In pursuit of ignorant university teachers and intellectually emancipated students

ABSTRACT

The current neo-liberalization of academia threatens the historical role of the university as a safe haven where critical thinking and intellectual emancipation can take place. Instead of educating questioning and independent knowledge seekers, much teaching centres on producing employable, efficient and uncritical workers who instrumentally solve problems within the given system. This essay considers the possibilities and limitations of contesting the neo-liberalization of academia through the teaching practice of not-knowing. This is done by drawing upon the work of Jacques Ranciére and by exploring how ignorant university teaching practices might lead to intellectually emancipated students. To push our imagination and understanding, the film Dead Poets Society is used as an empirical illustration.It is shown that ignorant (university) teachers can intellectually emancipated students through the practice of not-knowing by: (1) practising our own equality; (2) announcing the students’ inevitable equality; and (3) creating spaces for intellectual emancipation for our students.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• neoliberalism
• ignorant university teachers
• intellectual emancipation
• Jacques Ranciére
• Dead Poets Society

Contesting the neo-liberalization of academia by not-knowing

Universities are business schools. At least business schools say they’re business school, which is more honest than the rest of the rubbish. And these are places where you can no longer think. You are not encouraged to think – it's not what you are supposed to do. You are simply meant to produce. At a certain point, not that long ago, universities were places where thinking took place. Perhaps this seems like an absurd and ludicrous proposition. (Critchley and Cederström 2010, 114)

There is something happening within the university world today. Being part of academia means that one often hears stories similar to the quotation above. These are stories that claim that once upon a time the university was a place where thinking took place. Nowadays, it is said, the university is a neoliberal factory where the main aim of the teaching is to produce students who can become employable, efficient, and uncritical consumers (Giroux and Giroux 2006). Ankarloo and Friberg (2012) point out that the historical ideals of liberal education, free thinking, a search for knowledge, and intellectual improvement are down prioritized or even disregarded at many universities today. In a similar vein, Kronman (2008) observes that today's universities and teachers have abandoned the big and eternal questions such as ‘what is worth living for?’ and ‘what should one care about?’. Given this situation in academia, Parker (2018) concludes that today's students are not encouraged to question the society and system they live in, instead they are mainly encouraged to align and reproduce the present ways of living. Thus, in our present age, knowledge and teaching are above all seen as instruments that can yield economic growth instead of being seen as tools to human emancipation and self-development (Hasselberg 2009).

As hinted above, the usual suspect, and alleged mastermind (i.e. ideology) for this change within academia has many names, whereas the most common are neoliberalism, new public management, functionalism, and managerialism. Regardless of the name, the core idea remains the same, namely, the university and our teaching practices should be governed by a market logic and market principles (Giroux and Giroux 2006; Ferlie, Musselin, and Andresani 2008; Lynch 2006). Consequently, instead of focusing on how to be a public democratic sphere where learning and thinking take place (Giroux 2014), many of today's universities are forced to deal with questions about competitiveness, flexibility, and efficiency (Fanghanel 2012). According to Parker (2018), this neo-liberalization of academia is most evident at business schools around the world. This has triggered him to propose that the business school, as a neoliberal project, should be shut down, preferably bulldozed, and replaced with a school of organizing, where practices such as critical thinking, imagination and responsibility are given more space. In other words, his main concern is in line with the opening quotation above – how can the university be a place where thinking takes place again? And what kinds of teaching practices can support this transformation?

Yet, it is not entirely fair to say that the university is a place where thinking does not take place anymore, because it depends on what you mean with ‘thinking’. In his book Discourse on Thinking, the philosopher Martin Heiddegger (1966) suggests that there are two types of thinking that we as humans engage with at different times in our lives, namely, calculative thinking and meditative thinking. He describes calculative thinking as thinking that ‘plans and investigates’ (1966., 46). In his view, this is a kind of thinking that never rests or stops to contemplate on the meaning of whatsoever, instead calculative thinking just rushes from one project to another. Although Heidegger acknowledges that this kind of thinking is useful, and has benefitted humanity in many ways, he sees a great danger with accepting calculative thinking as the only mode of thinking available, since it might produce a widespread thoughtlessness in society (Heidegger 1966, 56). He even argues that ‘man today is in flight from thinking’ (Heidegger 1966, 45, italics in original), in a text that was written in 1955, many years before neoliberalism as an ideology had begun to spread. The alternative that Heidegger puts forward is then the practice of meditative thinking. He writes that meditative thinking is more about pondering than planning and investigating (Heidegger 1966, 52).¹ For instance, we practice meditative thinking when we ponder upon questions such as: ‘What really is happening in our age? By what is it characterized?’ (Heidegger 1966, 49). For Heidegger, the issue at stake is how to keep meditative thinking alive since it gives us the possibility to be thoughtful instead of thoughtless, and it gives us the possibility to be open-minded rather than single-minded (Heidegger 1966, 53). In short, meditative thinking provides us with ‘the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way’ (Heidegger 1966, 55).

The possibility of meditative thinking brings us back to the ongoing neo-liberalization of academia since it, to use the vocabulary of Heidegger, mainly promotes single-minded calculative thinking. And this type of thinking and teaching does not encourage our students to reflect upon on what kind of leaders, entrepreneurs or employees they want to become, or on what kind of society that is desirable or possible, or even on how they want to live their own lives. Instead, the focus of calculative thinking in our teaching practices makes them engage with solving problems such as increasing profit, increasing economic growth, improving the efficiency of an organization, and so on and so forth. As Parker observes (2018), those problems are still about reproducing the current society and not about questioning it or about imagining alternatives. Put differently, under the current neoliberal regime at the university, it seems like we believe that we already know the best ways on how to organize our society and the best ways on how to live our lives. But what if we do not know the best way to organize our society? And what if there are alternative ways of leading a meaningful life? Those questions would push us into the unknown, make us accept that we do not know everything, and that we have to explore new paths and reflect more profoundly upon how we want to dwell in the world. Thus, the practice of not-knowing and the meditative pondering on the big questions of life could bring back critical thinking and questioning to the university. The main question for this essay then centers on how we as university teachers can contest the current neo-liberalization through a teaching approach that is characterized by not-knowing (i.e. being ignorant), and by first of all encouraging our students to become intellectually emancipated citizens. To explore the possibilities and limitations of ignorant university teachers and intellectually emancipated students at the university, I will draw upon the work of the philosopher Jacques Ranciére.

In his work, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Ranciére studies and puts forward a rather ground-breaking pedagogy by considering the notion and practice of intellectual emancipation. For him, intellectual emancipation simply means being conscious of one's inevitable equality (Rancière 1991 39). Thus, Ranciére's fundamental assumption is that human equality should be understood as a starting point rather than an end destination or political objective. And, more importantly, this supposition suggests that all humans and thus students can emancipate themselves intellectually by realizing, verifying and practicing their equality (ibid.). That is to say, when people consider themselves as equals to all others, and let their own will and desires drive them forward in their lives, they also become intellectually emancipated (ibid.). Given this, the key practice for a university teacher is to let the students explore and find their own paths in life. So, instead of focusing on teaching them the ‘right’ things or how to live their lives, the teacher tries to be ignorant (i.e. not knowing), and thus allowing the students to practice their equality and become intellectually emancipated.

