Educational Populism in Ranciere and Gramsci

Both Jacques Ranciere and Antonio Gramsci make a number of fascinating points regarding educational fallacies supported by much of society. In The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Ranciere argues that the most effective methods of instruction are often separate from the more traditional expository style of teaching favored by institutes of higher education and that by definition education should be far more accessible to people from all walks of life. In The Prison Notebooks Gramsci asserts that philosophy is far more prevalent and useful than it is often portrayed as being and that as a result, we need to shift our view of the subject to incorporate the contributions of a much wider portion of society and acknowledge the subject's ubiquitous qualities. *Both authors, therefore, make an excellent case for increased populism both in the teaching methods and conceptions that shape the educational landscape in an attempt to open formal education to a wider socioeconomic base of potential students and teachers than previously thought possible.*

In The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Ranciere contends that there are far more efficient and useful methods of teaching than the ones we find currently utilized throughout the educational system. As he states, “there is no one on earth who hasn't learned something by himself and without a master explicator. Let's call this way of learning ‘universal teaching’ and say of it: ‘In reality, universal teaching has existed since the beginning of the world, alongside all the explicative methods. This teaching, by oneself, has, in reality, been what has formed all great men’” (16). Ranciere quite clearly believes that the most effective manner of teaching does not require advanced knowledge of the subject matter, but on the contrary, is accessible to anyone and everyone, and is even more effective than the traditional explicative methods. This revolutionary idea makes a powerful case for the expansion of educational techniques to reach a broad audience that has otherwise been shut out of the traditional educational bureaucracy. Ranciere expands on these ideas in no uncertain terms to prove the populist implications of his thesis.

The ramifications of universal teaching are an incredible refutation of the social and economic power structure that has traditionally defined education. As Ranciere states, universal teaching “is practiced of necessity by everyone, but no one wants to recognize it, no one wants to cope with the intellectual revolution it signifies...One must dare to recognize it and pursue the open verification of its power—otherwise, the method of powerlessness, the Old Master, will last as long as the order of things” (16). Clearly, Ranciere believes that his more inclusive theory of education, such as the conflict theory of sociology, will destroy the longstanding cultural and economic barriers to formal instruction that have stood in the way of the scholastic betterment of the disenfranchised for generations. This new methodology of education would reach a much wider audience and emancipate the traditionally marginalized classes from their exclusion from the world of academia while providing them with an equal and even greater level of knowledge than their peers educated in the old system. Quite clearly Ranciere’s theory points to a populist strain of educational philosophy, one we see echoed in the writings of Gramsci.

In The Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci indicates that the study of philosophy, while traditionally viewed as esoteric and highly specialized, is, in fact, a universal human endeavor to which a wide variety of society is capable of contributing. As he states, “It is essential to destroy the widespread prejudice that philosophy is a strange and difficult thing just because it is the specific intellectual activity of a particular category of specialists or of professional and systematic philosophers” (59). This argument makes it clear that the classical educational paradigm has unnecessarily marginalized various academic pursuits and made them needlessly inaccessible to the majority of the populace, a belief that in large part mirrors the beliefs of Ranciere. Furthermore, Gramsci clearly contends that a shift in this manner of thinking would once again have profound social, economic, and cultural consequences for the intellectual community.

In no uncertain terms, Gramsci asserts that one of the largest errors in the history of philosophy is the false dichotomy that has been created between the educated experts of the field and the masses. As he states, “One of the greatest weaknesses of immanentist philosophies, in general, consists precisely of the fact that they have not been able to create an ideological unity between the bottom and the top, between the ‘simple’ and the intellectuals” (Gramsci 64). This plainly states that a more egalitarian approach to the discipline of philosophy is required if the field is to speak to the full spectrum of social, economic, and intellectual groups. This belief is largely very similar to that expressed by Ranciere in terms of its intellectual populism.

Both Ranciere and Gramsci argue for a radical shift in the educational landscape to more fully incorporate the full spectrum of social groups into the field of academia. Ranciere asserts that the classical view of educators as requiring a wealth of experience beyond that of their students is a false and needless barrier to the true acquisition of knowledge, while Gramsci argues that the discipline of philosophy has been needlessly separated from the common man by a false sense of intellectual superiority amongst its practitioners. Together the work of these two great thinkers shatters many of the foundations of the traditional educational paradigm and opens the door to a new level of involvement in the world of academia for a wide variety of traditionally marginalized groups.

Works Cited

Gramsci, Antonio. "Antonio Gramsci, From The Prison Notebooks." Cultural resistance reader. Ed. Stephen Duncombe. London: Verso, 2002. 58-67. Print.

Rancière, Jacques. The ignorant schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. Print.