Ten years ago, bell hooks astonished readers with Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives. Combining critical thinking about education with autobiographical narratives, hooks invites readers to extend the discourse of race, gender, class and nationality beyond the classroom into everyday situations of learning. bell hooks writes candidly about her own experiences. Teaching, she explains, can happen anywhere, any time - not just in college classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes where people get together to share ideas that affect their daily lives.
In Teaching Community bell hooks seeks to theorize from the place of the positive, looking at what works. Writing about struggles to end racism and white supremacy, she makes the useful point that "No one is born a racist. Everyone makes a choice." Teaching Community tells us how we can choose to end racism and create a beloved community. hooks looks at many issues-among them, spirituality in the classroom, white people looking to end racism, and erotic relationships between professors and students. Spirit, struggle, service, love, the ideals of shared knowledge and shared learning - these values motivate progressive social change.
Teachers of vision know that democratic education can never be confined to a classroom. Teaching - so often undervalued in our society -- can be a joyous and inclusive activity. bell hooks shows the way. "When teachers teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter, which is knowing what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning."
1. The Will to Learn: The World as Classroom
2. Time Out: Classrooms without Boundaries
3. Talking Race and Racism
4. Democratic Education
5. What Happens When White People Change
6. Standards
7. How Can We Serve
8. Moving beyond Shame
9. Keepers of Hope: Teaching in Communities
10. Progressive Learning: A Family Value
11. Heart to Heart: Teaching with Love
12. Good Sex: Passionate Pedagogy
13. Spirituality in Education
14. This Is Our Life: Teaching toward Death
15. Spiritual Matters in the Classroom
16. Practical Wisdom
Biography
bell hooks is a writer and critic who has taught most recently at Berea College in Kentucky, where she is Distinguished Professor in Residence. Among her many books are the feminist classic Ain't I A Woman, the dialogue (with Cornel West) Breaking Bread, the children's books Happy to Be Nappy and Be Boy Buzz, the memoir Bone Black (Holt), and the general interest titles All About Love, Rock My Soul, and Communion. Her many books published with Routledge include Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, Belonging: A Culture of Place, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, Where We Stand: Class Matters, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, and Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies.
"Fans of hooks's earlier works, especially the landmark Teaching To Transgress, will welcome this new collection of essays on combating racism and sexism in education. Drawing extensively on her personal experiences as both student and teacher, hooks articulates a vision of democratic, progressive education that focuses on the classroom as a 'life-sustaining and mind-expanding' place. As with her previous books, her latest is passionate, opinionated, and challenging. While her statement that a '[commitment] to teaching well is a commitment to service' will attract some, her claims that racism, sexism, and class conflict are driving forces in the curriculum and in relations between teachers and students will unsettle many. Despite its challenging nature (or, more likely, because of it), the collection will interest students of education, ethnic and cultural studies, and women's studies." -- Library Journal
"Refreshingly original thinking about spirituality, family values, and even erotic relationships between professors and students...The author's clear and consistent voice for progressive, democratic education adds an important dimension to society's thinking about shared values and the creation of a loving and fair community." -- Publishers Weekly
"Teaching Community is magnificent. Educators, learners, and intellectuals will find the book to be an eye opening piece of work. [hook's] mastery of language, as it always does, creates a highly stimulating space from which readers can learn and actively participate in the analytical process. Black, white, male, female, teacher, and student should read the book for themselves and for the beloved community." -- Rolling Out
"hooks addresses many other topics of keen interest to all educators at various stages of their careers." -- Rosemary P. Carbine, College of the Holy Cross, Teaching Theology and Religion