According to Ranciére, the simplest way for a teacher to support intellectual emancipation is through announcing the students’ equality by, for example, asking the question ‘what do you think about?’ (ibid., 36). This question might motivate them to explore the unknown and thus to come up with new ideas on how to lead a good and meaningful life, or how to become responsible and reflexive leaders, entrepreneurs or employees. Hence, in my view, Ranciére's concept of intellectual emancipation offers one possibility on how to engage students with meditative thinking rather than calculative thinking and thus contest the neo-liberalization of academia. I will outline Ranciére's work in more detail in the coming pages, but we can already now conclude that his pedagogy of ignorant university teachers does not primarily focusing on producing efficient or employable workers, but rather on thinking and intellectually emancipated citizens. Or, as Heiddegger (1966, 47) might have said – meditative beings.

An important point is that in this essay being ignorant (i.e. not-knowing) is seen as something positive. This view breaks with more negative connotations of ignorance such as stupidity, indifference to facts and evidence, unawareness, uninformed, and so on. These types of ignorance are of course not desirable at all. So, when I talk about an ignorant university teacher, I have in mind a person who is leaving their own intelligence out of the picture so that the students are given the possibility to search for themselves and thus practice their equality (Rancière 1991, 13).

To discuss the possibilities and limitations of ignorant university teachers and intellectually emancipated students at the university, I will analyze the film Dead Poets Society. Dead Poets Society is a Hollywood film that follows the lives of some college students and their free-spirited teacher at the prestigious college Welton Academy. Films can, like all art forms, push our imagination into the unknown and thus allow us to explore new ways of dwelling in the world. They can also provide us with profound insights that might encourage us to rethink our present practices (Phillips 1995). In other words, by using Dead Poet Society as empirical material, I hope to shed new light on how a (university) teacher could act and to deepening our understanding on how intellectual emancipation could unfold at the university.

In sum, the aim of this essay is to explore the possibilities and limitations of becoming ignorant university teachers who support students’ intellectual emancipation, instead of merely forming them to become efficient, employable and uncritical workers, despite the fact that a neoliberal agenda reigns within academia. The essay is structured as follows. It begins with an introduction to some of the key ideas of Jacques Ranciére. After that follows a short presentation of the film Dead Poets Society, and a discussion on why it is relevant and meaningful to use films as empirical material in organization studies. Then follows two thematic discussions where the thinking of Raniciére is mixed with analyzes of specific scenes and characters from the film: (1) The Emancipated (and Ignorant) Teacher; and (2) Intellectually Emancipated Students. The essay ends with a lessons learned-section where the main insights are highlighted.

The Work of Jacques Ranciére as a path to not-knowing and intellectual emancipation

The question of what a teacher should do or not do is an old one. Even the ancient Greeks had opposing views on how a teacher (or philosopher) should act like. While the sophists taught against payment, Socrates walked the streets of Athens and engaged freely in dialogues on various topics (Nordin 2009). Today, more than 2000 years later, we are still seeking to understand how a proper education should look like. In this essay, I suggest that the ideas of Ranciére have the potential to shed new light on how we, as university teachers, could support our students to become intellectually emancipated.

The work of Ranciére has not got any serious breakthrough within the educational field (Pelletier 2009; Biesta 2010). Perhaps one reason for this is that Ranciére's ‘method of equality’ should not be understood as a pedagogic method or a distinct teaching technique (Pelletier 2009, 147). Yet, it is possible to explore his thoughts as ‘a new logic of emancipation’ within an academic setting (Biesta 2010). And, more recently, there have been efforts to bring his ideas to art education (Sinner 2015), and to consider the relevance of his thinking at the business school (Kogut, Sørensen Thaning, and Birksted 2020; Huault and Perret 2011; Huault and Perret 2016). The aim is to continue this effort by reading Ranciére's work affirmatively and by exploring his ideas as a new teaching practice that encourages students to intellectually emancipate themselves. The focus of this essay is exclusively on the book The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Le Maître ignorant: Cinq leçons sur l'émancipation intellectuelle), which was published in French 1987. The book is interesting for reasons beyond its content. For example, it is written so that it sometimes is hard to know if the ideas come from Ranciére or his source of inspiration Joseph Jacotot (Ross 1991, xxii). Due to that, I have chosen to quote the text as if it is the work of Ranciére, because it is his book after all. Before a close reading of some of his key insights is undertaken, through the two themes, a more general background is provided.

The plot in The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation centers on Joseph Jacotot and his educational experiences. Jacotot was a French lecturer in literature who lived in the nineteenth century. The profound and life-changing insight that struck Jacotot happened when he was forced to live as an exile in Belgium, due to political issues. When he first arrived to Belgium, he was assigned a job as a teacher in Louvain, despite the fact that he could not speak Flemish. Of course, this meant that he could not communicate with his students in an ordinary way. At the same time, a bilingual edition of the book Télémaque was published. This spurred an idea within Jacotot. He asked the students, with the help of an interpreter, to translate the book. When the students were halfway through the book, he asked them to repeat what they had learned, and read the rest of the book so carefully so that they could retell the content. He then asked the Belgian students to write down what they had learned, but with the twist that they had to write in French. To his great astonishment, the papers (and the language) the students handed in were of great quality. The papers (and the language) were even as good as a paper that one could expect from a native French, Jacotot observed (Ranciére 1991). This meant that the students had learned to write in French without an explaining teacher (i.e. a master). It was rather Jacotot's ignorance (not knowing) that had enabled the students to learn and think for themselves. Thus, the overwhelming insight was as simple as intriguing (Ranciére 1991, 2):

Was wanting all that was necessary for doing? Were all men virtually capable of understanding what others had done and understood?

These became the questions that fascinated Joseph Jacotot in 1815, and these are the questions that fascinate Jacques Ranciére (and myself) today.

Based on this insight and the belonging questions, Ranciére’s (1991, 101) formulates his main claim about equality, that is, ‘everyone is of equal intelligence’. For Ranciére (1991, 138), this means that ‘equality was not an end to attain, but a point of departure, a supposition to maintain in every circumstance’. This view on equality separates his work from thinkers such as Bourdieu, Althusser, and Milner, who all assume inequality as a starting point of their inquiries. An assumption that risks ending up in rediscovering and reproducing social inequalities (Ross 1991, xix). The core of Ranicére's work is thus, in a nutshell, the idea that equality should be understood as a starting point, and it is by verifying and practicing one's equality that intellectual emancipation happens (Ranciére 1991, 137). He exemplifies his main idea through the following sentence:

Me too, I am a painter! (Jacques Ranciére 1991, 65)

Thus, what Ranciére says here is that all people can become painters, regardless whether they will be good or bad painters. Instead, the crucial insight is that it is possible to evoke this feeling and insight within people, that is, ‘Me too, I am a painter!’. This is an utterance and manifestation of equality since it indicates that the person perceives herself as equal to everyone else (ibid, 57). That is the profound insight a person has to make in order to become intellectually emancipated.

