How Serious are we about Teaching to Transgress -
Writing this now, I wonder when did bell hooks write this article? A quick google search revealed the book was published in 1994. How little has changed since then. One of the first things I noticed in all of my class is the minimal diversity. I've also noticed that we have only had one article that did not ignore there could be some differences based on race, gender or class. It has been my experience that class is often left out of the discussion. Even who is teaching to pay for their PhD is a class (and sometimes race) paradigm. I have often struggled with many of the issues Hooks relates in the chapter, "Confronting Class in the Classroom." Not as the teacher but as the student. I am usually outspoken so no one would believe that I feel silenced but I often feel that my behavior is experienced as "inappropriate," and that as Hooks writes, "silence and obedience to authority were most rewarded." I agree, as she writes, "It is still necessary for students to assimilate bourgeois values in order to be deemed acceptable; and students who enter the academy unwilling to accept without question the assumptions and values held by privileged classes tend to be silenced, deemed troublemakers." What she skirts is the power/class divide between faculty and doctoral students. I have known that class as Hooks states, "is more than just a question of money, that is shaped values, attitudes, social relations, and the biases that informed the way knowledge would be given and received. For this to have benefited us in the classroom, did we need to talk about this sooner? If our classrooms, the one's we teach and the one's we take ignore this issue, what is our responsibility? How do we really address it when the issues are often invisible or we risk being not just silenced but sanctioned (formally and informally?)
Writing this now, I wonder when did bell hooks write this article? A quick google search revealed the book was published in 1994. How little has changed since then. One of the first things I noticed in all of my class is the minimal diversity. I've also noticed that we have only had one article that did not ignore there could be some differences based on race, gender or class. It has been my experience that class is often left out of the discussion. Even who is teaching to pay for their PhD is a class (and sometimes race) paradigm. I have often struggled with many of the issues Hooks relates in the chapter, "Confronting Class in the Classroom." Not as the teacher but as the student. I am usually outspoken so no one would believe that I feel silenced but I often feel that my behavior is experienced as "inappropriate," and that as Hooks writes, "silence and obedience to authority were most rewarded." I agree, as she writes, "It is still necessary for students to assimilate bourgeois values in order to be deemed acceptable; and students who enter the academy unwilling to accept without question the assumptions and values held by privileged classes tend to be silenced, deemed troublemakers." What she skirts is the power/class divide between faculty and doctoral students. I have known that class as Hooks states, "is more than just a question of money, that is shaped values, attitudes, social relations, and the biases that informed the way knowledge would be given and received. For this to have benefited us in the classroom, did we need to talk about this sooner? If our classrooms, the one's we teach and the one's we take ignore this issue, what is our responsibility? How do we really address it when the issues are often invisible or we risk being not just silenced but sanctioned (formally and informally?)
I checked the publication for the article as well. And isn't it amazing that in almost 2 decades and not much has changed. I am actually a little relieved here at MU, because before coming here, I was the only diversity in my classroom, both as a student and as a teacher.
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