Rancière, Freire and Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

First paragraph: Whilst studying for a PhD in adult education, I engaged in the task of comparing Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1972) with Jacques Ranciere's book, The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991). I had no qualifying undergraduate degree in social sciences or philosophy, but as a time-served computer programmer I utilised basic tools of logic to create an analysis. My interaction with the theorists' ideas was informed by personal experiences of education and politics rather than, for example, awareness of academic audiences, or ongoing discussions within the field of critical pedagogy. At the time, I did not anticipate that the results of my analysis would be published (Galloway 2012). After completing my studies, I worked as a shop assistant and as an adult educator in prison, experiences that provoked me to question the purpose of educational theories and their possible relevance to academic fields of study. In this chapter I return to this staged conversation between Freire and Ranciere and attempt to justify my opinion that the ideas do matter, because they encourage us to doubt commonly held assumptions about our (limited) potential to change society, instead challenging us to take personal responsibility for formulating and enacting alternatives whilst responding to each other and our shared concerns.