For Ranciére, the supposition that ‘everyone is of equal intelligence’ is not interesting as an empirical question but rather as an experiment (Ranciére 1991, 101). He is well aware of the unlikelihood of ‘knowing’ or ‘proving’ that all humans have equal intelligence, since it is impossible to isolate or measure intelligence with absolute certainty (Ranciére 1991, 46). He elaborates on this view by turning Descartes’ classical argument upside down. So, instead of supporting the claim that ‘I think, therefore I am’ (cogito, ergo sum), Ranciére writes; ‘I am a man, therefore I think’ (Ranciére 1991, 35). His point is that all social actors are ‘thinking beings’ (Ranciére 1991, 34), and that all the intelligences ‘are of the same nature’ (Ranciére 1991, 9), namely, the human nature, and where intelligence above all should be understood as attention (Ranciére 1991, 54). Although that it can never be proven that all humans have equal intelligence, Ranciére feels intrigued to explore what we can accomplish based on this assumption (Ranciére 1991, 46). Thus, when viewing people as equally intelligent, it primarily means that we acknowledge that all people are capable to learn something when they direct their attention toward a certain matter (e.g. a book such as Télémaque). Ranciére believes that this method of equality is the best way to avoid constraining structures such as class (which hinders people from getting access to knowledge and educations) and family circumstances (which form us all more or less) (Ranciére 1991, 35). This is why he says that his method of equality is a method for the poor and under-privileged since all emancipation begins with the acknowledgement of everyone's inevitable equality and that we all are capable of learning (Ranciére 2009).

To unpack his argument further, I will discuss two themes of his work in more detail and by analyzing the movie Dead Poets Society. But before undertaking this task, I will first present the movie Dead Poets Society, and reflect on why I find it relevant to use it in the coming analysis.

Dead poets society: using film art to push our understanding and imagination

Films have captivated humans since their dawning days in the late nineteenth-century. A good film does not only evoke strong feelings but can also provide one with deep insights or profound questions about human life. However, it has taken some time for films to become a methodological tool within social science. In 1995, Phillips wrote an important piece in which he discussed the possible benefits of turning to alternative data sources such as novels, plays, songs, poems and films. His main point was that fiction (and thus art) could feed us with unique insights and thus equip us with additional perspectives on the complex world we find ourselves in. Of course, this has always been one of the main aspirations within the field of art. Although it has taken some time for social science to acknowledge film as a possible data source, there are now several good examples on how a film can be used and analyzed, and thus deepening our understanding of a phenomenon or some social practices (c.f. Godfrey, Lilley, and Brewis 2012; Guthey and Jackson 2005; Parker 2009; Sørensen and Villadsen 2015).

A key benefit of using a fictional film as empirical material is that it can be of great interest for both researchers and practitioners since the plot might concern issues, dilemmas and problems that we, in different ways, wrestle with in our lives (Phillips 1995, 639). This is the main reason why I find Dead Poets Society interesting and useful. For this is a film that shows how seeking, thinking, and teaching can unfold within an educational institute that is governed by certain policies. Put differently, it shows how teachers and students try to break free from the constraints they face by affirming life and at the same time becoming intellectually emancipated. However, the film is interesting to analyze due to at least three further reasons. First, by using a famous film as empirical material we get a common ground for our investigation, and it helps us to have a constructive discussion on the possibilities and limitations of intellectual emancipation at the university. Second, the film has a rather romantic view on how teaching and learning could look like, and this might be an inspiration that we as university teachers need when our hectic days are filled with routine tasks such as lecturing, grading, measuring, filling in piles of reports, attending numerous meetings, and so on. That is, the film could help us to imagine alternative ways of being a teacher. Third, in the film, the teacher John Keating is portrayed in a very positive and heroic light, but, as we will see, to truly act as an ignorant teacher who allows the students to practice their equality and thus become intellectually emancipated is not an easy task to accomplish. Not even for an ‘ideal’ teacher as John Keating. Accordingly, I will use Dead Poets Society as an illustrative empirical example in order to explore a novel theoretical direction (Costas and Fleming 2009), that is, the pedagogical ideas of Jacques Ranciére.

Dead Poets Society was released in 1989 and the film became a huge success. The film was both a box office success and appreciated by film critics. The Australian filmmaker Peter Weir directed the film, and Tom Schulman won an Oscars for best manuscript. Its popularity and reputation make it particularly interesting to use as an empirical example since many people already have seen the film and can thus reflect upon the scenes by recalling their own interpretations. Also, the film is accessible for those who have not seen it. However, the choice of the film could be questionable due to at least two strong reasons. First, the cast only represents white middle/upper class men. Second, Welton Academy is not a university but a high school. Although this is important critique, I still think the film serves its purpose since the aim of this paper is to explore the possibilities and limitations of how an ignorant teaching practice could look like and how intellectual emancipation could unfold in general. And these insights could later on be explored in additional contexts and on more diversified students.

The film's plot centers on the English teacher John Keating and some of his students at the elite high school Welton Academy during the late 1950s. At the beginning of the film, one understands that Keating is a new teacher at Welton, and that he practices a number of different teaching techniques. The viewer is also introduced to a number of students, who later on will revive the Dead Poets Society. In this secret association, the main purpose is to encourage its member to ‘suck out all the marrow of life’. During the film, one has the opportunity to follow the students’ different personal transformations and fates. I have no intention to summarize the whole film, but I think the spirit of the film could be summarized through its famous tagline (and nowadays also a famous cliché), which is uttered by Keating in a key scene: ‘Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary’. In other words, a reasonable interpretation is that it is a film that concerns freedom, finding meaning, and how to dare to live one's life fully. I have divided the upcoming discussion into two themes: (1) The Emancipated (and Ignorant) Teacher; and (2) Intellectually Emancipated Students.

Theme I. The emancipated (and ignorant) teacher

In this first theme, I will begin with outlining Ranciére's view on how an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher could act like. I will also compare his view on teaching with other conceptions of teaching, and stress that his ideas of not-knowing and ignorance clear a path for students to intellectually emancipate themselves even under constrained situations. I will then explore Ranciére's view by analyzing some possibilities and limitations of Keating's teaching practices.

Ranciére’s view on an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher

Essentially, what an emancipated person can do is be an emancipator: to give, not the key to knowledge, but the consciousness of what an intelligence can do when it considers itself equal to any other and considers any other equal to itself. Emancipation is the consciousness of that equality […]. (Jacques Ranciére 1991, 39)

Ranciére's main argument that intellectual emancipation primarily is about realizing and practicing one's inevitable equality and thus be driven by one's own will poses some challenges for a university teacher. Because how can teachers move away from a conception of a teacher as someone who explains ‘facts’ about a certain phenomenon to a conception of a teacher as someone who mainly tries to support individual emancipation? For if you take the idea of equality as a starting point seriously, then the rather radical key teaching approach will be ‘I must teach you that I have nothing to teach you’ (Ranciére 1991, 15). At first glance, this sounds like a strange thing to say, but if we keep in mind that Ranciére is convinced that the route to liberty depends on ‘a confidence in the intellectual capacity of any human being’ (Ranciére 1991, 14), we then see how this phrase is an effort of setting the students free intellectually.

