hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Abingdon: Routledge.

In his work Thich Nhat Hanh always speaks of the teacher as a healer. Like Freire, his approach to knowledge called on students to be active participants, to link awareness with prac­tice. Whereas Freire was primarily concerned with the mind, Thich Nhat Hanh offered a way of thinking about pedagogy which emphasized wholeness, a union of mind, body, and spirit. (hooks, 1994, p.14)

That means that teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well­being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students. (hooks, 1994, p.15)

When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any class­room that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. (hooks, 1994, p.21)

• Clearer in the brief about my role as enabler and learner

When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interroga­tors. It is often productive if professors take the first risk, link­ing confessional narratives to academic discussions so as to show how experience can illuminate and enhance our under­standing of academic material. (hooks, 1994, p.21)

conditions of social equality are solidly in place that would enable any black person who works hard to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Forget about the fact that capitalism requires the existence of a mass underclass of surplus labor. (hooks, 1994, p.29)

If we examine critically the traditional role of the university in the pursuit of truth and the sharing of knowledge and infor­mation, 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. (hooks, 1994, p.29)

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. (hooks, 1994, pp.29-30)

there was the possibility of a learning community, a place where difference could be acknowledged, where we would finally all understand, accept, and affirm that our ways of knowing are forged in history and relations of power. (hooks, 1994, p.30)

If we fear mistakes, doing things wrongly, constantly evaluating ourselves, we will never make the acade­my a culturally diverse place where scholars and the curricula address every dimension of that difference. (hooks, 1994, p.33)

What does it mean when a white female English professor is eager to include a work by Toni Morrison on the syllabus of her course but then teaches that work without ever making reference to race or ethnicity? (hooks, 1994, p.38)

Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goal of trans­formative pedagogy. (hooks, 1994, p.39)

Working with a critical pedagogy based on my understanding of Freire’s teaching, I enter the classroom with the assumption that we must build “community” in order to create a climate of openness and intellectual rigor. (hooks, 1994, p.40)

• Multaka community
• Feedback from volunteers that they wanted more time together with the students and wanted to participate in the outcomes

 

What we all ideally share is the desire to learn—to receive actively knowledge that enhances our intellectual development and our capacity to live more fully in the world. It has been my experience that one way to build community in the classroom is to recognize the value of each individual voice. (hooks, 1994, p.40)

To teach effectively a diverse student body, I have to learn these codes. And so do students. This act alone transforms the classroom. (hooks, 1994, p.41)

In the transformed classroom there is often a much greater need to explain philosophy, strategy, intent than in the “norm ” setting. (hooks, 1994, p.42)

• Brief was inadequate

In my professorial role I had to surrender my need for immediate affirmation of successful teaching (even though some reward is immediate) and accept that students may not appreciate the value of a certain stand­point or process straightaway. (hooks, 1994, p.42)

The exciting aspect of creating a classroom community where there is respect for individual voices is that there is infinitely more feedback because students do feel free to talk—and talk back. And, yes, often this feedback is critical. (hooks, 1994, p.42)

Students taught me, too, that it is necessary to practice com­passion in these new learning settings. (hooks, 1994, p.42)

And I saw for the first time that there can be, and usually is, some degree of pain involved in giving up old ways of thinking and knowing and learning new approaches. I respect that pain. (hooks, 1994, p.43)

This is why it is so crucial that “whiteness” be studied, under­stood, discussed—so that everyone learns that affirmation of multiculturalism, and an unbiased inclusive perspective, can and should be present whether or not people of color are present. (hooks, 1994, p.43)

Often, if there is one lone person of color in the classroom she or he is objectified by others and forced to assume the role of “native informant.” (hooks, 1994, p.43)

Professors can intervene in this process by making it clear from the outset that experience does not make one an expert, and perhaps even by explaining what it means to place someone in the role of “native informant.” (hooks, 1994, pp.43-44)

