Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key parts of the text are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Introduction-Chapter 5

Reading Check

1. In the Introduction, by whom does hooks recall being taught in her early childhood?

2. What does hooks call the dominant educational philosophy that is in many regards the opposite of her own?

3. What is the name of the white friend from high school whom hooks recalls fondly in Chapter 2?

4. At which college did hooks teach when the events of Chapter 3 took place?

5. What name does hooks use for herself as interviewer in the Chapter 4 “interview” about Freire?

6. What specific part of the status quo did hooks often get into trouble at home for challenging when she was a child?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How did hooks’s educational experience change after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling?

2. How does hooks suggest that professors can take the first step in being vulnerable with their students?

3. According to hooks, why do people fear change in the current racialized power structure?

4. Although the professors seemed willing to include non-majority writers on their syllabi, what disappointing attitude about these works did hooks see during the seminar discussed in Chapter 3?

5. In Chapter 4, how does hooks react to charges of sexism in Freire’s work?

6. What kind of “theory” is hooks interested in and advocating for in Chapter 5?

Paired Resource

“‘Why Do Chinese People Have Weird Names?’: The Challenges of Teaching Multicultural Young Adult Literature”

• This journal article by Nai-Hua Kuo and Janet Alsup analyzes some of the perceived obstacles to teaching multicultural literature in American classrooms.
• This resource relates to Confronting Divisions in American Education: Moving from the Margins to the Center in the Multicultural Classroom.
• What concerns do the teachers interviewed in this article express? How do the authors use the classroom observation to comment on these concerns? Which aspects of this article do you believe hooks would react positively to? Why? Which aspects might she have a critical reaction to? Why?

“What Is Wake Up Schools?”

• This is the Website for the Plum Village schools started by Thich Nhat Hanh.
• This resource relates to Teachers as Healers and as Needing Healing.
• In Teaching to Transgress, what does hooks say about the founder of these schools? How do the philosophies and programs of the Wake Up Schools intersect with the pedagogical ideas hooks expresses?

Chapters 6-10

Reading Check

1. What does Diana Fuss discuss in the second half of her book that bothers hooks?

2. To what historical phenomenon does hooks point for the origins of the rift between white and Black women?

3. Whose personal experiences does hooks cite as evidence that Black female household workers often viewed their white female employers negatively?

4. In which university department did hooks first begin teaching women’s studies?

5. In Chapter 9, what does hooks cite Angela Davis as an example of?

6. Whom does hooks interview in Chapter 10?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is hooks’s response to Diana Fuss’s critique of essentialism?

2. What does hooks find groundbreaking about Adrienne Rich’s “‘Disloyal to Civilization’: Feminism, Racism, and Gynephobia”?

3. Why does hooks find it understandable that the Black men she has taught have sometimes had difficulty accepting their role in the oppression of women?

4. How does hooks explain the initial resistance to feminism in her Black female students?

5. What was hooks’s motivation for writing Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism?

6. What does hooks believe about the very different life experiences of herself and her Chapter 10 interviewee?

Paired Resource

“Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free

• A New Yorker profile by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor of Barbara Smith and the Black feminists of the Combahee River Collective
• How did the Combahee River Collective begin, and what were the motivations of its founders? How does this align with hooks’s remarks about early Black feminism? What additional elements are present in the ideals of the Combahee River Collective that are not explicitly a part of hooks’s arguments? Are these additional elements in any way incompatible with hooks’s arguments?

“We Should All be Feminists” and “Men Can’t be Feminists”

• “We Should All be Feminists” is a 30-minute TED Talk by acclaimed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; “Men Can’t be Feminists” is an opinion piece by Bisi Alimi written in response.
• What are Adichie’s key points in her TED Talk? How do you think hooks would respond to Adichie’s ideas? Why? What does Alimi object to about the idea that men can be feminists? What essentialist ideas does he promote? How do you think hooks would respond to Alimi’s ideas? Why?

Chapters 11-14

Reading Check

1. In Chapter 11, what dialect’s hegemony does hooks challenge?

2. When hooks first got to college, what did she focus on when she thought about class issues?

3. What kind of classrooms does hooks believe lessen the pressure to conform and erase markers of lower-class or Black identity?

4. What two aspects of human beings does hooks believe most classrooms force apart?

5. What kind of love does hooks contend the word “eros” is often mistakenly assumed to refer to?

6. In Chapter 14, what does hooks accuse many professors of prioritizing over teaching?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What value does hooks see in Black vernacular?

2. What does hooks believe white students can learn from classrooms where Black vernacular is used?

3. What misapprehension about the classroom does hooks say causes students and teachers to ignore issues of class?

4. How, according to hooks, does encouraging passion in the classroom leads to greater inclusivity?

5. What qualities of American society does hooks see as standing in the way of transforming classrooms?

6. Why is her work on education such a high priority for hooks?

Recommended Next Reads 

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks

• The second book in hooks’s “teaching trilogy,” this collection of essays considers education within the broader context of society and offers autobiographical insight into the genesis of hooks’s ideas.
• Shares themes of Confronting Divisions in American Education: Moving from the Margins to the Center in the Multicultural Classroom, The Necessity of Accessible Theory, and Teachers as Healers and as Needing Healing
• Shares topics of structural oppression, feminism, student engagement, and passion in education

Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by bell hooks

• The third book in hooks’s “teaching trilogy,” this collection of essays answers practical questions posed to hooks after the publication of Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community.
• Shares themes of Confronting Divisions in American Education: Moving from the Margins to the Center in the Multicultural Classroom, The Necessity of Accessible Theory, and Teachers as Healers and as Needing Healing.
• Shares topics of the importance of critical thinking, structural oppression within the academy, feminism, and student engagement.

The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson

• This early work of educational criticism points out the many negative impacts that structural racism within American education has on Black students, pointing out that the system largely serves to indoctrinate, rather than liberate, Black minds.
• Shares the theme of Confronting Divisions in American Education: Moving from the Margins to the Center in the Multicultural Classroom
• Shares topics of structural oppression, racism, and educational alienation
• The Mis-Education of the Negro on SuperSummary