Book Review: Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks (Rest in Power, 2021)

Abstract: Herein are discussed the social justice implications of moral instructional practice according to bell hooks. Also identified are the practical uses of educational leadership in classroom instruction utilizing transgression of the status quo. It is incumbent for educational practitioners to maintain healthy and ethical relationships with their students. As a result, an educator’s moral practice is analyzed through the various ethical theories of the common good, social justice, liberation practice, essentialism, feminism, diversity, and inclusion. From a deontological perspective and as a result?of liberation practice relativism, moral instruction is the way forward to ensure the greater good. The field of education must transform to embrace heightened awareness for respect for individuality, equity, and justice. Further, bell’s theoretical framework of transgression alludes to student social and psychological empowerment reconciled by the relationship between moral instructional methods and organizational commitment to ensure students are treated with dignity and respect.??

Keywords:?social justice, transgression, liberation practice,?essentialism,?feminism, educational leadership, moral instructional practice, diversity and inclusion

Book Review

Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks

“It is rare that any professor, no matter how eloquent a lecturer, can generate through his or her actions enough excitement to create an exciting classroom. Excitement is generated through collective effort.” (p. 8).

Teaching to Transgress - Education as the Practice of Freedom?(Hooks, 1994) is a preeminent text regarding compassionate education. Its goal is to counter subjection practices in educational practices. Moreover, its premise is that current educational practices marginalize students; thus, there is a necessity to make substantial changes in educational applications. Regarding the obstinacy of racism and the different isms that are part of the existing culture. Hooks implores individuals who are advocates to impact educational equity for sustainable change. Furthermore, Hook encourages those who work as social justice stewards because they may experience alienation and condemnation intended to prevent progress. She offers those who seek opportunity for people who wish to contextualize their encounters in education and to those endeavoring to adapt to the existing societal framework. Last, this work was created for individuals who seek to inspire youth, students, and how to transgress. Ultimately, she provides a framework for those who challenge the status quo.??

Teaching to Transgress?is a method that aims to address one's own commitment and duty to education. It is a method that emboldens instructors and students to take advantage of the lessons she espouses. The role of educational progressives is to address the need to liberate oneself from abuse. Most appropriately, one should practice this work to improve society locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.?

Engaged Pedagogy

“Professors who embrace the challenge of self-actualization will be better able to create pedagogical practices that engage students, providing them with ways of knowing that enhance their capacity to live fully and deeply.” (p. 22)

Working at the nexus to establish theoretical and practical knowledge in graduate-level education connects pedagogy to andragogy in the sense that Hooks prompts reviewers to examine their capacity to question ideas identified with marginalization. The goal is to become proficient at marginalization mitigation to cultivate an environment for transformative learning. Notwithstanding, there are difficulties related to incorporating transgression into institutions of higher education as students, staff, faculty, and administration rarely evaluate and examine its definitions and implications. There must be commitment made by students to question how and what they are taught, and administrators must be willing to understand their demands. Thus, learning can take on new meaning when students are actively engaged in the process of curriculum identification, development, and design.?

A Revolution of Values: The Promise of a Multicultural Change

“All of us in the academy and in the culture as a whole are called to renew our minds if we are to transform educational institutions-and society.” (p. 34)

Furthermore, Hooks contended that racial domination is provocative and exacting; raising images of colonialists, settlers and progenitors of past destruction, oppression, and segregation. As an author who is seemingly comfortable and candid in race discourse, she indicated that systematized xenophobia or covert racism is apparent in subjective approaches and inequitable educational practices. Hooks argued that racial domination is the most valid term to express in context to marginalization because the constant maltreatment of marginalized people is not lost on people of color.??Even people of color who live an intellectual life are not shielded from racial domination. Thus, for racial domination to be effective, one group of people must dominate another group against their will. Hooks conveys her experiences with white feminists who wanted to lead black feminists’ groups, much like xenophobe progenitors had. Moreover, she found that some Caucasian instructors and administrators were more comfortable with people of color who showed proficiency in their subjects as long as they behaved and thought as they did.?

Embracing Change: Teaching in a Multicultural World

“When I first entered the multicultural, multiethnic classroom setting I was unprepared.” (p. 41)

The topic of how to instruct successfully from a social equity viewpoint that enables students to think about models of social change has been a challenge for dynamic instructors. Instructors can use a social equity instructive focal point to treat the subject of subjugation in ways that meet their commitment to authentic and engaging education. Social equity education is helpful in defining a social equity point of view to construct strategies for curriculum development, reasoning, facilitating activities in social change, reflection, and building multicultural communities. Instructors who provide social equity in their classrooms, also provide examples for others to follow.

