Bell Hooks Teaching To Transgress Summary

Bell Hooks’ Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom proposes an engaged pedagogy to handle the overwhelming sense of boredom, disinterest, and apathy that teachers and students feel about the learning experience. According to the author, the feeling of student alienation in the educational institutions can be traced to discriminatory, racist, and classist policies present in these settings. Hooks (1993) leverages on her past experiences to show the impact of race and gender on the learning process and its outcomes. For instance, she mentions that as a little girl, she witnessed that the society around her only expected three things from a woman: to get married, work as house girls, or become a teacher. Hooks decries this mentality as a product of the white supremacist patriarchy that was ingrained through historical
Thus, the experiences that teachers and students encounter, the teaching and learning models, and outcomes of educational institutions are the factors of one’s social background, such as income levels, race and ethnicity, religion and culture, and, in some cases, stereotypes. The same aspects are affected by historical circumstances that create ripples in society to date.
From the aforementioned perspective, Giroux (1988) asserts that teachers should be the individuals who are able and willing to reflect upon the ideological principles that inform their practice to make changes affecting wider social issues. Moreover, Giroux (1988) stretches the role of the teacher beyond the classroom walls to engage the students in both educational advancement and personal transformation by instilling a spirit of self-evaluation, questioning, and continuous improvement. Therefore, the recommendation bridges the gap among students, as depicted by their varying social