He also must allow the time and space for research. And he needs to direct students' attention to ensure they are learning.
Mostly, the teacher should become more of a mentor than an explicator, one who encourages, asks questions, and perhaps most importantly, promotes a growth mindset--or as Rancière would say, one who "forbids" the "'I can't, I don't understand'" (23).
Intellectual growth is not linear; the "route is unknown" (33). So as teachers, we need to lean into this. Emancipated classes should be flexible on a day-to-day basis. "The master is he who keeps the researcher on his own route" (emphasis mine, 33). Additionally, students should be able to explore and learn at their own speed, just as long as they're researching and focused.
3) What happens if a student doesn't know what he's passionate about?
In order to discover a passion, one needs to know himself, "that is to say, by examining the intellectual acts of which he is he subject, by noticing the manner in which he uses, in these acts, his power as a thinking being" (36). Every one of our students can do this, we just need to 1) ask the right questions and 2) give them the space to figure this out. Then it's the student's job to continue their intellectual growth by "[learning] something and [relating] everything else to it" (20).
4) How does a teacher assess? How do you hold students accountable?
While I gather Rancière disagrees with grades, he does leave us with a number of verbs that he seems to value in student learning. For example, "[asking] questions," (30) "observing, comparing, combining..." (36) "seeking, [and] researching" (37). If a teacher must assess, it seems this is how he can evaluate a student's work on an equal intellectual footing. I think Rancière could agree with this style of assessment or accountability even if he doesn't agree with grading per se. After all, he writes, "[a teacher] will not verify what the student has found, just that the student has searched" (31).
It just so happens, this is exactly how I built assessment/accountability into my course:
