The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation

Synopsis

This extraordinary book can be read on several levels. Primarily, it is the story of joseph jacotot, an exiles french schoolteacher who discovered in 1818 an unconventional teaching method that spread panic throughout the learned community of europe. Knowing no flemish, jacotot found himself able to teach in french to flemish students who knew no french; knowledge, jacotot concluded, was not necessary to teach, nor explication necessary to learn. The results of this unusual experiment in pedagogy led him to announce that all people were equally intelligent.