Going to K-12 has become the norm, as well as the law, and going to college after K-12 has recently become the norm too. A common thought that many share, but not physically very often, is, “Is school necessarily necessary in order to gain knowledge?” Most will say no, however, almost all will go along with the norm regardless. Rancière, author of the scholarly book, “The Ignorant Schoolmaster”, has probably had the same question, and we can safely assume his answer would be “no,” based on his writing.
Rancière uses the historical figure of a French instructor, Joseph Jacotot, who had the challenge of teaching French to a group of Flemish students without speaking Flemish himself. In his book, he discusses six subjects: explication, emancipation, ignorance, intelligence, will, and language. He has a very distinct belief for each subject, and interesting explanations for his beliefs. I found Rancière’s discussion on explication, emancipation, and intelligence most interesting. I will illustrate these three principles of intellectual emancipation argued by Rancière, and argue my case for my point of view in regards to why I believe his principles*.
Using Joseph Jacotot’s classroom as an example, Rancière argues anyone is capable of acquiring knowledge without explication (Ranciere, 10). By giving each student a bilingual copy of Télémaque, the students of Joseph Jacotot were capable of understanding and learning French grammar and spelling, without explication. Rancière believes that learning can become desiring and enjoying when a student makes their own journey; however, depending on explication from the teacher causes a “veil of ignorance” (6). Rancière further explains that as a result, the student becomes inferior to the t...
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...eresting to look at explication, emancipation, ignorance, intelligence, will, and language in Rancière’s view. It is definitely a text I would recommend anyone at any age to read and be open minded in regards to Rancière’s view. As I was reading the text, it brought upon the question, “If anyone is capable of acquiring any knowledge without explication, why do people tend to spend thousands of dollars in order to acquire knowledge?” It is indeed a very interesting question for me, and one that I will research more about. As of right now, I can only assume, the idea that higher education is only acquirable at an institution is, like the meaning of intelligence, another common misconception.
Works Cited
Ranciere, Jacques. The Ignorant School Master: Five Lessons in Intellectual
Emancipation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991. Print.
Botstein once argued in his book Jefferson’s Children that “the American high school are obsolete”. In detail, the dissemination that the current method of education has entirely strangled the scheme is an important issue which has to be scrutinized critically.
John Taylor Gatto, who was a teacher at the public school for twenty-six years, and the writer of the essay “Against School” that first appeared in Harper’s magazine in 2001, censures and blames the American public school’s educational system in his argumentative essay with various convincible supporting ideas. Gatto argues that the demands of public education system’s schooling are essential problems in “Against School”. Gatto shows some positive examples of the educating without forced schooling and shows models of the ‘success without forced modern schooling’. Indeed, the writer insists that historically forced schooling is not related to intellectual and financial success in American history. James Bryant Conant, who was the twenty-third
Gatto uses the example of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln not attending twelve years of schooling and turning out just fine. In fact, he goes on to point out that most famous Americans in history, such as Edison, Carnegie and Rockefeller, to name a few rose to be admirals (p. 302), without attending high school. The main point Gatto seems to be explaining is that so many historians went without the twelve years of schooling and came out well educated. Although Gatto points out the historical stand point, Alfie Kohn uses past research to get his point across. As Kohn explains, studies after studies have shown that students starting from elementary school – up until graduate school are less interested in learning the material as a result of being graded. (p. 287) Also, the strive to get into college or graduate school depends on grades and GPA which puts more of a focus on having the highest grades and GPA, causing students to stress over making an A rather than a B or C, fearing that they may be turned down from a
From early ages into young adulthood, education is a major component of one’s future possibilities. A childhood filled with enlightenment, instead of negligence toward education, leads to a significantly higher chance of an easier lifestyle. In the essay “Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly
He is able to achieve his explicit purpose of telling the story of his experience learning the French language by using first person point of view, as well as by appealing heavily to ethos in doing this. By writing the essay as a first person narrative, Sedaris effectively tells his story as truth, and is also able to achieve his implicit purpose because he himself has overcome challenges in learning something new. Sedaris’s appeals to ethos work in the same way, in that they make him a credible speaker, which makes him effective in achieving his purposes. By using hyperbole and informal language, Sedaris creates a casual tone, which allows him to connect with his audience. This makes the essay more personal to each reader, and allows for a larger scope of readers, as it lacks academic vernacular. This is especially helpful in achieving the implicit purpose. Since Sedaris intends to convey that learning something new is filled with obstacles which must be overcome, one can infer that the text itself is directed at those who are likely to be learning new things; while this can be anyone in the world, the essay is most relatable to students. By using an informal tone, young people will find the essay more engaging, as well as easier to understand, which will allow them to derive a clear message from the
