Articulating the “Ignorant Citizen”: Beyond the Imperative to Know in Citizenship Education

The drastic measures taken by governments throughout the world in response to the coronavirus pandemic have made politics appear more present than ever in the lives of young students. While this is seemingly a golden opportunity for civic education to thrive, the demand for social distancing also affects the practice of such education, narrowing it down to the teaching of theoretical knowledge at the expense of other aspects of active citizenship. My talk will reflect on the relations between citizenship and education, challenging the prevailing assumption that conveying knowledge is an essential aspect of civic education, and pointing to an alternative path for political education. Based on Jacques Rancière’s “Method of Equality” and his view of the equality of intelligence, I will argue that knowledge is a stultifying factor in the fostering of engaged citizens. When knowledge is presented as a precondition for political action, actual civic engagement is postponed ad infinitum, for there is always more to knowledge to acquire, always someone who knows much more. Drawing on Gert Biesta's conception of "The Ignorant Citizen" I will contend that the imperative to know not only stands in students’ way of becoming active citizens, but also thwarts the new generation's ability to develop new modes of civic engagement. This does not mean that knowledge plays no part in active citizenship, nor that civic education is altogether impossible. In the second part of the talk, I will turn to to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's conception of political articulation to outline a new approach to civic education that does not rely on the transference of knowledge from teacher to student. Differentiating between three different aspects of political articulation – performance, connection, and transformation – I will offer a conceptual framework through which to think about political education that assumes that students are already capable of engaging in civic-political activity.