Waiter, there's a "phallocentric paradigm of liberation" in my water.

            Upon reading bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, I was pleased to see that her response to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was similar to that of my own: where is the mention of gender?  While I did not go as far to articulate it as “sexism of language” and a “[construction] of a phallocentric paradigm of liberation” (p. 49).  

 But, as hooks continues, there is value in Freire’s work, despite its explicit sexism.  There is value in John Dewey’s Experience and Education, despite his reluctance to admit that women can exist as students in a classroom.  I found it easy to dismiss this overt sexism as an unfortunate characteristic of that historical period, but I wonder if that should be the case. Unlike hooks, I did not share the same thirst for change; her parallel between privilege in resources and privilege in a desire to change was breathtaking.  Does my lack of “thirst” result only in a wasting of resources?  Or can my dissatisfaction with those resources serve as a catalyst for change?  Does this translate to silent acceptance of the status quo?

            Being that hooks is known for works such as Feminist Theory, connecting her works to gender is an easy task.  In Teaching to Transgress, she has entire (albeit short) chapters devoted to “Feminist Scholarship” and “Feminist Thinking.”  I want to pull at a possibly tangential aspect of gender.  hook's interview with Ron Scapp touched on an area of interest for me: the presence of the body in the classroom.  hooks and Scapp explored the existence of the professor’s body in the classroom as an indication of power: “the person who is most powerful as the privilege of denying their body” (p. 137).  hooks elaborates on how “the 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” (p. 140). Similarly, hooks argues against the mind/body split that allows for a compartmentalization of academic life (of the mind, yet broken/abused/damaged) and the suppressed, unmentioned other (the body).  This split is further characterized as the public (mind) and private (body).

          This discussion of the public/private spheres brought to mind an incident that occurred this summer. [read about it here: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/academias-anti-fat-problem]

            A University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist by the name of Geoffrey Miller tweeted a discriminatory message (which he later recanted and apologized for his lack of discretion, all of which was executed in under 280 characters).   Just as hooks had asserted, “the person who is most powerful as the privilege of denying their body” (p. 137).  While this was stated in reference to the body of the instructor, I think I also concerns the other bodies in the classroom.  I never found out if the tweet was in reference to the body of a man or woman (or genderqueer), but that misses the point.  The fact that this story was featured (or retweeted) over and over on feminist websites, blogs, and Facebook pages points to the fact that this is a gendered experience. 

            Moving from this story to hooks’ pedagogy, what do we do?  As members of this Pedagogy course, we are all instructors of the University’s “Introduction to Human Communication” (or as we so affectionately call it, “COMM 1010”).  I would be shocked to learn that someone in the class has not discussed race at some point.  I would be a little less shocked to find out that someone had not discussed gender.  Moving forward, even less surprised by a lack of discussion of class. Is this where the discussion of power structures ends? Should we even talk about body politics?  I think hooks would give a resounding “absolutely!”  Her interest in not just perspective, but voice leads to such assertions that “hearing each other’s vices, individual thoughts, and sometimes associated theses [sic] voices with personal experience makes us more acutely aware of each other” (p. 186). 

            So, fellow instructors, I leave you with this: while I cannot dictate how you run your classroom, nor should I dismiss your results as failures just because they do not mirror the expected results of the status quo, I encourage you to expand your horizons.  I hope that you are able to see that gendered discrimination is not limited to explicit performances of male or female, but rather that intersectionality will always exist.  Even if you do not have the option to give space for marginalized voices, I challenge you to make space. 

-C.H.

Commitment to Authenticity

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom has given me a new love for the classroom and appreciation for students. bell hooks really took her time to dive into this book about how to create a culturally diverse environment and engage that in almost any classroom. Specifically, she touches on race, class, and gender to tackle topics that most would avoid in a classroom setting. By challenging teachers, and students, hooks said that we can experience a mutual engagement to allow the possibility of change. I want to analyze her outlook on race and how she discussed how a multicultural standpoint can help educators develop a change in their approach to teaching.

She opens her discussion of race in this book and really takes a critical look at engaged pedagogy. Being actively committed to self-actualization allows teachers to understand what their role really looks like in the classroom, especially in regards to understanding students of minority groups. hooks argued that the notion of engaged pedagogy "values student's expressions"to insure that the teacher's voice is not the only one being heard in the classroom. (p. 20). This means that we are not only engaging in their ideas and thoughts as scholars, but also considering their diverse backgrounds and how those shape and form their perceptions about the world. Considering one's social constructionism allows a teacher to fully commit to understanding the other in a classroom. She discussed how often the white perspective is fully engaged and understood as the over-arching theme for how classrooms should be structured. Immediately, I imagined myself in a classroom where I once felt like my voice was not accepted. These moments are easy to recollect because I am an individual of color and I do identify with a minority group. This is not to say that I feel oppressed all the time in the classroom, but feeling that a dominant voice should be only accepted was and is a struggle for me. Faced with the fear that we are subject to become "clones of our peers," feeling obligated to perform a certain way in the classroom is often a common argument for people of color (p. 5).