So, historically, the role of the teacher has been to transmit knowledge, explain a certain topic for the students, and where the aim has been to gradually bring the students closer to the teacher's level of knowledge (Ranciére 1991, 3). The idea of the teacher as an explainer has been taken-for-granted within the school system (Ranciére 1991, 4). But the experiences of Jacotot both challenge and problematize this assumption. There are at least two problems with the teacher as an explainer that need consideration. First, the conception of a teacher as an explainer risks to cause stultification rather than emancipation (Ranciére 1991). The danger is that the teacher has the ambition to instruct and to explain instead of having the ambition to emancipate or to treat the students as equals. Ranciére uses the example of Socrates to illustrate this teaching practice. He argues that the Socratic method² is based on the idea that the learned one, the master Socrates, ‘interrogates in order to instruct’ (Ranciére 1991, 29). Thus, by asking questions, the master ‘guide the student's intelligence – discreetly enough to make it work, but not to the point of leaving it to itself’ (Ranciére 1991, 29). And this type of teaching practice will not create equal and emancipated students who are willing to follow their own desires or think for themselves. Rather, it risks creating parrots who just say and think what the teacher says and thinks. Therefore, the problem of stultification is closely connected to the second problem with the teacher as an explainer, and the risk of reproducing inequality instead of overcoming it. For example, by explaining X, one produces the impression that the learner will never understand X without the teacher's help (Ranciére 1991, 6). In other words, a teacher might give the impression that the student will never reach their level since there is always more to learn (Ranciére 1991, 6). The student will thus always be dependent on a master, and this kind of relationship between humans hinders the creation of an equal society or even a different society.

These problems bring us back to the idea that all that a teacher could do is to make the students aware of their equality. This idea simply means ‘treating the students as equals’ (Ranciére 1991, 19), leaving one's own ‘intelligence out of the picture’ (Ranciére 1991, 13), supporting the student ‘to use his (sic) own intelligence’ (Ranciére 1991, 15), and encouraging the student ‘to learn something and to relate to it all the rest’ (Ranciére 1991, 18). The purpose of this teaching practice is thus not primarily to produce scholars, but to make the students intellectually emancipated.

There are two concrete practices that an emancipated and ignorant master could do to encourage her students to think and pursue intellectual emancipation. The first practice is to announce their equality and to ask them to think and search for themselves. As Ranciére (1991, 36) writes, ‘the whole practice of universal teaching is summed up in the question: what do you think about it?’ For example, Jacotot did not develop a fancy educational method; he just told the Belgian students to learn the Télémaque. He gave them the assignment, but he did not know, or told them, how they should solve it (Ranciére 1991, 9). The second practice is to make sure that the students are trying, that they put in some effort, and that they continue to search. The main aim here is not to control whether the student's effort is of scholarly quality but to make sure that the student is trying and thus practice her equality (Ranciére 1991, 31). Making sure that the students have studied and tried for themselves might sound like a modest requirement, but it actually encourages the students to practice their equality indefinitely since it makes the students realize that one's search never ends (Ranciére 1991, 31).

A final key point is that, according to Ranciére (1991, 33), one as a teacher ‘must be emancipated oneself’ in order to emancipate others:

To emancipate someone else, one must be emancipated oneself. One must know oneself to be a voyager of the mind, similar to all other voyagers: an intellectual subject participating in the power common to intellectual beings.

Even if it sounds self-righteous to say that one is emancipated, it just means that one is aware of one's equality, and that one practices this equality in one's everyday life. In short, for Ranicére, the main teaching practice for the emancipated teacher is to announce everyone's equality and explore what we can accomplish based on this supposition. It is now time to consider these pedagogical ideas by exploring John Keating as an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher, who announces everyone's equality to his students and create spaces where they can verify their equality.

Exploring John Keating as an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher

The teacher John Keating is one of the leading characters in the film Dead Poets Society. He is a former Welton student, or ‘Hell-ton’, as he wittily says to his students. We are given several clues that he once was an ambitious student since he was the editor of school's annual, the captain of the soccer team, and the founder of the Dead Poets Society. His dedication to teaching is revealed in numerous scenes. For example, when one of his students asks him how he can stand to be at Welton, he simply replies; ‘Cause I love teaching. I don't wanna be anywhere else’. Besides his passion for teaching, he is also keen on getting the students to think for themselves. And during one class he even says ‘now, my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again’. So, in this first theme, I will explore Keating as an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher, which is seen as a prerequisite in order to support others to become intellectually emancipated (Ranciére 1991, 39). But before we dig deeper into the teaching practices of Keating, we first need to get a feeling of the educational environment at Welton Academy and some of the constraints that he has to struggle with.

In the film's very first scene, we see how the young students at Welton walk into a church. They carry banners, and in his welcome speech, the headmaster, Mr Nolan, asks the boys to account for the school's four principles. The young boys answer in choir: ‘Tradition! Honor! Discipline! Excellence!’. This opening scene gives us a hunch that there is little space for true intellectual emancipation at Welton. Rather, the emphasis is on tradition, and predetermined conceptions of honor and excellence. In his introductory speech, Mr Nolan also insinuates that if they follow these principles, they will most likely make it to the prestigious Ivy League Schools. That is their intended, and pre-given, path of life. The known.

Given these four principles, one can also conclude that the educational culture at Welton is based on ideas of the teacher as explainer and transmitter of knowledge (Ranciére 1991). These principles mirror conservative values where the student primarily should listen to the masters (i.e. teachers) and try to reach their level of knowledge. The view of the teacher as an explainer is particularly observable in one scene where the Latin teacher, McAllister, teach the right pronunciation of a Latin word.

McALLISTER

Agricolam.

BOYS

Agricolam.

McALLISTER

Agricola.

BOYS

Agricola.

McALLISTER

Agricolae.

BOYS

Agricolae.

McALLISTER

Agricolarum.

BOYS

Agricolarum.

McALLISTER

Agricolis.

BOYS

Agricolis.

McALLISTER

Agricolas.

BOYS

Agricolas.

McALLISTER

Agricolis.

BOYS

Agricolis.

McALLISTER

Again, please. Agricola.

BOYS

Agricola.

In the film we see how the students [boys] keep repeating the words of McAllister with very little enthusiasm. They are just saying what he just said, like parrots who try to be as their master. The educational aim is of course that they should learn to pronounce the word as well as McAllister does. Yet, a dangerous consequence with this kind of superior teaching practice is that the students risk to never become emancipated; or seen as equal human beings, since they are fed with the idea that they will never reach the same level as their teacher (Ranciére 1991, 3). Instead, they are destined to be inferior, especially since there are so many words that they have to learn to pronounce correctly, as their master McAllister does. And if there is no passion or will for learning by themselves, the students will never become equal or intellectually emancipated (Ranciére 1991, 12). And this is how the general educational environment at Welton Academy is portrayed during the film.

An alternative teaching practice would be to make the students aware of their equality and encourage them to be driven by their own wills, which later on would improve their possibilities to intellectually emancipate themselves (Ranciére 1991, 101). However, to accomplish this, the teacher herself has to be emancipated and thus believe in the equality of all human beings (Ranciére 1991, 33). There is at least one particular scene that strongly suggests that Keating is intellectually emancipated. The below dialogue takes place during lunch at Welton and we witness a friendly quarrel between McAllister and Keating, which concerns Keating's teaching practices.

