#Ranciere18 - Students Need to Take Responsibility for Their Learning. Do the Circumstances of Schools Make It Possible? A Guest Post by Joel Backon

A couple of comments before I begin. First, I am in awe of the blog posts and Twitter responses I’ve seen to date, and thank Jared for organizing this “book club”.  Second, Chapter Three, Reason Between Equals, seems to be the core of Ranciere’s argument. Consequently, I’ll try to tackle the first three sections and leave it to a colleague to handle the rest.

This portion of the book is about intelligence in the broadest sense of the word. As I understand it, young children appear to have a similar intelligence because they are driven equally by instinct and need (paraphrase of 51). One can infer from the next portion that lesser people “...develop the intelligence that the needs and circumstances of their existence demand of them.” (51) So most children are somewhat similar to lesser people. It is now easier to understand that some people exercise will, reflection, and veracity, qualities that propel them to new intellectual heights, as long as their self-knowledge is strong (metacognition) and they don’t follow the path of Icarus. As an ignorant schoolmaster, how am I to understand such a worldview? Does it not create the kind of caste system that was prevalent in the nineteenth century and was seriously challenged during the Sixties? Why isn’t it okay for people to know what they need to know without being classified as lesser people? Are we destined for an intellectual elite or will we be able to create a society that transcends needs and circumstances for higher callings, even if those callings are not the traditional prestigious professions?

Will we be able to create a society that transcends
needs and circumstances for higher calling?

I would like to argue that Ranciere is suggesting something here. If we ask students to take responsibility for their own learning, they will push beyond needs and circumstances because they will feel emancipated (Ranciere’s term - I would say empowered). That’s how the Flemish students learned French. Jacotot emancipated or empowered those students with clear goals and an expectation that they would be successful. His strategy is at the core of good teaching. I’d also like to argue that Jacotot’s strategy would be far more difficult today because we are cursed with knowing more about how kids learn. We are faced with institutional obstacles that grew out of the factory model of education and failed to disappear or be replaced. We now value autonomy, mastery, and purpose (Daniel Pink), and in doing so, have little use for grades, seat time, standardized assessments, late penalties, and detailed rubrics. They are designed to crush the wills of our students so they revert back to needs and circumstances. We must teleport Ranciere to the twenty-first century so he can help us retool our craft to ignite the best from each one of our students.

"We now value autonomy, mastery, and purpose... and in doing so, have little use f
or grades, seat time, standardized assessments, late penalties, and detailed rubrics."

Argument complete. I’m not an English teacher; literary analysis is not my strength. As a historian, I pick up artifacts from texts and try to reconstruct them into something meaningful that will propel us forward today. Trying to figure out exactly what Ranciere means is not a challenge I relish. Using his thoughts to connect with my own experiences and the world around me is more my cup of tea. Please analyze my argument at face value first, and then apply the literary analysis so I can better understand Ranciere’s intentions.

This has been a post by Joel Backon (@jbackon) for the #Ranciere18 reading project. Go here to see the google doc, and go here to join the hypothes.is group.