bell hooks, one of America’s leading black intellectuals, shares her philosophy of the classroom, offering ideas about teaching that fundamentally rethink democratcic participation…. More >>
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Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
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#1 by Simone Marie Mitchell on June 30, 2010 - 10:25 pm
In reading this book, I was reminded of a wonderful Professor of Humanities at the university that I attended. He taught in just the style that hook’s describes in her text: democratic and liberatory. He was a white man who taught a course on African-American culture. At the time my classmates and I were too busy being angry, sometimes very vocally, about the fact that the course was being taught by a white man as most such courses were (can I say are ?) at that institution, which is not to say that our concern was/is unfounded or illegitmate. What we didn’t do was understand the place where he was coming from. He was genuine. A very sincere teacher who would always make time for students and was always working to help more people of colour advance themselves. His classroom was also a very open and safe place. We were encouraged to discuss and challenge ideas, and we did. The way that this man taught was so obviously a labour of love that five years after taking the course, and while reading Teaching To Transgress, is when I could actually recognize the value in what I was given in that classroom by that teacher. He is one of two professors that were transgressive teachers in my 4 1/2 years of undergraduate study, both of whom were white (one man, one woman) and quite obviously believed in a liberatory pedagogy. I never had a black professor during my entire recently-concluded undergraduate career. Which I think still speaks to the concern had by myself and my peers in our first year of university. However, “education as the practice of freedom” is a view that can be held by anyone who believes in it and transgressive teaching can be done by anyone who is committed to working with students to transform the limiting structures that form the basis of our society and, consequently, the foundation of our institutions, which are in and of themselves problematic, aren’t they ?
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Toby, an educator on July 1, 2010 - 1:13 am
hooks does an exemplary job of illuminating, in accessible language, the ways in which race, class and sex intersect in “the academy” and in the classroom. I highly recommend this book to anyone who teaches — in higher ed or K-12.
If you are White and/or middle class and are willing to *listen* to what hooks offers, you may well say, after reading her book: “I was blind, but now I see.”
hooks may not cater to a middle-class, white readership (nor should she), but those of us who fall into those categories certainly can learn from her experiences and from her critical analysis.Open your mind. Let your defenses down. And sink into a book that can change the way you approach classroom instruction — and, perhaps, the way you live your life.
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by A. Kee on July 1, 2010 - 1:36 am
This book is essential for faculty who believe in libratory education. When I got my first job as an instructor I read a few books on college teaching and they were fine for nuts and bolts like how to plan a syllabus. However, hooks writes about heart-matters that really affect teaching and learning like engagement, multiculturalism, theory, feminism, community, class, and eroticism.
For example, she discusses teaching which engages the learner (why is this taken for granted preK-12 but abandoned at grade 13?) and being a diverse teacher with diverse classes in a predominantly white male academy (if you’re female, or not white, or not straight, or ‘political’, this is you), and other topics essential to understanding the undercurrents which happen every day in lectures across the country.
I must say that I am struck by the strongly negative reactions of some reviewers. For me this book was an oasis in the desert.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Robert D. Steele on July 1, 2010 - 2:01 am
This is the third of three books on liberation pedagogy that I picked up, the other two being Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage (Critical Perspectives Series) and Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
This book is a collection of essays by a woman of color who studied with Freire and found in his works her own liberation and her inspiration to take his ideas and practices further.
I am shocked early on to realize that her description of black schools prior to desegregation as better, because their teachers were passionate about helping them excel, whereas in integrated schools they were treated as second class citizens and taught obedience, rings true.
I see feminist pedagogy in a new more positive light.
The author represents a unique interplay among anticolonial, critical, and feminist pedagogies.
She resonates with me when she speaks of the crisis in education; of our need for a totally renewed educational environment in which biases must be confronted and students liberated.
Her strong statement that education should be the practice of freedom is repeated in many different ways throughout the book.
She states, and I have three sons in public school who would agree, that transgressing wrong-headed boundaries is liberating and entirely called for. She discusses teachers as healers, and throughout this book I gain a deeper broader sense of the pain that minorities and women take pains to repress or conceal because the educational environment is not safe for revelation, only obedience.
I am quite taken by her discussion of the importance of wholeness in teaching, and her engaging discussion of how many professors, especially white mailes, are social misfits who think they can separate their teaching (one-way, authoritarian) without having to engage with students of be whole themselves. She is especially hard on the manner in which they treat the classroom as personal fiefdoms where they can exercise unchallenged authority.
She says that resistance must include the unconvering of lost knowledge. I am reminded of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’.
She quotes Martin Luther King in emphasizing, as he did, that shared values and a focus on people are essential is we are to contain, in his words, “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.”
She teaches that cultural diversity is INCLUSIVE, and it is not about substituting one culture over another in the relation pecking order. I am reminded of two books I recently reviewed, The Web of Inclusion: Architecture for Building Great Organizations and The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.
She states that teaching that does not include explicit awareness of race, sex, or class, lacks liberating context.
She cites Terry Eagleton who says “Children make the best theorists,” for not being indoctrinated, and I am reminded of how many arguments I have lost to my 18-year-old when “because I say so” just does not suffice.
I am fascinated by her discussion of how standards can suppresses, norms can neutralize.
She spends time on the importance of theory as a space, a place, for sense-making and reconciliation.
She cites Full in noting that the boundaries between insiders and outsiders contain information rather than allowing the dissemination of knowledge. I am reminded of The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety.
The author offers a very effective critique of the ignorance, stereotyping, and lack of understanding with which white professors wrote about black reality.
I am not doing justice to the essays on existentialism and on black-white women in relation and in critique of one another, but she notes that resolution between them demands joint collective dialog.
As the book of essays winds down I have a few notes:
+ Habit versus voice
+ Must teach students how to LISTEN
+ Being a teacher is about BEING with people
+ Pedagogy can be, should be, political activism
+ Queens in New York City has 17,000 people speaking 66 languages
+ Class matters, and is too often left unaddressed. I am reminded of Global Class War
Her final note: Learning is a place where paradise can be created. We must learn to transgress freely, and thereby demonstrate that education IS freedom. I am reminded of Improper behavior.
I would not have appreciated this book and the author’s insights as easily had I not first read t he two works by Friere that I cite above. The author honors and exceeds her model, this is a very fine book, and I would add in passing that I also found Cornell West’s Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism to be a Nobel-level reflection.
Very highly recommended.
Also recommended:
Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Anonymous on July 1, 2010 - 3:33 am
bell hooks challenges the economically and educationally advantaged white feminists who would conduct their discourse amongst themselves rather than allow a Black woman to offer her own ideas. In fact, ideas are the purpose of this book, allowing ideas to proliferate in the classroom instead of allowing racist stereotypes prevail. This is a courageous and brilliant book, and something of a threat to the institutionalized and priviledged feminism of white women, particularly at the universities of this country. White feminists ignore this book at their peril, and should read it immediately.
Rating: 5 / 5