McALLISTER

You take a big risk by encouraging them to become artists, John. When they realize that they're not Rembrandts, Shakespeares or Mozarts, they'll hate you for it.

KEATING

We're not talking artist, George. We're talking free thinkers.

McALLISTER

Free thinkers at seventeen?

KEATING

Funny. I never pegged you as a cynic.

McALLISTER

Not a cynic. A realist. “Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I'll show you a happy man.”

KEATING

“But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be.”

McALLISTER

Tennyson?

KEATING

No. Keating.

As we see, their disagreement whether the students should be encouraged to become ‘free thinkers’ or not leads them to quote different poets. However, Keating does not cite a famous authority. Instead, he uses his own words and thinking. That is to say, he believes in his equality, he verifies it, and he practices it (Ranciére 1991, 137). Also, McAllister bridles at the idea that the students could become great artists. He believes that they can never be considered equal to his prominent poets. Compare that teaching approach with Ranciére's (and Keating's) imperative of making all people feel like they are equal (Ranciére 1991, 31). In short, this scene implies that Keating is intellectually emancipated as he has the confidence to believe that he is equal to any celebrated poet. As we soon will see, he is also willing to share this insight of everyone's equality with his students, and by doing so, he engages in what Ranciére calls for universal teaching.

The next step then, for the emancipated Keating, is to announce the idea of everyone's equality to his students. The key practice is to make them conscious of their equality (Ranciére 1991, 30), and to make them consider themselves as equals to all others (Ranciére 1991, 39). As we learned earlier, this universal teaching practice begins with asking the question, ‘what do you think about it’? (Ranciére 1991, 36). So, let us consider two situations where the students are encouraged to think for themselves by engaging with question of ‘what do you think about it?’.

The first situation takes place in Keating's classroom. All of a sudden, Keating climbs his own desk; he then encourages the students to do the same. The point is that this should inspire them to look out at the classroom (and the world) from a new perspective. While the students try out his advice, he says the following:

KEATING

Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way. Even though it may seem silly or wrong, you must try! Now, when you read, don't just consider what the author thinks. Consider what you think.

KEATING

Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.

Hence, Keating emphasizes the fact that the students should think for themselves; that they too could find their voice in life. He points out that they should not only consider what the author of a book thinks, but rather that their own voice and intellect are equally important. Put differently, he has no ambition to give them ‘the key to knowledge’, but rather to provide them with ‘the consciousness of what an intelligence can do when it considers itself equal to any other’ (Ranciére 1991, 39). He wants them to see themselves as equals, and by doing so he also supports their intellectual emancipation, instead of making them to think the same as the author of the book.

In another scene, Keating quotes a poem from Walt Whitman, and he repeats and accentuates the last two sentences of the poem: ’That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?’. The powerful play is obviously a metaphor for life itself, and Keating hopes to inspire the students to think through what their verse (i.e. life) should be about. Again, this suggests that he wants them to become aware of their equality, and he does so by once again engaging with the universal teaching practice of asking the question ‘what do you think about it? (Ranciére 1991, 23).

In sum, these examples show that we in several situations can understand Keating as an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher, since he does not tell the students what they should think or how they should live their lives. Instead, he encourages them to figure out that by themselves. In Ranciére's work, the idea of an emancipated (and ignorant) teacher is seen as a prerequisite in order to support students’ intellectual emancipation. In the next section, we will therefore explore how Keating's teaching practices support the intellectual emancipation of three of his students, but we will also learn that it is not that easy to act like an ignorant and emancipated teacher all the time.

Theme II. Intellectually emancipated students

In this second theme, I will begin with outlining Ranciére's view on intellectually emancipated students. I do that by discussing the importance of will and to follow one's own desires, and that intellectual emancipation is only accomplished when one's equality is verified and practiced in one's everyday life. I will then explore the intellectual emancipation of Charlie, Neil, and Todd. I suggest that Keating's teaching practices give them space to verify and practice their equality and thus support them to become intellectually emancipated. However, we will learn that their intellectual emancipation has both positive and negative consequences, and that sometimes Keating is not just acting like an ignorant teacher but also like a master who directs the students’ attentions.

Ranciére’s view on intellectually emancipated students

Meaning is the work of the will. This is the secret of universal teaching. It is also the secret of those we call geniuses: the relentless work to bend the body to necessary habits, to compel the intelligence to new ideas, to new ways of expressing them; to redo on purpose what chance once produced, and to reverse unhappy circumstances into occasions for success. (Jacques Ranciére 1991, 56)

If we accept Ranciére's assumption that all humans are equal and that the key teaching practice is to announce this equality to one's students, then we need to consider his view of the will and its importance when it comes to intellectual emancipation. To being with, he understands will as ‘the power to be moved, to act by its own movement, before being an instance of choice’ (Ranciére 1991, 54). Given this, Ranciére suggests that the will is the difference when it comes to learning. Put simply, in order to learn; one must have the will to learn. As Ranciére writes above, the secret of genius is nothing else than hard and relentless work. For Ranciére, this indicates that intellectual emancipation, and the practice of equality, is first and foremost ‘a method of the will’ (Ranciére 1991, 12):

The method of equality was above all a method of the will. One could learn by oneself and without a master explicator when one wanted to, propelled by one's own desire or by the constraint of the situation.

In short, a person is driven by their own will when they pursue their own desires. He continues to explore the importance of will by arguing that the lack of will is one main reason behind the belief in intellectual inequality (Ranciére 1991, 40):

Its [the belief in intellectual inequality] force comes from the fact that is embraces the entire population under the guise of humility. I can't, the ignorant one you are encouraging to teach himself declares; I am only a worker. Listen carefully to everything there is in that syllogism. First of all, “I can't” means “I don't want to; why would I make the effort?” Which also means: I undoubtedly could, for I am intelligent.

What he tries to grasp here concerns the question of why some people have the will to fulfill their life-goals and desires and why some do not. Consequently, he proposes that the lack of will is often disguised in the ‘I can't’, which also means; I do not want to make the effort required to learn something or become intellectually emancipated. The danger with this attitude is that some people will not acknowledge their own power (Ranciére 1991, 57). The opposite would be a person who is intellectually emancipated and thus driven by her will and desire to learn and explore a certain phenomenon or way of living. However, it is not enough just to realize one's equality; one must also verify it in practice. This is why Ranciére (1991, 137) argues that ‘equality is not given, nor is it claimed; it is practiced, it is verified’. As a result, it is only in practice and by verifying one's equality that one truly becomes equal and intellectually emancipated.

