When it comes to teaching, teachers' explanations only prolong educational inequality.
Equality in education must be achieved through the will to enable students to develop their intellectual abilities on their own.
Rancière's New Perspective on Equal Education

The polarization of education and society is not a problem of yesterday or today.
The debate over whether we should teach content that is appropriate for each student's circumstances or whether we should teach the same content to all students regardless of their background continues endlessly, but no solution has been found.
However, these two opposing perspectives are the same in that they assume that inequality in education must be addressed toward a state of equality.


Unlike the two perspectives above, this book discusses a third perspective on equality in education, based on the work of the renowned French philosopher Rancière, The Ignorant Teacher.
According to this, the method of teaching by having the knowledgeable (the teacher) explain the educational content to the ignorant (the student) endlessly postpones equality in education.
Rancière found a way out of this ‘explanatory frame’ in the case of Joseph Jacotot.
Using Jacotot's example of 'universal teaching', he presents the principle of education that 'all people have equal intellectual abilities', and says that teachers should not explain what they know, but only play a role in encouraging students' will.
The teacher's job is to help students liberate their own intellectual abilities.
That is, this book sees the universal teaching for equality in education as making people realize that they are rational beings who can learn on their own through their intellectual ability and will.


Equality in education and learning are universal topics of interest not only to teachers, educational administrators, and other education professionals, but also to many others.
By understanding Rancière and the author's new perspective on education, we hope to broaden our perspective on what equal education is and how education should be conducted to achieve it.