Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2000 by Smith, Karl A, McNaron, Toni A H

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

by bell books

Routledge, 1994, 216 pp.

Rereading bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress jarred Karl into reflecting how little progress has been made in transforming higher education since his days as a graduate student in educational psychology where he read Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Herb Kohl's 36 Children, John Dewey Is Education and Experience and so many other books that hooks refers to. Her reflections on school experiences resonated with us:

"Accepting the teaching profession as my destiny, I was tormented by the classroom reality I had known both as an undergraduate and a graduate student. The vast majority of our professors lacked basic communications skills, they were not self-actualized, and they often used the classroom to enact rituals of control that were about domination and the unjust exercise of power. In these settings I learned a lot about the kind of teacher I did not want to become... In graduate school I found that I was often bored in classes. The banking system of education (based on the assumption that memorizing information and regurgitating it represented gaining knowledge that could be deposited, stored and used at a later date) did not interest me. I wanted to become a critical thinker (p. 5)."

hooks' proposes that there is a serious crisis in education. She states that "Students often do not want to learn and teachers do not want to teach." Student motivation (or lack thereof) is a common comment and concern of the faculty we work with. hooks' is optimistic and passionate as indicated in the following:

"The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy... With these essays, I add my voice to the collective call for renewal and rejuvenation in our teaching practices... I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions movement against and beyond boundaries. It is a movement which makes education the practice of freedom.(p. 12)."

Teaching to Transgress covers a lot of territory, beginning with an essay on Engaged Pedagogy. hooks' adopts Thich Nhat Hanh's philosophy of engaged Buddhism, the focus on practice in conjunction with contemplation, and notes its similarity to Freire's emphasis on "praxis"-action and reflection upon the world in order to change it.

She notes in the second chapter, A Revolution of Values: The Promise of Multcultural Change, that "it is painfully clear that biases that uphold and maintain white supremacy, imperialism, sexism, and racism have distorted education so that it is no longer about the practice of freedom. The call for a recognition of cultural diversity, a rethinking of ways of knowing, a deconstruction of old epistemologies, and the concomitant demand that there be a transformation in our classrooms, in how we teach and what we teach, has been a necessary revolution-one that seeks to restore life to a corrupt and dying academy."

There are lots of similarities between hooks' ideas for transforming the academy and Parker Palmer's ideas in The Courage to Teach (summarized in the journal of Engineering Education, vol. 88, no. 1, January, 1999). For example, hooks' states that "To create a culturally diverse academy we must commit ourselves fully. Learning from other movements for social change, from civil rights and feminist liberation efforts, we must accept the protracted nature of our struggle and be willing to remain both patient and vigilant. To commit ourselves to the work of transforming the academy so that it will be a place where cultural diversity informs every aspect of our learning, we must embrace struggle and sacrifice (p. 33)."

In chapter 3, Embracing Change: Teaching in a Multicultural World, hooks' advocates that "Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goal of transformative pedagogy (p. 39)." She claims that students are much more willing to surrender their dependency on the banking system of education than are faculty. We hope this is the case but students have been thoroughly socialized in the banking system and often even our best students are reluctant to change. We agree with hooks' assumption that "we must build `community in order to create a climate of openness and intellectual rigor." Her thought that "a feeling of community creates a sense that there is a shared commitment and a common good that binds us" is central to transforming the classroom.

bell hooks is one of the clearest theorists about race as it impacts education at all levels within American society. She lets no one escape unchallenged about the barrenness that lies at the heart of a received educational system or the peril that accompanies resistance to changing pedagogical strategy to accommodate the realities of today's student body and to respond to 100 years of educational research about what makes for effective education.