In his work, Ranciére does not consider contextual constraints to one's will, such as cultural, social and economic structures. One possible reason for this is that he believes that individual change precipitates social change (West 2011). He even claims that the core of his universal teaching practice is to announce that ‘an individual can do anything he wants’ (Ranciére 1991, 56), and that wanting is all that is necessary for doing (Ranciére 1991, 2). However, as the analysis will show, this is not always the case in reality (or not even in a Hollywood picture). But, to be fair, Ranciére is not primarily interested in the hinders of intellectual emancipation. Rather, he prefers to focus on successful scenes of intellectual emancipation since he believes that we could learn from them because ‘what has happened once is thenceforth always possible’ (Ranciére 1991, 11). And he writes, ‘what interests us is the exploration of the powers of any man when he judges himself equal to everyone else and judges everyone else equal to him’ (Ranciére 1991, 57). Thus, it is now time to explore the powers and intellectually emancipations of Charlie, Neil, and Todd.

Exploring Charlie, Neil, and Todd as intellectually emancipated students

To illustrate how intellectual emancipation as practices of equality and will can unfold, I have chosen to focus on three of the leading characters in the film: Charlie, Neil, and Todd. The common feature for these three students is that they, at different stages, practice their equality and therefore become intellectually emancipated. In other words, they realize and practice their equality when they decide to be driven by their own wills (Ranciére 1991, 137). However, as we will see, the consequences of their newfound equality and intellectual emancipation are not entirely positive, which is an aspect that Ranciére does not consider in his work.

The intellectual emancipation of Charlie

Charlie is a lively and charismatic young man. It is revealed that he comes from a wealthy family, which most likely helps him be as laidback and adventurous as he is. Charlie is also the first student who realizes and practices his equality and thus becomes intellectually emancipated. Below are three short examples in favor of this claim.

First, when Neil and his fellow students revive the Dead Poets Society by reading the opening lines, from the poetry book that they got from Keating, Charlie immediately, and intuitively, says that he affirms the ideas of Henry David Thoreau.

NEIL

I'll now read the traditional opening message by society member, Henry David Thoreau. “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

CHARLIE

I'll second that.

Thus, what Charlie actually expresses with this little remark is that he too has the will ‘to live deliberately’ and to ‘suck out all the marrow of life’. That is to say, he wants lead his own life to the fullest and not follow somebody else's footsteps. And, more importantly, this comment is a perfect illustration of Ranciére's view of the will, that is, ‘the power to be moved, to act by its own movement, before being an instance of choice’ (ibid., 54). This reveals that Charlie believes in his equality and that he has the will to become intellectually emancipated. Yet, this insight might never had happened if not Keating had introduced them to the Dead Poets Society. So, by giving them the poetry book, he made sure that they were trying to become intellectually emancipated (Ranciére 1991, 31).

The second example that suggests that Charlie is becoming intellectually emancipated, with the help of Keating's support derives from an outdoor schoolyard exercise. In this walking exercise, Keating tries to create awareness among the students on how easy it is to give in to group pressure. He does that by exposing how three students, who began to walk at their own pace, eventually began to walk in the same pace and rhythm while the rest of the group cheered at them. Thus, what Keating actually is doing when he urges the students to find their own style of walking is that he encourages them to follow their own will and desires (Ranciére 1991, 12). However, Charlie stands still in the background and just looks at his fellow students. By doing so, he shows Keating that he is becoming intellectually emancipated.

KEATING

Mr. Dalton? You be joining us?

CHARLIE

Exercising the right not to walk.

KEATING

Thank you, Mr. Dalton. You just illustrated the point. Swim against the stream.

However, this scene can also be problematized from a teaching perspective. Because it is possible to say that Keating does not leave his own ‘intelligence out of the picture’ (Ranciére 1991, 13), but rather directs the students towards his idea of a good life. Put differently, he acts like an explainer instead of being ignorant (not-knowing) and thus allowing the students to search for themselves (Ranciére 1991). This hints about that it is really difficult to truly act like an ignorant teacher who puts his own intelligence and desires aside.

A third example that supports the claim that Charlie is becoming intellectually emancipated due to Keating's teaching practices is that he is the first of the students who creates his own poem.

CHARLIE

Laughing, crying, tumbling, mumbling. Gotta do more. Gotta be more.

CHARLIE

Chaos screaming, chaos dreaming. Gotta do more! Gotta be more!

Charlie calls his poem for ‘poetrusic’ since it is a mixture of poetry and clarinet music. This is a strong argument in favor of the claim that he believes that he is equal to everybody else, and that he verifies and practices his equality (Ranciére 1991, 137). Charlie's confidence in his own poetry reminds us of Ranciére's idea that the feeling of ‘Me too, I am a painter!’ is a sign of intellectual emancipation.

Put together, these three examples show how Charlie verifies and practices his equality and thus becomes intellectually emancipated while being accompanied by Keating's teaching practices. However, a final lesson that we could learn from Charlie, is that there could be a danger in practicing one's equality, especially if one does not control the immediate surroundings. Because Charlie wishes to practice his equality in many different situations. This results in Charlie being expelled from Welton, since he makes a prank on the school's headmaster, who is much more powerful than Charlie. This reveals that social, cultural, and institutional structures could hinder people from practicing their equality in many contexts. And this insight refutes Rancíere's idea that wanting is all that is necessary in order to become intellectually emancipated (Ranciére 1991, 2). Although Charlie gets expelled and has to leave Welton, he remains intellectually emancipated. This is shown in his final scene where he tells his friends to keep calling him by his new and self-invented name – ‘Nuwanda’.

The intellectual emancipation of Neil

Neil is the second student that we will analyze in order to shed light on how intellectual emancipation can unfold within an educational setting where the teacher create spaces for equality. Neil's background is in a distinct way different from his fellow students. While he has a middle-class background, his classmates, in general, come from the upper-class. His strict father also points out, several times, that he and the mother have invested a lot of time and money in Neil's education. Of course, this puts pressure on Neil, and he is expected to fulfill their aspirations rather than his own. Neil is an energetic young man, and he is, for example, engaged as an assistant editor for the school's annual. At least until the day his father says that he is involved in too many extracurricular activities. As we will see later, the conflict between Neil and his father will have severe consequences for Neil. Just like Charlie is Neil one of the first students who really embraces Keating's ideas of pursuing your own desires and dreams and by doing so he practices is own equality.

The first example of Neil's intellectual emancipation can be seen in the dialogue below. It takes place when he enters his dorm room, which he shares with his fellow student Todd.

NEIL

I found it.

TODD

You found what?

NEIL

What I wanna do right now. What's really, really inside me.

TODD

“A Midsummer Night's Dream”?

NEIL

This is it.

TODD

What is this?

NEIL

It's a play, dummy.

TODD

I know that. I-- Wh-Wh-What does it have to do with you?

NEILR

They're putting it on at Henley Hall. Open tryouts. Open tryouts!

TODD

Yes, so?

NEIL

So, I'm gonna act. Yes, yes! I'm gonna be an actor! Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to try this. I even tried to go to summer stock auditions last year, but, of course, my father wouldn't let me. For the first time in my whole lifeI know what I wanna do, and for the first time I'm gonna do it whether my father wants me to or not! Carpe diem!

Neil's excitement is rather obvious in this scene. He has just realized what he wants to do with his life. He wants to become an actor, and he is prepared to pursue this path regardless of his father's will. That is, Neil has the will to make his life extraordinary in his own way, and he realizes that he is an individual who can do whatever he wants to do (Ranciére 1991, 56). Or, put differently, he realizes his equality and decides on ‘how to use it’ (Ranciére 1991, 17). The fact that it is Keating who has created this consciousness of his own equality (Ranciére 1991, 39) is revealed in Neil's final words: ‘Carpe diem!’.