Freire has had to remind readers that he never spoke of conscientization as an end itself, but always as it is joined by meaningful praxis. In many different ways Freire articulates this. I like when he talks about the neces­sity of verifying in praxis what we know in consciousness: ‘That means, and let us emphasize it, that human beings do not get beyond the concrete situation, the condition in which they find themselves, only by their consciousness or their intentions— however good those intentions may be. The possibilities that I had for transcending the narrow limits of a five-by-two-foot cell in which I was locked after the April 1964 coup d’etat were not sufficient to change my condition as a prisoner. I was always in the cell, deprived of freedom, even if I could imagine the outside world. But on the other hand, the praxis is not blind action, deprived of intention or of finality. It is action and reflection. Men and women are human beings because they are historically constituted as beings of praxis, and in the process they have become capable of transforming the world—of giving it meaning.’  (hooks, 1994, pp.47-48)

But critical interrogation is not the same as dismissal. (hooks, 1994, p.49)

talking with academic feminists (usually white women) who feel they must either dismiss or devalue the work of Freire because of sexism, I see clearly how our different responses are shaped by the standpoint that we bring to the work. (hooks, 1994, p.50)

To have work that promotes one’s liberation is such a powerful gift that it does not matter so much if the gift is flawed. Think of the work as water that contains some dirt. Because you are thirsty you are not too proud to extract the dirt and be nourished by the water. (hooks, 1994, p.50)

• Multaka project was flawed in terms of addressing power dynamics and the benefits to the volunteers, but in a context of fashion research, it was water for our thirst to a learning methodologies that centred human experience.

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. Only through such praxis—in which those who help and those who are being helped help each other simultaneously —can the act of helping become free from the distortion in which the helper dominates the helped. (Freire in hooks, 1994, p.54)

When you [the teacher] come and stay one hour with us, you bring that milieu. . . . It is as though you bring a candle into the room. The candle is there; there is a kind of light-zone you bring in. When a sage is there and you sit near him, you feel light, you feel peace. (Thich Nhat Hanh in hooks, 1994, p.56)

If the women are critical, they have to accept our contribution as men, as well as the workers have to accept our contribution as intellectuals, because it is a duty and right that I have to par­ticipate in the transformation of society. Then, if the women must have the main responsibility in their struggle they have to know that their strug­gle also belongs to us, that is, to those men who don’t accept the machista position in the world. The same is true of racism. As an apparent white man, because I always say that I am not quite sure of my whiteness, the question is to know if I am really against racism in a radical way. If I am, then I have a duty and a right to fight with black people against racism. (Freire in hooks, 1994, p.57)

Fuss makes the point that “the artificial boundary between insider and outsider necessarily contains rather than disseminates knowledge.” While I share this perception, I am disturbed that she never acknowledges that racism, sexism, and class elitism shape the structure of classrooms, creating a lived reality of insider versus outsider that is predetermined, often in place before any class discussion begins. There is rarely any need for marginalized groups to bring this binary opposition into the classroom because it is usually already operating. (hooks, 1994, p.83)

Looked at from a sympathetic standpoint, the assertion of an excluding essentialism on the part of students from marginalized groups can be a strategic response to domination and to colonization, a survival strategy that may indeed inhibit discussion even as it rescues those students from negation. (hooks, 1994, p.83)

If I do not wish to see these students use the “authority of experience” as a means of asserting voice, I can circumvent this possible misuse of power by bringing to the classroom pedagogical strategies that affirm their presence, their right to speak, in multiple ways on diverse topics. This pedagogical strategy is rooted in the assumption that we all bring to the classroom experiential knowledge, that this knowl­edge can indeed enhance our learning experience. If experi­ence is already invoked in the classroom as a way of knowing that coexists in a nonhierarchical way with other ways of know­ing, then it lessens the possibility that it can be used to silence. (hooks, 1994, p.84)

Professors, especially those from dominant groups, may themselves employ essentialist notions to constrain the voices of particular stu­dents; hence we must all be ever-vigilant in our pedagogical practices. (hooks, 1994, p.86)

H enry Giroux, in his writing on critical peda­gogy, suggests that “the notion of experience has to be situated within a theory of learning.” Giroux suggests that professors must learn to respect the way students feel about their experi­ences as well as their need to speak about them in classroom settings: “You can’t deny that students have experiences and you can’t deny that these experiences are relevant to the learn­ing process even though you might say these experiences are limited, raw, unfruitful or whatever. Students have memories, families, religions, feelings, languages and cultures that give them a distinctive voice. We can critically engage that experi­ence and we can move beyond it. But we can’t deny it.” (hooks, 1994, p.88)

