Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Class differences can serve as a barrier in the classroom if the professor and students do not confront the issue. Unfortunately, there is a silence about this issue, since people often assume the classroom is a democratic space dedicated to equality where all have the same access to education. hooks points out how those assumptions are false. The traditional classroom favors middle- and upper-class values and students must conform to those values if they are to succeed.

She explains that her initial understanding of class when she first went to college was limited to the question of tuition, especially since she was only able to attend college because of a combination of scholarships and loans. She soon realized that class was much more than about how much money you have: “[class] shaped values, attitudes, social relations, and the biases that informed the way knowledge would be given and received” (178). Students are attuned to these subtle biases and adjust their behaviors accordingly to fit in. Students must learn to restrain their responses and hide their poorer backgrounds if they are to be accepted or they will feel estranged and stigmatized, as hooks did when she went to Stanford.

Her discussion of class connects to her earlier discussion of language, since students often must hide both their lower-class backgrounds and their non-Standard English languages if they want to be rewarded in the classroom. This need for invisibility and restraint means that students must try to censor their behavior to fit into the classroom if they are to succeed.

Feminist classrooms do not exert the same pressure for silence, restraint, and conformity on their students; rather, they allow for an interrogation of such pressure: “Significantly, feminist classrooms were the first spaces in the university where I encountered any attempt to acknowledge class difference” (181). Working-class students felt more comfortable expressing their critique of class biases in feminist classrooms since the examination of gender bias often led to a discussion of how gender and class intersected.

hooks encourages her students, especially her African American students, not to give up their culture by conforming to the dominant, white, middle-class classroom: “They must creatively invent ways to cross borders. They must believe in their ability to alter the bourgeois settings they enter” (183). She encourages them to be active in the classroom as they negotiate space for the fullness of their identities, refusing to let their backgrounds be stigmatized and made invisible. She does not want class to be a barrier for working-class students, but instead, she wants to transform the classroom so no one is made to feel like an outsider. Rather than simply inverting the power structure, so that the poorer students gain more authority while the richer students lose theirs, she wants a radical transformation of the classroom paradigm.

She encourages professors to do more to address class issues, especially as classrooms are getting more and more diverse. She understands the need to interrogate power. Many professors worry that they will lose control of the classroom if they change their pedagogy to allow for a greater diversity of voices to take center stage, but professors need to recognize how class bias impacts their classroom. Only by explicitly engaging in this type of pedagogy, can “the democratic ideal of education for everyone can be realized” (189).

Another issue that doesn’t often come up in the classroom, like class and language issues, is the role of eroticism in the classroom. hooks traces this taboo to the traditional mind/ body split in the classroom, where the mind is revered in the university, while the body is erased, and thus, passion has been erased in the classroom. The feminist critical pedagogy doesn’t engage in the separation of one’s mind and body. hooks is inspired by the feminist classroom, which does not deny the value of desire. She values eros in the classroom as a motivating force.

Part of the problem of discussing desire in the classroom is assuming that eros simply refers to sexual love. To this point, hooks references Sam Keen’s book The Passionate Life, which states that eros didn’t originally refer to sexuality, but to “the moving force that propelled every life-form from a state of mere potentiality to actuality” (194). hooks argues that there are many types of love, but no matter the type, love can be a powerful force in the classroom.

Some suspect that passion for students, for the professor, and for ideas will make one less objective in evaluating a student, but hooks wants people to move beyond the idea that education is equal and inclusive. She wants to broaden the attachment that professors may feel for some students to include all students. Only by acknowledging the value of passion can a true desire for learning be ignited for all. This does not preclude rigor in the classroom. Passion can drive an even more rigorous examination of academic subjects.

In the closing essay of her book, hooks emphasizes that there is a crisis in the classroom and educators must recognize the urgency of their work. She emphasizes that the work she does is full of joy and fulfillment. She remembers the teachers who inspired her, “who offered[her] an opportunity to experience joy in learning, who made the classroom a space of critical thinking, who made the exchange of information and ideas a kind of ecstasy” (202). She realizes the difficulty in transforming the classroom, especially in a society that often is anti-intellectual and does not engage in critical thinking. She has been teaching for 20 years and craves rest, but she refuses to take a break from teaching when she sees the desperate need of her students who crave guidance and support from progressive professors.

Despite the overwhelming needs of students, hooks recognizes that many professors do not prioritize the art of teaching. They do not see teaching to be as important as their research and writing. Even though hooks has written extensively on teaching, it is often her work on cultural criticism and feminist theory that capture the most interest on campus, as teachers and students don’t see teaching theory as necessary for intellectual growth and scholarship. hooks laments this lack of focus on the classroom. She sees education as the dynamic focus of her work because it is the interaction with students that she sees as having the greatest power to change lives. While she recognizes that this is a serious responsibility, she, as well as her students, are energized by the possibilities for learning that exist both in the classroom and beyond.