To use Neil as an example is also interesting since it reveals the difficulties of becoming intellectually emancipated even when one has the will. For instance, consider the scene below where Neil discusses his acting dreams with Keating. He tells him that he cannot speak to his father about it, who wants to stop him from pursuing this way of life.

NEIL

But he's planning the rest of my life for me, and I-- H-He's never asked me what I want.

KEATING

Have you ever told your father what you just told me? About your passion for acting.

You ever show him that?

NEIL

I can't.

KEATING

Why not?

NEIL

I can't talk to him this way.

KEATING

Then you're acting for him, too. You're playing the part of the dutiful son. I know this sounds impossible, but you have to talk to him. You have to show him who you are, what your heart is.

NEIL

I know what he'll say. He'll tell me that acting's a whim, and I should forget it. That how they're counting on me. He'll just tell me to put it out of my mind, “for my own good.”

KEATING

You are not an indentured servant. If it's not a whim for you, you prove it to him by your conviction and your passion. You show him that. And if he still doesn't believe you, well, by then you'll be out of school and you can do anything you want.

NEIL

No. What about the play? The show's tomorrow night.

KEATING

Well, you have to talk to him before tomorrow night.

NEIL

Isn't there an easier way?

KEATING

No.

Neil did not talk to his father, and he defied his wish by acting in the play. This made his father embarrassed and angry, and due to this, he decided that Neil should transfer to Braden Military School, and then move on to Harvard to become a doctor. Thus, in one sense, Neil is both an ‘indentured servant’, as Keating says, and intellectually emancipated. He is an ‘indentured servant’ since he is under 18 and not permitted to make his own decisions, but he is also intellectually emancipated since he knows what he wants to do and decides to follow his own desires (Ranciére 1991, 12). Furthermore, the above excerpt also illustrates the challenges of not acting like a master as a teacher. For Keating seems to be an important person for Neil and he gives him advice on how he should live his life. Put differently, Keating is still a master who tries to direct Neil's actions and attention (Ranciére 1991, 15).

In the end, Neil realizes that he will not be able to act anymore, or at least for another ten years. This pushes him to commit suicide. Neil's situation thus shows that Ranciére's statement that ‘I can't’ sometimes means ‘I don't want to’ (Ranciére 1991, 53) is not that simple. In reality, a person is often involved in intricate relationships, and this needs to be acknowledged. Neil's story rather reveals the perils of being intellectually emancipated when one is in a life position where one has the will to become intellectually emancipated but still cannot fulfill one's own will or desires due to, for example, legal restrictions.

The intellectual emancipation of Todd

In the first two cases, the consequences of the students’ intellectual emancipation have been quite tragic (expulsion and suicide), but in the final example, the story is more romantic.

Already at the beginning of the film, we learn that Todd is a shy and quiet young man. We are also told that his brother is a former A-student at Welton, something that Todd is constantly reminded of when he says his name and people around him replies ‘oh, that Anderson’. Todd struggles immensely with self-doubt. For example, he openly says that he hates to read out loud or express himself in front of others. This self-doubt implies that he distrusts his capability and thus his equality. He often says that he can't, which suggests that he is not ready to practice his equality and thus to become intellectually emancipated (Ranciére 1991, 57). Keating observes Todd's self-doubt, and encourages him to get rid of this feeling:

KEATING

Mr. Anderson thinks that everything inside of him is worthless and embarrassing. Isn't that right, Todd? Isn't that your worst fear? Well, I think you're wrong. I think you have something inside of you that is worth a great deal.

During the film we see several snippets where Todd tries to write poems in his dorm room. This suggests that he has the will to practice his equality and that he is willing to work hard and relentlessly to become intellectually emancipated (Ranciére 1991, 56). But it takes time. And Keating keeps pushing Todd to trust his own capability. For example, during one class, Keating forces him to improvise a poem in front of the class by telling his associations from a picture of the poet Walt Whitman.

KEATING

The picture of Uncle Walt up there. What does he remind you of? Don't think. Answer. Go on.

TODD

A m-m-madman.

KEATING

What kind of madman? Don't think about it. Just answer again.

TODD

A c-crazy madman.

KEATING

No, you can do better than that. Free up your mind. Use your imagination. Say the first thing that pops into your head, even if it's total gibberish. Go on, go on.

TODD

Uh, uh, a sweaty-toothed madman.

KEATING

Good God, boy, there's a poet in you, after all. There, close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close 'em. Now, describe what you see.

TODD

Uh, I-I close my eyes.

KEATING

Yes.

TODD

Uh, and this image floats beside me.

KEATING

A sweaty-toothed madman?

TODD

A sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain.

KEATING

Oh, that's excellent. Now, give him action. Make him do something.

TODD

H-His hands reach out and choke me.

KEATING

That's it. Wonderful. Wonderful.

TODD

And, and all the time he's mumbling.

KEATING

What's he mumbling?

TODD

M-Mumbling, “Truth. Truth is like, like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.”

KEATING

Forget them, forget them. Stay with the blanket. Tell me about that blanket.

TODD

Y-Y-Y-You push it, stretch it, it'll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying, it will just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream.

KEATING

Don't you forget this.

So, this forced improvisation helps Todd to practice his equality so that he realizes that he too can become a poet (me too, a painter!) (Ranciére 1991, 65). Furthermore, Keating points out that Todd should not forget this event, which might have been the first time Todd considered himself equal to all others (Ranciére 1991, 39). Thus, yet again, we see how Keating's teaching triggers and supports the intellectual emancipation of Todd. Although Todd smiles at Keating at the end of this event and thus seems to appreciate what just happened, this whole teaching practice can be questioned and understood as the opposite of being an ignorant teacher. The reason for this is that Keating pushes Todd into something that he does not want to, that is, Keating puts his will above Todd's will, and does not treat Todd as an equal. Instead, Keating seems to perceive himself as superior and entitled to guide Todd's attention in a way that reminds us of the Socratic method where the master knows best (Ranciére 1991, 29).

In the film's famous grand finale, Todd's practices nevertheless show how Keating's teaching has made him intellectually emancipated so that he dares to follow his own will and desires (Ranciére 1991, 12). Keating, who just got fired because of Neil's suicide (the parents and school board asserted that his teaching caused it), comes to his office to pick up some stuff during an ongoing class in English, which is now held by the headmaster Mr Nolan. When Keating is about to leave the room, Todd speaks out and defies the authority of Mr Nolan. In other words, he dares to verify and practice his equality, as he does not care about what Mr Nolan or the other students think. His classical manifestation of his intellectual emancipation is that he shows his gratitude to Keating by climbing his desk while saying the famous words ‘O Captain! My Captain!’.

TODD

Mr. Keating! They made everybody sign it.

MR. NOLAN

Quiet, Mr. Anderson.

TODD

You gotta believe me. It's true.

KEATING

I do believe you, Todd.

