Teaching to

Transgress

Education as the Practice of Freedom

bell hooks

Routledge New York London

 

 

—————·–~—-

Published in 1994 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 711 Third Avenue NewYork, NY10017

Copyright© 1994 Gloria Watkins

Published in Great Britain by Routledgc Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

hooks, bell. Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom I

bell hooks p. cm.

Includes índex ISBN 0-415-90807-8- ISBN 0-415-90808-6 (pbk.) l. Critica! pedagogy. 2. Critical thinking-Study and teaching.

3. Feminism and education. 4. Teaching. I. Title. LC196.H66 1994 370.1!’5-dc20 94-26248

C1P

to all my students,

especially to LaRon who dances with angels in gratitude for all the times we start over-begin again-

renew our joy in learning.

” … to begin always anew, to make, to reconstruct, and to not

spoil, to refuse to bureaucratize the mind, to understand and to li ve life as a process-live to beco me … ”

-Paulo Freire

 

 

Contents

Introduction

Teaching to Transgress

Engaged Pedagogy 13

2 A Revolution ofValues 23 ——–

The Promise of Multicultural Change

J Embracing Change 35 Teaching in a Multicultural World

4 Paulo Freire 45

5 Theory as Liberatory Practice 59 ‘ !

6 Essentialism and Experience 77 ¡, ¡:

[I

 

 

7 Holding My Sister’s Hand 93

Feminist Solidarity

8 Feminist Thinking lli In the Classroom Right Now

Feminist Scholarship 119

Black Scholars

lO Building a Teaching Community 129

A Dialogue

11 Language 167 Teaching New Worlds /New Words

Confronting Class 12 in the Classroom 177

·—–·-

Eros, Eroticism, ll and the Pedagogical Process 191

14 Ecstasy 20 I

Teaching and Learning Without Limits

Index 209

lntroduction

Teaching to Transgress

In the weeks before the English Departrnent at Oberlin Col- lege was about to decide whether or not I would be granted tenure, I was haunted by dreams of running away-of disap- pearing-yes, even of dying. These dreams were nota response to fear that I would not be granted tenure. They were a response to the reality that I would be granted tenure. I was afraid that I would be trapped in the academy forever.

Instead offeeling elated when I received tenure, I fell into a

deep, life-threatening depression. Since everyone around me believed that I should be relieved, thrilled, proud, I felt “gnilty” abont my “real” feelings and could not share them with any- one. The lecture circuit took me to sunny California and the New Age world of my sister’s house in Laguna Beach where I was able to chill out for a month. When I shared my feelings with my sister (she’s a therapist), she reassured me that they were entirely appropriate because, she said, ”You never wanted

 

 

2 Teaching to Transgress

to be a teacher. Since we were little, all you ever wanted to do was write.” She was right. It was always assumed by everyone else that I would become a teacher. In the apartheid South, black giris from working-class backgrounds had three career

choices. We could marry. We could work as maids. We could beco me school teachers. And since, according to the sexist thinking of the tim e, men did not really desire “smart” women, it was assumed that signs of intelligence sealed one’s fate. F rom grade school on, I was destined to become a teacher.

But the dream ofbecoming a writer was always present with- in me. From childhood, I believed that I would teach andwrite. Writing would be the serious work, teaching would be the not-so-serious-I-need-to-make-a-living ‘Job.” Writing, I believed then, was all about private longing and personal glory, but teaching was about service, giving back to one’s community. For black folks teaching-educating-was fundamentally polit- icai because it was rooted in antiracist struggle. Indeed, my all- black grade schools became the location where I experienced learning as revolution.