‘Claiming the Status of Speaking and Thinking Beings’: Using Rancière to Encourage a Perceptual Shift around People, Education and Equality

Abstract Education is often seen as a solution to the many challenges we face as a society where people and the problems they experience, or cause, can be fixed by education. Equality, it is believed, can be achieved through education. The work of Jacques Rancière offers a different perspective. This article draws on data from a qualitative study of community activist learning to illustrate Rancière’s principle of equality. It considers how education may create and sustain inequality. Community activism provides a useful context to consider how, rather than being deferred, equality can be verified through people claiming the status of speaking and thinking beings. The aim is to encourage a shift in how people, education and equality are perceived. Since education reform after reform have had little impact on tackling inequality, it is argued that we need to see differently before we can do differently.