MR. NOLAN

Leave, Mr. Keating.

TODD

But it wasn't his fault!

MR. NOLAN

Sit down, Mr. Anderson! One more outburst from you or anyone else, and you're out of this school! Leave, Mr. Keating. I said leave, Mr. Keating.

TODD

O Captain! My Captain!

Yet, the million-dollar question follows: is Todd's cry ‘O Captain! My Captain’ a sign of an intellectually emancipated student or a sign of an inferior servant? Because it is Keating who earlier on encouraged the students to call him ‘O Captain! My Captain’. So maybe Keating remains as a master (captain) in Todd's mind even when he is gone?

The stories of Charlie, Neil, and Todd show that it is possible to teach in a way so that students can practice their equality and thus becoming intellectually emancipated even if the educational environment is constraining in various ways. However, the stories also reveal that one's intellectual emancipation might lead to both negative and positive consequences. Of course, it is also impossible to claim that the student's intellectual emancipations are exclusively the result of Keating's teaching practices. Yet, I still want to suggest that it possible to see how Keating's teaching most of the time encourages them to consider themselves as equals, to follow their own wills and desires, and thus to practice their inevitable equality. And, as Ranciére points out, ‘what has happened once is thenceforth always possible’ (Ranciére 1991, 11). This is the main insight that we could take from this analysis, that is, it is possible to encourage and support intellectual emancipation even in constrained situations.

Lessons learned from Jacques Ranciére and dead poets society

Thoughtlessness is an uncanny visitor who comes and goes everywhere in today's world. For nowadays we take in everything in the quickest and cheapest way, only to forget it just as quickly, instantly. (Heidegger 1966, 45)

These words about thoughtlessness were spoken by Martin Heidegger as a part of his memorial address for the late German composer Conradin Kreutzer in 1955. Yet, it is stunning to see how well they fit with our contemporary Zeitgeist. And if there is little room for thoughtfulness in our hectic everyday lives, then the current neo-liberalization of academia threatens to shut down critical thinking and intellectual emancipation terminally. To eschew this kind of situation, Heiddegger (1966) suggested the practice of meditative thinking, which could make us dwell in the world in new and different ways.

In this essay, I explored how meditative thinking could be understood as not-knowing and as an ignorant teaching practice. This teaching practice has the potential to enable and support intellectual emancipation among students, and thus resist the ongoing neo-liberalization of the university and its main focus on producing employable, efficient and uncritical workers (Giroux and Giroux 2006). I did this by drawing upon the rather ground-breaking pedagogical work of Jacques Ranciére, and by using the film Dead Poets Society as a piece of art that could push our imagination and understanding of what it means to be a teacher into new trajectories.

The essay shows that it is possible to resist constraining educational environments by not-knowing and by being an ignorant teacher who primarily works for intellectual emancipation. Based on the analysis, I suggest that there are three teaching practices that we as ignorant university teachers can undertake to support intellectual emancipation at the university. First, we have to verify and practice our own equality by realizing that we too are equal to everyone else, and that all humans are inevitably equal. That is, we have to be emancipated in order to emancipate our students. Second, we can announce everyone's equality to our students. This might encourage them to follow their own desires and their own wills. This can be done by asking the simple question ‘what do you think about it?’. Third, we can create spaces for intellectual emancipation by leaving our own intelligence out of the picture, and instead allowing our students to learn by themselves. In other words, we stop seeing ourselves as masters who explain how things works. Instead, we act as dialogue partners who encourage our students to explore and make sense of the world in new and different ways.

Furthermore, in this essay, I have also highlighted some limitations and challenges in the pursuit of ignorant university teachers and intellectually emancipated students. That is, the difficulty of not acting like a master and explainer, and the difficulty of always treating the students as equals. In the analysis, we saw how Keating, despite good intentions, sometimes guide the students’ attention and how he acts like a master who (thinks he) knows better than the students. This implies that he does not treat his students as absolute equals. Thus, it seems hard to truly act as an ignorant (not knowing) teacher all the time.

Yet, it is also possible to critique Ranciére's notion of an ideal teacher. Maybe we as teachers sometimes need to use our power and responsibility to guide our students’ thinking and practices in order to explore the unknown or to find different ways of dwelling in the world? Otherwise there is a risk that we encourage our students to mindlessly just reproduce the present (neoliberal) ways of living. Thus, there seems to be a complex relation between knowing and not-knowing that we need to be aware of. Furthermore, as we saw in the examples of Neil (suicide) and Charlie (expulsion), there are powerful structures in our society that might obstruct people in their pursuits for equality and intellectual emancipation. In other words, wanting is not all that is necessary to become intellectually emancipated. This is a missing piece in Ranciére's work, which needs further consideration. Also, Ranciére's view on equality mainly focuses on individual and intellectual equality, which means that it does not really offer any guidance on how to deal with the material and social inequalities of our society. This is what West (2011, 191) calls for the tragedy of Jacotot, that is, intellectual emancipation seems to be destined to be an individual project rather than a societal one. If this is true or not is moreover a subject for further consideration.

Nevertheless, a future of ignorant university teachers and intellectually emancipated students could be a possible resistance to the current intellectually depraved situation at many universities (Critchley and Cederström 2010). In my own teaching, I have found that this ideal is easier to accomplish when supervising PhD students and thesis projects rather than large basic courses. In the former situations, it becomes natural to encourage the students to practice their equality and thus joining the rest of us in our endless pursuit of creating knowledge about human life. This equality might also encourage them to become more responsible and reflexive leaders, entrepreneurs, and employees, who rather questions than reproduces the ways we live. However, I am sure that the universal teaching practice of asking the question ‘what do you think about’ could take place in many more situations at the university. Consequently, a task for future research is to empirically explore the many operations that could make intellectual emancipation happen at the university (e.g. Sinner 2015; Kogut, Sørensen Thaning and Birkested, 2021; Huault and Perret 2016). Ironically, a danger with bringing Ranciére's pedagogical insights to the university is that they might serve as reasons for cutting down costs of teaching since the students can learn by themselves and thus there is no need for that many teachers anymore. But I do not think this will be the case, instead I think his insights rather encourage us to improve and change our teaching practices so that we focus more on questions and the unknown than on answers and the known.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the special issue editors Monika Kostera and Anke Strauß, and the anonymous reviewers. You have contributed with great and constructive comments that have improved this essay vastly. Thank you all for your efforts!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius Stiftelse samt Tore Browaldhs Stiftelse [grant number W19-0033].

Notes

1 In his book, Heidegger uses the concept of ‘releasement’ (letting go), and the idea of ‘openness to the mystery’ to develop his idea of meditative thinking further, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this essay.

2 As an observant reviewer pointed out, there is reason to question Ranciére's reading and understanding of the Socratic method since one of his students was Plato. And Plato did not become a parrot, but rather a highly independent and emancipated thinker. Yet, Ranciére does not have Plato in mind when he critiques the Socratic method. Instead, his critique focuses on the slaves (the poor) that Socrates met during his everyday walks. They did not have the same life chances as Plato, and, according to Rancière (1991, 29), they primarily needed to learn about their equality instead of being instructed to think and act in certain ways.