Critical pedagogies of liberation respond to these concerns and necessarily embrace experience, confessions and testimony as relevant ways of knowing, as important, vital dimensions of any learning process. (hooks, 1994, p.89)

• The volunteers talking about their experiences of fashion and culture as a way to study non-Western fashion

I would ask them to consider whether there is any “special” knowledge to be acquired by hearing oppressed individuals speak from their experience—w hether it be of vic­timization or resistance—that might make one want to create a privileged space for such discussion. Then we might explore ways individuals acquire knowledge about an experience they have not lived, asking ourselves what moral questions are raised when they speak for or about a reality that they do not know experientially, especially if they are speaking about an op­pressed group. (hooks, 1994, p.89)

if I bring to the class only analytical ways of knowing and someone else brings personal experience, I welcome that knowledge because it will enhance our learning. Also, I share with the class my convic­tion that if my knowledge is limited, and if someone else brings a combination of facts and experience, then I humble myself and respectfully learn from those who bring this great gift. I can do this without negating the position of authority profes­sors have, since fundamentally I believe that combining the analytical and experiential is a richer way of knowing. (hooks, 1994, p.89)

I know that experience can be a way to know and can inform how we know what we know. Though opposed to any essentialist practice that constructs identity in a monolithic, exclusionary way, I do not want to relinquish the power of experience as a standpoint on which to base analysis or formulate theory. (hooks, 1994, p.90)

When I use the phrase “passion of experience,” it encompasses many feelings but par­ticularly suffering, for there is a particular knowledge that comes from suffering. It is a way of knowing that is often expressed through the body, what it knows, what has been deeply inscribed on it through experience. (hooks, 1994, p.91)

In the classroom, I share as much as possible the need for critical thinkers to engage multiple locations, to address diverse stand­points, to allow us to gather knowledge fully and inclusively. (hooks, 1994, p.91)

I might ask students to ponder what we want to make happen in the class, to name what we hope to know, what might be most useful. I ask them what standpoint is a personal experience. Then there are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. And sometimes the m ountaintop is difficult to reach with all our resources, fac­tual and confessional, so we are just there collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearn­ing for a way to reach that highest point. Even this yearning is a way to know. (hooks, 1994, p.92)

If we really want to create a cultural climate where biases can be challenged and changed, all border cross­ings must be seen as valid and legitimate. This does not mean that they are not subjected to critique or critical interrogation, or that there will not be many occasions when the crossings of the powerful into the terrains of the powerless will not perpet­uate existing structures. This risk is ultimately less threatening than a continued attachm ent to and support of existing sys­tems of domination, particularly as they affect teaching, how we teach, and what we teach. (hooks, 1994, p.131)

• Conclusion

Liberatory pedagogy really demands that one work in the classroom, and that one work with the limits of the body, work both with and through and against those limits (hooks, 1994, p.138)

• I think that applies to me – the most animated person in the classroom! I probably walk a few miles during my lectures…

The erasure of the body encourages us to think that we are listening to neutral, objective facts, facts that are not particular to who is sharing the information. We are invit­ed to teach information as though it does not emerge from bodies. 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. We are all subjects in history. We must return our­selves to a state of embodiment in order to deconstruct the way power has been traditionally orchestrated in the classroom, denying subjectivity to some groups and ac­cording it to others. By recognizing subjectivity and the limits of identity, we disrupt that objectification that is so necessary in a culture of domination. (hooks, 1994, p.139)

It is fascinating to see the ways erasure of the body con­nects to the erasure of class differences, and more impor­tantly, the erasure of the role of university settings as sites for the reproduction of a privileged class of values, of elitism. (hooks, 1994, p.140)

Professors may attempt to deconstruct traditional biases while shar­ing that information through body posture, tone, word choice, and so on that perpetuate those very hierarchies and biases they are critiquing. (hooks, 1994, p.141)

In philosophy classes today, work on race, ethnicity, and gender is used, but not in a subversive way. It is simply used to update the curriculum superficially. This clinging to the past is mandated by the profound belief in the legitimacy of all that has come before. Teachers who have these beliefs really have trouble experimenting and risk­ing their bodies—the social order. They want the class­room to be the way it has always been. (hooks, 1994, p.142)

