Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Introduction-Chapter 5

Reading Check

1. Black women (Introduction)

2. The banking model of education (Chapter 1)

3. Ken (Chapter 2)

4. Oberlin (Chapter 3)

5. Gloria Watkins (Chapter 4)

6. The patriarchy / patriarchal practices (Chapter 5)

Short Answer

1. After Brown v. Board of Education, schools were desegregated, and hooks was bussed to a predominantly white school where the racist atmosphere took the joy out of education for hooks. (Introduction)

2. Professors can share personal experiences and link these to the material being discussed. (Chapter 1)

3. People who have benefitted from the current racial power structure are afraid to lose power, and they have trouble imagining a truly equal society: they fear that one power structure will simply be replaced by another, and the new one will be less beneficial to them than the current one. (Chapter 2)

4. She felt that the professors were unable to approach works by non-majority authors with the same open-minded respect they showed toward works already in the canon.  (Chapter 3)

5. She acknowledges that there is sexism in his work, but she says that this does not mean none of Friere’s ideas have value—and in any case, she identifies more with the peasants he writes about than she does with white feminists. (Chapter 4)

6. She is interested in theory that can be discussed in straightforward, plain language so that everyday people have access to its content and can put the ideas into practice in their lives. (Chapter 5)

Chapters 6-10

Reading Check

1. African American literary criticism (Chapter 6)

2. Slavery (Chapter 7)

3. Her mother’s (Chapter 7)

4. Black Studies (Chapter 8)

5. Early Black feminist writers (Chapter 9)

6. Ron Scapp (Chapter 10)

Short Answer

1. Although hooks agrees that essentialism is problematic when it excludes the possibility of understanding by outsiders, she disagrees with Fuss’s stance that experience is not a valuable route to knowledge. (Chapter 6)

2. This essay honestly confronts the history of hostility and suspicion between Black and white women. (Chapter 7)

3. These Black men have a hard time conceptualizing themselves as oppressors because they have historically been the targets of oppression from whites. (Chapter 8)

4. Her Black female students were skeptical of feminism because of its association with whiteness, and they were often afraid that associating themselves with feminism would alienate them from their own community. (Chapter 8)

5. She was frustrated by the lack of scholarly work on experiences specific to Black women. (Chapter 9)

6. She believes that their differing life experiences make each a valuable source of insight for the other. (Chapter 10)

Chapters 11-14

Reading Check

1. Standard English (Chapter 11)

2. Tuition (Chapter 12)

3. Feminist (Chapter 12)

4. Mind and body (Chapter 13)

5. Sexual love (Chapter 13)

6. Research and writing (Chapter 14)

Short Answer

1. She sees Black vernacular as continuing a tradition of language as a form of resistance. (Chapter 11)

2. She thinks that white students can grow from their own confusion and learn to stop struggling to be the “masters” of every experience. (Chapter 11)

3. People falsely believe that the classroom is a democratic place of equal opportunity. (Chapter 12)

4. Extending the attachment that professors feel for some of their students into a more general passion for all students creates more inclusivity. (Chapter 13)

5. American society is anti-intellectual and does not value critical thinking. (Chapter 14)

6. Teaching offers hooks the greatest opportunity to change people’s lives. (Chapter 14)