Understood that this a cultural phenomena that seems to constantly question white privilege in the classroom and how it is always at the margins for minorities. How can we as instructors seek to create what hooks argued is a safe environment to learn when we do not call about self into question?

hooks developed the argument for teachers to understand their role in relationship to their students... or in other words, she called for us to look at multicultural standpoint. hooks argued that there is a fear amongst educators when discussing multicultural issues and losing control in the classroom, but when a space is created for those fears to be discussed, entering into areas of building a community with students. What an approach! Of course this means that we are not always going to feel our best self when entering certain topics/issues but avoiding those topic/issues are exactly why struggles continue to exist.

This dated video, is a great example of what hooks discussed in her book about engaging in pedagogy... embracing education as the practice of freedom... teaching to transgress. The responsibility she places upon the educator is so necessary in that we MUST shift the focus on people instead of things in order to reach these levels. But we must continually ask ourselves are we now altering the roles of oppressors in the classroom as a way to make our students engage in discussions about race, class, and gender? Is this truly the role of an instructor? Should we really seek to value each an individuals voice and perception about social issues? You can only picture the results of a discussion like this if there were was not regulation of how to unpack why racial topics are always controversial.

Yes. If not, what will happen to the desire for creative space? What will happen to the student who feels like they cannot identify with class discussions... especially those about racial issues... and especially when the topic about their race is at hand? Why should anyone feel as if they cannot discuss those issues with their teacher or peers? In order to reach a frame of understanding, we MUST do MORE than call attention to the ways in how education can be a practice of freedom. "We must acknowledge that our styles of teaching may need to change,"(p. 35). We must change.

hooks would say yes for multiple reasons (i.e. race, class, and gender). Paulo Friere would say yes. And then Stanley Fish would HEAVILY disagree. But it is in this disagreement that critical approaches to pedagogy are able to prosper and to inspire future generations of educators. We need his and others' disagreement to keep the conversation moving about education. A commitment to authenticity is truly NOT an easy task. Accrediting Friere with inspiring her approach to pedagogy, hooks said that "Friere's work (and that of many other teachers) affirmed my right as a subject in resistance to define my reality," (p. 53).  Well bell hooks, you have affirmed mine.

LOHRUH

Becoming a role model for change: Too little? Too much? Just right.

“Pedagogical practices can determine the extent to which all students learn to engage more fully the ideas and issues that seem to have direct relation to their experience.”   -bell hooks

Dear lovely reader,

This week bell hooks in her book Teaching to Transgress asks teachers to examine themselves in a not-so-flattering light.  Some is directly stated and some is implicitly drawn between the lines.  Within the context of giving voice to the students as well as other views other than the hegemonic norm, she brings up the term “authority of experience” that gives notice only to those who have erudition and power by means of social scripts that allow them to have such.  hooks cites that this is often used to “silence and exclude” different views/people from the conversation.  In order to change this dynamic and release other voices in the framework of the class room teachers must be willing to 1) scrutinize their own beliefs, 2) let go of their pride, and 3) let go of fear.

If the goal of a teacher’s classroom is to empower critical thinkers who learn to question their beliefs and traditions as a form of learning, one of the first things a teacher must learn to do is to question his/her own beliefs.  In order for the students to see and understand this it must be modeled for them right? There is a grey area here that a teacher must answer for her/him self (assuming that hooks’ premise for the goal of a classroom is something to be emulated-something that asks for a conversation of its own); what part of this questioning process is shown to the students? Is it truly a good idea to be in a state of questioning such core beliefs in the midst of one’s students? Perhaps it might be best to show them only the end product or only the beginning of the journey, or maybe it might be best to explain a process that has already taken place rather than something a teacher is in the midst of.  Certainly, it would take away creditability to tell one’s students that the authority figure does not/did not have everything figured out right?

 Is the argument for a loss of credibility valid at all? On one hand, a teacher must be able to control the classroom.  At the very least students must respect the teacher enough to listen to them and obey the rules of the classroom.  On the other hand the tight grip on that “creditability” can also suffocate students by not allowing the teacher to teach by example or to let other perspectives speak.  This is the idea of “Do as I say not as I do.”  Perhaps it is valid to acknowledge that sometimes “credibility” is just a fancy word for ego and pride. If a teacher can realize that his/her pride does play a role in their classroom, maybe it is also possible to find a way to model how to question one’s own beliefs and perspective while still maintaining credibility. While on the way to balance it might be prudent to ask teachers and students alike –Who speaks? Who listens? And why? As hooksl suggests so that this new freedom can be taken home to the classroom to commence this process. Learning to lessen the power a teacher holds creates the opportunity for the students to empower themselves.

