Ignorant school master

At one stage when I was doing more academic work, my reading list consisted of those writers, who write about teaching, research, and environment, however, learning was naturally the underlying factor in all their writings. 

Education  and educators, teaching and learning.

At the suggestion of one of my supervisors, I had read Ranciere, and his Ignorant School Master.

It was a fascinating account of a French teacher who didn't know the language of his Flemish speaking students,  while he was in exile in Netherlands and these students didn't know French, but he ended up teaching them a French classic!

How?

What worked was students' motivation to learn, and what was proven to be superfluous was the teacher who explicates or transmits knowledge. 

How can this be applied in my work today, while I'm teaching English, I've been thinking. How can I reduce and even eliminate explication,  explaining again and again? 

I'm ignorant as I don't know much about my students, their language, culture. 

So, what motivates them, I need to tap into that, maybe, build a desire in them to learn the language.  Luckily, they know some English, live in an English speaking country, and have the need, desire, and motivation to learn English.      

I'm ignorant, they aren't!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    



Ranciere (p. 6) writes, 

"To explain something to someone is first of all to show him he cannot understand it by himself. Before being the act of the pedagogue, explication is the myth of pedagogy, the parable of a world divided into knowing minds and ignorant ones, ripe minds and immature ones, the capable and the incapable, the intelligent and the stupid." 

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