Reviews

I have long appreciated and admired the work of bell hooks, and I have read parts of this before. Now having read it in its entirety, I think Teaching to Transgress may be my favourite in terms of being able to apply the learning to some very specific contexts in my own personal and leadership growth. I would love to see this as a core text in leadership development, because the way hooks talks about teaching, about truly interrogating power relationships, and about inviting all of the people in the classroom to consider how they contribute to the overall culture and effectiveness of the classroom is something that I think translates so well to engaged, collaborative leadership. It is essential to acknowledge where power resides (rather than pretending it isn’t there, as is so common in progressive spaces). It is critical to acknowledge how that power impacts one’s responsibilities in a classroom (or organization), yet there is also room to acknowledge how everyone contributes to shared space and uses power within them. There is also an important sense of humility in this work, but I’m not even sure if humility is the right word because of how hooks frames the responsibility of a teacher to truly hear from the people in the shared space that is a classroom what is working well and what needs to change. If more people in positions of leadership understood their responsibility to hear dissent, and the value of doing so in building something better, I think we’d be in a very different place today.

laz_'s review

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3.0

3.5 stars

hooks has some really amazing stuff here about breaking the norms of institutionalized, conventional methods of teaching and learning to make it something that enriches everybody, although it is a tad scattered and messy in its organization. (she does admit that it is that way, however.) much to think about,, fuck the system!