Incorporation of social equity theories in educational elements is fundamental, yet if not careful can conceal oppressive educational practices. Therefore, Hooks implores instructors to utilize critical race theory to deconstruct xenophobia to thwart exploitation in education. Utilizing an interdisciplinary way to understand systematic racism, instructors are better equipped thwart permanent scars, impressions that propagate the institutional muting of race discourse in instructor education. Likewise, instructor education programs must investigate systematic oppression in education because if they do not, few individuals have the courage or interest to do so on their own.?

Paulo Freire

“Authentic help means that all who are involved help each other mutually, growing together in the common effort to understand the reality which they seek to transform.” (p. 54)

Conscientization is focal point in Freire's conceptualization of education as a type of freedom. Moreover, the student learns best by applying experiences to what is be learned.??Epistemologically, there exist a connection between the student, instructor, and knowledge. In transformational learning, one of these points empowers the others to change. The goal of the instructor is to effectively set the student upon a journey of learning material in a socially responsible manner; whereas, students then present knowledge they have discerned.??Students are then responsible for their learning and others. In this way, instructors can then reconstruct or reconstitute their role in the course.?

Theory as Liberatory Practice

“By reinforcing the idea that there is a split between theory and practice or by creating such a split, both groups deny the power of Liberatory education for critical consciousness, thereby perpetuating conditions that reinforce our collective exploitation and repression.” (p. 69)

Gender studies scholars agree on the standards and objectives of gender studies pedagogy, yet Hooks raised genuine concerns about the authenticity of these techniques. Pedagogy advocated by gender academicians and activists is instructive for scholars when they encourage production of communities of learning. Regardless of a person’s race, sexual orientation, age, or socio-economic status; students need validation of their personal experiences. When instructors encourage students’ social understanding and activism, they help them to develop critical thinking capacity. Hooks implores instructors to unequivocally support basic Liberatory practices.?

Essentialism and Experience

“Authority of Experience” have already been determined by a politics of race, sex, and class domination.” (p. 81)

Hooks deliberated that disintegration of transgression for those who are theory‐practice reformers is connected to individual experiences. Perhaps they have experienced traumatic deconstruction and thus feel insecure about their ability to lead others through the process. Nonetheless, the personal stories of those who instruct or those who intend to instruct should deconstruct to get to the root of the isms that reside deep inside in all. The goal is to transgress traditional teachingmethods to encourage students to?expand their mindsets past essentialism from personal realities embedded in childhood, adulthood, innate abilities, and personal visions.

Holding My Sister’s Hand: Feminist Solidarity

“Contemporary discussions of relations between black women and white women (whether scholarly or personal) rarely take place in integrated settings.” (p101)

Globalization, ecological corruption, and financial mismanagement have affected communities of living and learning. Along these lines, it is more important than ever that in communities of learning that women listen to each other’s stories. These stories should be held in the spirit of love authenticity, solidarity, and transformation.?

Feminist Thinking: In the Classroom Right Now

“Are you strong enough to handle the isolation, the criticism?” (p. 117)

Hooks conjectures that women's experiences in education are controlled by cultural, political, and economic existences in which they live. Women in many cultures suffer suppression and thus bound by this connection. Therefore, the very system they are born into is status quo and some women see no choice but to voluntarily relinquish their own liberation. The concept of women’s rights is based upon the idea and bias of the predominant academic conventions of the West. The social and political objectives of the women's liberation movement were primarily based on liberal rights and equity for women. Further, the women’s liberation movement provides a critique of poststructuralism. As a result, the women's liberation movement has experienced impediments because those who wish to transform society must choose alternative frameworks instead of trying to modify existing ones. There are challenges in transforming the self, much less society.??

Feminist Scholarship: Black Scholars

“…contemporary feminist movement created the necessary cultural framework for an academic legitimization of gender-based scholarship without explicitly naming itself as feminist.” (p.126)

The intersections of social constructs and academia for women of color is defined by who they are in the sense that their career is not necessarily their own. For instance, as a person of color, one is seen as the representative for students, faculty, and staff. Unfortunately, the needs of marginalized communities become an obligation to people of color serving in academe. As a woman of color in academe, one may acquiesce to the hypothetical ideal of women's liberation as characterized by theoretical assumptions veiled as evidence-based scholarly interpretations of what reality is actually like for marginalized people in the academy.

