I have to stop for a note on
Rancière's second chapter, “The Ignorant One's Lesson.” I
probably should've written something about the first chapter –
something about stultification or the first mention of universal
teaching maybe – but I'm not being that rigorous here.
The thing about the second chapter is
that it seems to touch on my sense of a reading methodology that asks
students to just read by looking at what they do understand and
building from there. So often, students read a passage (we've just
been working on literacy skills for science passages on the Living
Environment Regents) and get to the end and say “I don't get it.”
I infuriate them constantly with my stock response “Of course you
do – let's look at it.” I could just as easily be saying the
more brusque “Don't say that you can't. You know how to see, how
to speak, you know how to show, you can remember. What more is
needed?” Jacotot and Rancière agree with me - to say what is on
the page is to tell me you know what it says. Meaning is strung
together later out of the things you recognize. The "Red
Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever
been so fatal, or so hideous. The Red Death is wrecking the
land. What the Red Death is and how it's wrecking the land and who
the story's about and all the rest of it will come later.
Even better is the big realization for
students. Rancière points out that “precisely what must be
discovered is that there is nothing hidden, no words underneath
words” and it is a fear of this master narrative that students must
be taught to forget. Just read. It's here on the page. Of course,
there's context and the call and response of text to text and
polyphony and whatever other way you want to put it, but to read
what's on the page is the thing in question. All the rest of that is
discussion of what you could say about the text. Our goal is to read
without resorting to condescension.
Is that the same sort of thing that
Rancière detests? The constant holding off of more meaning from the
student? Is it only in the presence of the Old Master that this
unveiling of connection and context can happen? Or is there
something more complicated going on here?
Probably the most relevant question I
have at this point is whether or not Rancière's “Power of the
Ignorant” is necessary as a condition or as a position. He claims
that, for the ignorant schoolmaster, “there's no risk of this
master sparing the child the time necessary to account for the word
Calypso.” I fall into this sometimes – pestilence means
sickness, let's move on – although I'm getting better bit by bit.
But that doesn't mean that ignorance is a necessary condition, maybe.
I can even imagine how a knowledgeable schoolmaster could play the
role of the ignorant schoolmaster – I know it but what does that
have to do with you? Or am I just justifying my position or,
hell, my authority?
