Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

bell hooks

Mar 2014 · Routledge

About this ebook

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks-writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual-writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.

bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom?

Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines a practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise critical questions about eras and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself. "To educate as the practice of freedom", writes bell hooks, "is a way of teaching that anyone can learn." Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher's struggle to make classrooms work.

Ratings and reviews

Notice how bell hooks begins her chapters with a story about herself rather than a structure. How does this make you feel about the validity of what she says?

About the author

bell hooks is Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York. She is the author of many books, most recently Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, also published by Routledge.