Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (Bell Hooks Teaching Trilogy)

Description

In Teaching Critical Thinking , renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hooks explores the confounding and sometimes controversial topics that teachers and students have urged her to address since the publication of the previous best-selling volumes in her Teaching series, Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community. The issues are varied and broad, from whether meaningful teaching can take place in a large classroom setting to confronting issues of self-esteem. One professor, for example, asked how black female professors can maintain positive authority in a classroom without being seen through the lens of negative racist, sexist stereotypes. One teacher asked how to handle tears in the classroom, while another wanted to know how to use humor as a tool for learning. Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today. Review: Education, Critical Thinking, and Freedom - bell is a profound and provocative thinker. She causes us to think about what education can accomplish. Her cornerstone is that of critical thinking, a concept that is not taught often enough or from a child's early years. She clearly demonstrates the value of critical thinking in every person's life, not just those who are intellectual or academic. Peace, freedom, and democracy rest on the idea of critical thinking. To excel and feel alive and free we must all learn to think critically. Clearly the masses do not know how to think critically, for they were never taught how and they don't recognize the value in it. bell hooks is passionate about her teaching and it this comes through so very loud and clear in the way she writes. Every educator should read this book. Every student should read this book. It addresses democracy, social change, feminism, critical thinking, racism, and freedom. Her book is a true pleasure to read. Review: Well written - Not disappointed...well worth buying