The final step to question is that of letting go of fear.  hooks speaks the fear of passion in the classroom. 

As she sees it, many teachers are afraid of passion because they fear that it will inevitably lead to conflict.  Many teachers (me included) seek to combat this fear of chaos by creating a “safe environment.”  While this tactic can and does work in many cases, it lends itself to a conversion from safe into boring.  The “safety” net becoming a distance from the harder subjects whether it be racism, violence, or even the teacher her/himself.  So what does safe look like when it is not boring? hooks would explain it as community, I would add that there is also a need for checks and balances built into that community.  Through building a community, a space is freed from the fear of oppression on the part of the students as they learn about each other in ways that unlearns stereotypes and creates significance for differing perspectives.  Within this, checks and balances are needed. These might include parameters of respect instituted by the teacher as well as offering accountability for things that are said/done in the classroom.  I would purpose that these types of changes would bring more coherency rather than chaos in the classroom as a whole.

All of this being said, it is important to note that this is built on the premise that the idea hooks is concerned with (the opening of minds to new thoughts and perspectives as a means creating a better society) is one that should be shared as a priority in the classroom.

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”  -Aristotle

~A.R.G.

Good Teaching is an Act of Hospitality

This week Parker Palmer presents his approach to teaching in his book called The Courage to Teach.  Palmer takes a very personal approach that deserves a very personal response.  In the opening chapter Palmer puts forth a metaphor for the positioning he is describing and exploring throughout the rest of the book.  It reads “But a good teacher must stand where personal and public meet, dealing with the thundering flow of traffic at an intersection where ‘weaving a web of connectedness’ feels more like crossing a freeway on foot.”  The web he is referring to are the strings that hold the tension of balance between his paradoxes.  As a new teacher I am most interested in the balance between holding an open hand in order to become vulnerable in the classroom to allow the students to learn through you, not just from you, while still somehow maintaining a professionalism that calls forth respect from the students.

                Every teacher has to decide how they will allow immediacy into their own pedagogy, or if they do not decide it will become so without thought or reflection and may do more harm than any good it could have done.  Palmer calls on teachers to lay themselves bare before the class and let the students to use that vulnerability as a spring board into transformative learning.  What Palmer is trying to sway the teaching profession away from is the simple, impersonal, banking method of teaching that requires no reflection or internalization of the information that is being downloaded in order to be regurgitated in a testing format. Palmers answer to this is to spring forth into life and help students to become invested in the learning process.

                The process of allowing the students to invest themselves requires the teacher to model this investment for their students; not just in the subject, but in the class as well.  This seems like a great philosophy: my hope for my teaching, for my students, is that they will be able to get something more out of the class than a letter grade, that they will truly learn.  However what Palmer leaves unanswered is the practice of how this occurs.  No path is laid out or steps given to set out on this journey.  He simply lays out the end product of what it should look like.  Perhaps with more practice I will be able to see a teaching style that I would like to crease into my own pedagogy and be able to do just that without guidance, but for now, as a struggling novice, I can only look at them and hope that one day my teaching will find that balance. 

                What is it that allows a teacher to be professionally vulnerable? Is it the understanding of the subject, themselves, or their students? Palmer would argue that it is all three.  If we (teachers) understand the subject, or at the very least, know how to attain that understanding, and if we can only learn of our students as they open themselves up, the audience is left with the final question: How can we know ourselves?  In order to become vulnerable we must have an understanding of ourselves, but we also must become vulnerable to understand.  As beautiful as that sounds, how is that possible?  Is it that we should take it first out of the classroom in order to start?

                Palmer says that techniques are provided for the new teachers into the real (by real he means experience and vulnerability) teacher arrives.  Surely there must be a way to start to evoke this “real” teacher.  I am left with questions, quite possibly by design.  How can I implement this? How can my fellow teachers implement this? How do I check myself to make sure I do not cross over too far one way or the other?  How do I stay vulnerable even in the midst of great suffering? Will my students be able to see that even through what I am doing goes against the norms, it is good and respectable? Will they be able to go there with me, or will I be left alone and exposed?  Will this very personal connection bring them into higher learning or will it push them away?

