In his seminal book The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1987), Jacques Rancière rejects the belief in the superior intelligence of the teacher, which stands at the heart of "the myth of pedagogy", and offers in its stead a hypothesis of equal intelligences. While this book led to important criticisms of modern education and the idea of measurable intelligence, the implications of Rancière's views on the concept of thinking and the connection between education and thinking processes have yet to be examined. My presentation will explore the links between thinking, intelligence and education in Rancière, and present three major claims: first, I will demonstrate that Rancière's view implies that there are many possible ways of thinking and learning, although not every mental activity amounts to genuine thinking; second, I will develop a Rancièrian critique of the teaching of thinking skills, yet I will also argue that for him, emancipatory education is one in which the student is made to think; and third, I will argue that thinking in a unique, original way has a political potential which goes beyond the mere realization that all intelligences are essentially equal.

Rancière describes superior intelligence, the one allegedly enabling the teacher to provide explanations without which the student cannot learn, not as a natural capacity differentiating people in an essential-Platonist manner, but rather as thinking in accordance with the right method. That is to say, "stultifying" education rests on the Cartesian presupposition according to which even though every man is capable of thinking, there is qualitative difference between random, unordered thinking and rigorous thinking that follows systematic rules. Education that denies the existence of a superior intelligence and advances the hypothesis of the equality of intelligences must therefore reject the assumption of one proper method for thinking; the equality of intelligence means equal ability to think and learn, but it does not imply that everybody thinks in the same way. Although not every mental activity amounts to learning, "universal teaching" necessarily acknowledges a plurality of equally valuable forms of thinking, namely the ability of human thought to learn and understand in countless ways.

Can thinking be at all taught? The growing field of education for thinking, which have been flourishing in the past three decades in both theory and practice, not only answers affirmatively, but also claims that such education has a significant democratic, even liberating dimension, for it gets the students engaged in critical autonomous activity. Rancière's view, which links systematic thinking to the myth of superior intelligence, leads to seeing such education as stultifying, for it assumes that the student cannot learn to think by herself, without a knowledgeable teacher who explains how it is to be done. However, as Rancière too links learning to thinking, I suggest that his approach posits a new relation between education and thinking: when the teacher uses his authority over the student and forces her to learn, he in fact forces her to think for herself and as herself, namely to develop her own unique way to understand, interpret and translate the subject matter into her own words.

Lastly, the connection between education and thinking in The Ignorant Schoolmaster sheds new light on the political significance of emancipatory education. According to Rancière, such education can potentially liberate people because it leads the student to realize that no one has superior capabilities. I argue, however, that pointing the spotlight to the activity of thinking reveals additional potential that universal teaching may have: it prepares the ground for challenging common sense, for seeing and hearing those who have no part in the world as it is ordinarily perceived and understood.

Biesta, Gert and Bingham, Charles. (2010) Jacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation (London: Bloomsbury Academic). Deranty, Jean-Philippe and Ross, Alison (eds.) Jacques Rancière and the Contemporary Scene: The Philosophy of Radical Equality (London: Bloomsbury Academic). Masschelein, Jan and Simons, Maarten (eds.). (2011) Rancière, Public Education and the Taming of Democracy (Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell). Rancière, Jacques. (1991 [1987]) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Rancière, Jacques. (2004 [1999]) Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).