Bell Hooks

I’ve been reading Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress. Clearly she’s writing about my classrooms, the kids I “teach”, and the way I teach. What she says has applications outside of merely “teaching” though. She addresses the “powers”, the institutional archetypes of many domains. Her “insights, strategies, and critical reflections on pedagogical practice” which she calls an “intervention - countering the devaluation of teaching even as they address the urgent need for changes in teaching practice”, have application in all domains where the “powers” are thriving.

“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 communication 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”.

“Teaching is a performative act. And it is this aspect of our work that offers the space for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the unique elements in each classroom. To embrace the performative aspect of teaching we are compelled to engage “audiences”, to consider issues of reciprocity. Teachers are not performers in the traditional sense of the word in that our work is not meant to be a spectacle. Yet it is meant to serve as a catalyst that calls everyone to become more and more engaged, to become active participants in learning”.