Even those of us who are experimenting with progressive pedagogical practices are afraid to change. (hooks, 1994, p.142)

W hat’s really scary is that the negative critique of pro­gressive pedagogy affects us—makes teachers afraid to change—to try new strategies. (hooks, 1994, p.143)

To acknowledge student responsibility for the learning process is to place it where it’s least legitimate in their own eyes. When we try to change the classroom so that there is a sense of mutual responsibility for learning, stu­dents get scared that you are now not the captain working with them, but that you are after all just another crew member—and not a reliable one at that. (hooks, 1994, p.144)

• The students first encounter with the Multaka project was characterised by fear, uncertainty and detachment. After a flawed briefing, not least because of technical issues, and sensing the nervousness in the room (rather than the excitement I myself was feeling and eagerly communicating), we had an informal talk in the canteen at CSM prior to another lecture I was giving. One by one, I ask each student to voice their reactions to the project and briefing. Then I explained my rationale for the project, why it was such an opened brief, that my main goal was for us challenge learning and research, that this was an experiment, and that letting them dictate the terms of the project with the volunteers was a purposeful approach. In a way it was my form of controlling by asking for control to be taken by them. The talk lasted just under an hour and you could almost touch the changes in attitude. All of the sudden the excitement was omnipresent.

I tell students not to confuse infor­mality with a lack of seriousness, to respect the process. (hooks, 1994, p.146)

Education as the practice of freedom is not just about liberatory knowledge, it’s about a liberato­ry practice in the classroom. So many of us have critiqued the individual white male scholars who push critical pedagogy yet who do not alter their classroom practices, who assert race, class, and gender privilege without interro­gating their conduct. (hooks, 1994, p.147)

different, more radical subject m atter does not create a liberatory pedagogy, that a simple prac­tice like including personal experience may be more constructively challenging than simply changing the curriculum. (hooks, 1994, p.148)

• My lecture on heroin chic always creates so much debate. This year I notice the discussions were taking a very heated binary shape, where students were coming from what they perceived as logical sides. So I shared my own experience of eating disorder and fashion in the turn of the century. I told it honestly but lightly (I’ve been healed without relapses for 20 years!) and that changed the course of the discussions. The students were not interested in taking firm sides anymore. That was quite an interesting moment. Since then, I had a couple of students who have come to me to share how inspired and hopeful they were witnessing the possibility of healing in their own struggles. That was not my initial intension, but an added bonus. It not only brought us together in our shared experiences, but I was also able to impart hope.

Coming to voice is not just the act of telling one’s experience. It is using that telling strategically—to come to voice so that you can also speak freely about other subjects. (hooks, 1994, p.148)

to teach stu­dents how to listen, how to hear one another. (hooks, 1994, p.150)

• Attention and intention

This doesn’t mean we listen uncritically or that classrooms can be open so that anything someone else says is taken as true, but it means really taking seriously what someone says. In principle, the classroom ought to be a place where things are said seriously—not without pleasure, not without joy—but seriously, and for serious consideration. (hooks, 1994, p.150)

Once the space for dialogue is open in the classroom, that moment must be orchestrated so that you don’t get bogged down with people who just like to hear themselves talk, or with people who are unable to relate experience to the academic subject matter. At times I need to interrupt students and say, “T hat’s interesting, but how does that relate to the novel we’re reading?” (hooks, 1994, p.151)

Yet one can be critical and be re­spectful at the same time. One can interrupt someone, and still have a serious, respectful dialogue. (hooks, 1994, p.151)

The bottom-line assumption has to be that everyone in the classroom is able to act responsibly. That has to be the starting point—that we are able to act re­sponsibly together to create a learning environment. (hooks, 1994, p.152)

Yet the classroom should be a space where we’re all in power in different ways. That means we pro­fessors should be empowered by our interactions with students. (hooks, 1994, p.152)

the weight is on me to establish that our pur­pose is to be, for however brief a time, a community of learners together. It positions me as a learner. But I’m also not suggesting that I don’t have more power. And I’m not trying to say we’re all equal here. I’m trying to say that we are all equal here to the extent that we are equally com­mitted to creating a learning context. (hooks, 1994, p.153)

The power of the liberatory classroom is in fact the power of the learning process, the work we do to establish a community. (hooks, 1994, p.153)