Editing Joseph Jacotot

{{Short description|French teacher and educational philosopher (1770–1840)}}
{{One source|date=February 2012}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2025}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Joseph Jacotot
| image       = JosephJacotot.jpg
| alt         =
| caption     =
| birth_name  = Jean Joseph Jacotot
| birth_date  = {{birth date|df=yes|1770|03|4}}
| birth_place = [[Dijon]], France
| death_date  = {{Death date|df=yes|1840|07|30}}
| death_place = Paris, France
| known_for   = The method of intellectual emancipation
| occupation  = Educationist, teacher
}}

'''Jean Joseph Jacotot''' ({{IPA|fr|ʒakoto|lang}}; 4 March 1770{{snd}}30 July 1840) was a French [[teacher]] and [[educational philosophy|educational philosopher]], creator of the method of "intellectual emancipation."

==Life==
Jacotot was born at [[Dijon]] on 4 March 1770. He was educated at the university of Dijon, where in his nineteenth year he was made a professor of [[Latin]], after which he studied law, became a lawyer, and at the same time devoted a large amount of his attention to mathematics.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Jacotot, Joseph|volume=15|pages=121–122}}</ref>

In 1788 he organized a federation of the youth of Dijon for the defence of the principles of the [[French Revolution|Revolution]]; and in 1792, with the rank of captain, he set out to take part in the [[Campaigns of 1792 in the French Revolutionary Wars|campaign of Belgium]], where he conducted himself with bravery and distinction. After filling the office of secretary of the ''commission d’organisation du mouvement des armées'', in 1794 he became deputy of the director of the [[École Polytechnique]].  Upon the founding of the central schools at Dijon he was appointed to the chair of the "method" or instruction of science.  There he made his first experiments in his "emancipatory" method of teaching. When the central schools were replaced by other educational institutions, Jacotot occupied the chairs of mathematics and of Roman law until the overthrow of the empire. In 1815 he was elected a representative to the chamber of deputies; but after the [[Second Restoration]] he found it necessary to quit his native land.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Having taken up his residence at [[Brussels]], in 1818 Jacotot was nominated teacher of the French language at the [[State University of Leuven|University of Louvain]], where he systematized the educational principles which he had already practised successfully in France.<ref name="EB1911"/>

==Teaching method==
His emancipatory or ''panecastic'' ([[French language|French]]: ''panécastique'' "everything in each" from [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] [[wikt:πᾶς|πᾶν]] and [[wikt:ἕκαστος|ἕκαστον]]) method was not only adopted in several institutions in Belgium, but also met with some approval in France, England, Germany, and Russia. It was based on three principles:

# all men have equal intelligence;
# every man has received from God the faculty of being able to instruct himself;
# everything is in everything.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Regarding the first principle, he maintained that it is only in the will to use their intelligence that men differ.  His own process, depending on the third principle, was to give a student learning a language for the first time a short passage of a few lines, and to encourage the pupil to study first the words, then the letters, then the grammar, then the meaning, until a single paragraph became the occasion for learning an entire literature.<ref name="EB1911"/> A book that he often used as a source material for learning was ''[[Les Aventures de Télémaque]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Understanding Rancière, Understanding Modernism |date = 23 March 2017| publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn = 978-1-501-31137-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=q7QFDgAAQBAJ&q=%22Les+Aventures+de+T%C3%A9l%C3%A9maque%22+%22jacotot%22&pg=PA51 |editor-first=Patrick M. |editor-last=Bray}}</ref> After the [[July Revolution|revolution of 1830]] Jacotot returned to France, and he died in Paris on 30 July 1840.

Jacotot described his system in ''Enseignement universel (universal education), langue maternelle'' (Louvain and Dijon, 1823)—which passed through several editions—and in various other works; and he also advocated his views in the ''Journal de l’émancipation intellectuelle'' and elsewhere. For a complete list of his works and fuller details regarding his career, see ''Biographie de J. Jacotot'', by Achille Guillard (Paris, 1860).<ref name="EB1911"/>

Jacotot's educational doctrines became popular in England through the interest taken by British educationalist [[Joseph Payne (educationalist)|Joseph Payne]] in a study of his work, called ''A Compendious Exposition of the Principles and Practice of Professor Jacotot’s Celebrated System of Education'' (1830).<ref>{{cite book |last= Howatt |first= A.P.R |date= 3 June 2004|title= A History of English Language Teaching |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=g2e7iw_F-ZcC|access-date=12 February 2022|location= Oxford |publisher= Oxford University Press|page=170 |isbn= 978-0-194-42185-0}}</ref>

Jacotot's career and principles are also described by [[Jacques Rancière]] in ''[[The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation]]'' (Stanford University Press, 1991).

== Publications ==
* ''Enseignement universel, Langue maternelle'' (1823)
* ''Musique, dessin et peinture'' (1824)
* ''Mathématiques'' (1827)
* ''Langues étrangères'' (1828)
* ''Droit et philosophie panécastiques'' (1837)

== References ==
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jacotot, Joseph}}
[[Category:1770 births]]
[[Category:1840 deaths]]
[[Category:French educational theorists]]
[[Category:French schoolteachers]]
[[Category:People from Dijon]]
[[Category:19th-century French educators]]
[[Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery]]