Building a Teaching Community: A Dialogue

“Significantly, those of us who are trying to critique biases in the classroom have been compelled to return to the body to speak about ourselves as subjects in history.”

Hooks has enabled exploration and contended that teaching communities are a requirement to cement the practices of transgression. For instance, teaching communities create an awareness of the self, instructor, and the whole. Students are urged to take part in self-reflection and self-exploration with respect to their own attitudes toward topical information and its application to practice.

Language: Teaching New World/New Words

“Shifting how we think about language and how we use it necessarily alters how we know what we know.”

Educators at all levels must embrace the rationale for language-conscious education regardless of status quo leanings. Language-conscious education incorporates a diversity of perspectives and opportunities for individuals to take latitude, which provides inclusion for all into scholarly dialogues. Likewise, language-conscious education must extend to evaluative measures in every space in the academia to ensure equity and provide for more accurate data sets.

Confronting Class in the Classroom

“Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences in educational settings.”

A transformational classroom must include students' assessments, instructors' perceptions, interviews with students, interviews with several educators, and discussions with an array of staff. In this way, diversity of thought is encouraged. This is a departure from traditional lecture style classrooms. Most importantly, communities should be invited into the classroom as this encourages diversity of experiences and thought where students can gain perspectives from those of the different or same race, class, sex, physical ability, and sexual orientation. The instruction and learning process become more dynamic when power relationships are challenged, and their dependence is decreased in the aforementioned elements. On the other hand, given the cultural dynamics of oppression in Western instructional environments, instructors of color may have issues implementing transformational classroom practices because some students will be resistant with this classroom methodology.

Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process

“Understanding that Eros is a force that enhances our overall efforts to be self-actualizing, they it can provide an epistemological grounding informing how we know what we know, enables professors and students to use such energy in a classroom setting in ways that invigorate discussion and excitement critical imagination.”

Hooks implores instructors not to underestimate the power of love in the classroom.??Love in teaching, for teaching, and students is necessary for fully implementing transformational education and helping students transgress from traumatic educational experiences. The recovery needed is not isolated to people of color, but everyone who has been educated in an institutional environment and extends to those who are in nontraditional settings are taught by someone who was educated institutionally. Emphasis on organizational characteristics of status quo systems underscores the significance of love as an educational standard. Hooks reminds readers that antiquated academic notions of teaching from the head and not the heart is a thing of the past…that is if instructors want to connect with students in multi-dimensional ways.

Ecstasy: Teaching and Learning Without Limits

“The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.”

Hooks contended that instructors do not have the fundamental knowledge to impart transgressive practices in the classroom, yet they can learn. The underlying issue is that instructors must begin the journey of introspection and self-inquiry to comprehend how teaching to transgress can transform instruction and students. Incorporating Hook’s method may be challenging, but not impossible. Additionally, teaching to transgress requires planning and giving oneself permission to fail in the process, so that one can learn and implement changes in perpetuity.?

Conclusion

Hooks revitalizes instructors by helping them to understand that instruction is not paradise and at times it can be perplexing. Most instructors are passionate about education and helping people; thus, instructors must maintain a steadfast connection to what inspired them to teach in the first place. Finally, co-creating communities of learning provide edification in educational environments, with the goal of motivating students to share what they have learned in the classroom…Each One, Teach One.

Application: Implications of Teaching to Transgress on Continuing Professional Education

In context, an appraisal of continuing professional education (CPE) has been deeply considered in light of Hook’s critique of the need for educators to transgress to become better instructors. Currently, continuing professional education (CPE) is an exercise in which instructors use a blend of contextual research, individual assignments, and generally focused on results or achievement. Hooks indicated that assignment assessment is potentially dangerous to student development if not executed without bias and with a focus on holistic development.?

The instructor as transgress facilitator must provide context to classroom discussions in regard to asking critical questions: what went right, wrong, and can be improved in their education; so, students feel encouraged to openly share their experiences in the classroom. The instructor may find challenges engaging students due to interest in method, discussion, or time constraints. Student engagement is a persistent obstacle for instructors, yet through well-organized course construction and supportive agency, and; this concern can be lessened. The ability of the instructor to provide honest and unbiased context in academic development is critical for future learning.

References

Hooks, B. (2014).?Teaching to transgress. Routledge.