This book could not have come to me at a better time.  It just so happens that the same questions that Palmer raises are the same questions I am asking about myself and my own teaching.  In this questioning I started drowning in self doubt and fear, and even though I am not left with any answers, Palmer does give me hope that they are out there. As you, teachers and non-teachers alike, look to these questions and begin winding your way through them (on purpose or not), what are you finding as answers, or options for those of us who are struggling?

~A.R.G.

Freire and Fish - an opportunity for a beautiful friendship

When I first began reading Stanley Fish’s Save the World on Your Own Time I was fully prepared to disagree with everything he said. I was primed with the idea that Fish would be contradictory to the material we read in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  After reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed I was prepared to take on Freire’s ideas and implement them into my classroom, specifically: opening up space for dialogue, so that both the student and teacher are in a continual state of learning from each other’s experiences. I believe that with this type of education, we can achieve higher levels of learning, specifically in regards to understanding perspectives outside of our own experiences.

I read Fish’s introduction and thought to myself, this guy is a real asshole. My jaw dropped when he wrote that he had told his students, “I hadn’t the slightest interest in whatever opinions they might have and didn’t want to hear any.” I interpreted this to mean that Fish did not care about his students, and was in the profession for all the wrong reasons. In he next section of the introduction however, he describes a situation in which a student was struggling with the material, and Fish worked through the problem, attacking it from a wide variety of angles until he understood. I was conflicted. Then I started in on his material, and when Fish writes in a less abrasive manner, his ideas actually seem quite reasonable.

Fish claims that teachers should not try to impose their own personal ideologies on students – rather they should focus on teaching the students the material at hand. While some people might argue that it is impossible to separate personal politics from the classroom, I think there is value in this idea. As I mentioned earlier, I found myself drawing connections between Fish and Freire. I found this section of fish relatable to Freire’s idea that in order to allow learners to liberate themselves, we should provide them with foundational tools. In order to develop critical thinkers in the classroom, we cannot impose our beliefs on them, but rather give them the tools necessary to understand and evaluate the world around them, and then open up a dialogic sphere, where students and teachers can debate, test, and refine their theories and opinions.

Then, Fish becomes an asshole again. As soon as he’s got me buying into his pedagogical theories, he defined “academizing” in such a way, that my conclusion about this theory is nullified. “To academize a topic is to detach it from the context of its real world urgency, where there is a vote to be taken or an agenda to be embraced, and insert it into a context of academic urgency, where there is an account to be offered or an analysis to be performed (27).” To separate one’s own political ideologies from the classroom does not mean that we have to detach the subjects from their real world urgency. To insert these topics into a context of academic urgency is not mutually exclusive from allowing the students to recognize the real life implications and real world impacts of the topics that arise in classroom discussion.

Thus begins my back and forth struggle through reading Stanley Fish. I believe that he has relevant concerns, and decent ideas, but he takes them to such an extreme where he precludes the possibility of allowing his students to grow on their own, and his ability to learn from his students. Another prime example of this comes on page 54, where he lists “no-no’s” of universities.

• ·      A classroom that teaches the virtues of critical analysis and respectful debate can go at least some way to form citizens for a more deliberative democracy.
• ·     A liberal arts college or university that helps young people to learn to speak in their own voices and to respect the voices of others will have done a great deal to produce thoughtful and potentially creative world citizens.
• ·      The aims of a strong liberal education include… shaping ethical judgment and a capacity for insight and concern for others.
• ·      Contemporary liberal education must look beyond the classroom to the challenges of the community, the complexities of the workplace, and major issues in the world.
• ·      Students need to be equipped for living in a world where moral decisions must be made.

I simply don’t understand why he sees these stances as so polarized and opposite to his own teaching philosophy. He overgeneralizes these positions in his response to them to the point of absurdity. Like when he says, “You shouldn’t respect the voices of others simply because they are others… you should respect the voices of those others whose arguments and recommendations you find coherent and persuasive (54).” I don’t know of a single educator who would argue that we should respect the opinions of others that are sexist, racist or bigots simply because they are others. Instead, we seek to provide the foundational tools to help our students understand where these opinions come from, and break down the historical context that allows these opinions to permeate the media and popular opinion, so that they might form their own new opinions on these subjects.

As an educator, I will heed some of the advice of Stanley Fish. I believe that it is important to separate my own political ideologies from the classroom to allow space for students to develop their own opinions and arguments. I hope that I am able to effectively provide them with the foundational tools to be able to do this. Certainly I hope that my students will come to conclusions that jive with my own opinions, but ultimately what I care about is that they are able to make informed decisions, critically evaluate the information that they use to develop these decisions, and defend them intelligently. I believe that in this light, Fish and Freire are not as diametrically opposed as I was originally led to believe.