Engaged Pedagogy Chapter Summary

In “Engaged Pedagogy” the first chapter of “Teaching to Transgress: Education as a practice of Freedom” bell hooks walks us through her philosophy of pedagogy with a chapter that manages to serve as a powerful introduction to her book. In chapter one, Hooks manages to introduce her view on pedagogy, her inspirations and her experiences within the academia as a student and a professor and how it helped formulating her philosophy.

In the first part of the chapter, Hooks introduces “Engaged Pedagogy” by noting that education as a practice of freedom is a way that anyone can learn, given that they believe the role of the teacher isn’t merely just to share knowledge but to make education a much deeper experience where students can get to grow intellectually
Hooks points out how Freire inspires her to question the “banking system of education” what she describes as the insistence on students to memorize and store information provided by their professors. Freire’s work asserted the author’s belief that education can only lead to freedom if it’s a shared effort between students and teachers. Hooks then compares Hanh’s style to Freire’s in the way Freire's focuses on the mind in contrary to Hanh’s focus on the unison between the mind, body and the soul.

Afterwards, Hooks uses her experiences in the academia as a student and professor as a way to present more of her views about education. She argues that students need from their professors more than just information and that the role of a professor should be the role of a healer according to Hanh. Hooks then explains how her “engaged pedagogy” is challenging compared to other pedagogy schools as it focuses on well being and self actualization and how self actualization requires an effort from the educator herself to become self actualized before helping other reach their own self