Going to college has become an American dream. The desire to gain an education, in order to live a fulfilled life, leads to working a dream job and having the house on the corner with the white picket fence. However, achieving the American dream of obtaining a college degree is not as easy as one may think. To live the American dream students need to have a deep desire to learn and educate themselves to become more thoroughly educated and knowledgeable. Both Russel Baker’s essay “School vs. Education” and Mary Sherry’s’ essay “In Praise of the F Word” have agreed with points in the fact that education begins earlier in life. But when does education begin? The first easy lessons in life begin from learning how to roll, crawl, walk, and talk. I remember when I was about three years old and learned how to ride my first bike with training wheels. Although I didn’t learn overnight, after much practice, I became a pro. We are born to learn. However, active parenting, a supportive community, a robust economy, and prepared teachers impact the process of education and the importance
According to Jim Rohn, “Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.” Education plays a major role in the every society, which can hinder one or enhance one’s mind. The key to learning is staying focus and wanting to grasp information that will help one pursue higher education in the near future. Home and public schools both have their pros and cons, but they both instill knowledge within the students. When it’s time for kids to go to school, parents must decide what type of educational environment would be better for their child. The best solution is to find the perfect learning facility that the individual
We live in a society where we are surrounded by people telling us that school/education and being educated is the only way to succeed. However, the school system is not up to the standards we want it to uphold. There are three issues we discuss the most which are the government, the student, and the teacher. In John Taylor Gatto 's essay “Against School”, we see the inside perspective of the educational system from the view of a teacher. In “I Just Wanna Be Average”, an essay written by Mike Rose, we hear a student 's experience of being in a vocational class in the lower level class in the educational system when he was supposed to be in the higher class.
Through our class discussions of education we came across this quote by Joseph Sobran, an American journalist and writer who spent a great amount of his career working for the National Review Magazine, "In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college." When asked to critically think about the meaning of this quote I concluded that our educational standards have been lowered over the years and that students in America are not as intelligent as they once were in previous years. These two thoughts brought me to the questions, what does it mean to be educated or intelligent and who gets to decide. When reflecting emotionally on how this quote made me feel I realized it made me feel
Graff begins by talking about the educational system, and why it flawed in many ways, but in particular, one: Todays schools overlook the intellectual potential of street smart students, and how shaping lessons to work more readily with how people actually learn, we could develop into something capable of competing with the world. In schools, students are forced to recite and remember dull and subject heavy works in order to prepare them for the future, and for higher education. “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic. We assume that it’s possible to wax intellectual about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, fashion, sports, TV, or video games.” (Graff, 198-199) In everyday life, students are able to learn and teach themselves something new everyday. It is those students, the “young person who is impressively “street smart” but does poorly in school” (Graff, 198), that we are sweeping away from education and forcing to seek life in places that are generally less successful than those who attend a college or university.
In conclusion, education is broader than just falling into what the contemporary school system has to offer. Both Gatto and Graff proved this by explain how conforming students to certain perspectives of education limits their potential in other educational branches that interest the students. Also, curricula should bring a balance between making a school a place for obtaining information, and accommodating the educational demands for each individual student. It is imperative to understand that reforming the academic system, by fine-tuning schools to have its students learn what exactly they are interested in, will lead to having students accessing their full intellectual potential.
Education is an ongoing process; remains through all the stages of life. Knowledge is deep-sea and one can never claim to have acquired all of it. Sim...
School plays an important role in our lives. Many people will spend more than fifteen years at school in order to get the qualifications that are required to work in a specific field. Those years are broken down into several levels, some of them being more enjoyable than others. Two very important levels that people go through are high school and college. Even though some think that these levels are almost the same, there are significant differences between them. The cost of high school is not the same as the cost of college. Also, some differences apply from an academic point of view. Typically, the social environment also differs from high school to college, which can be related to the question of freedom versus responsibility.
In the twentieth century, the avoidance of the using L1 in classrooms dominated teachers’ minds; as well it was implemented in many policies and guidelines of language teaching (Cook, 2001). Thornbury (2010) listed a set of arguments against using L1 in L2 classrooms mainly for that the translation of L2 into another language will play negative effects on students’ learning process. He pointed out that the use of L1 will result learners to have a cognitive dependence on their mother tongue at the expense of developing independence TL learning. Although the two language systems are not equivalent in many aspects, students may have an awareness of the notion of equivalence of the two languages if translation serves to convey meanings. Some argue that the use of translation to convey the meaning of the TL is more efficient and more memorable. However, Thornbury (2010) sees the opposite. He stated that the simple and direct way of translation will make L2 knowledge less memorable since the process lacks mental efforts in working out meanings.
Ross, K. "Translator‟s introduction." The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation. By Rancière,, J. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. pp. vii-xxiii. Print.