Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

In this chapter, hooks defines critical thinking and explains its function in the classroom. Children are born with a sense of wonder and a desire to obtain knowledge. However, they soon lose their passion for thinking as the world and their schooling teaches them that thinking is a dangerous practice: “Sadly, children’s passion for thinking often ends when they encounter a world that seeks to educate them for conformity and obedience only” (8). Teachers who want their students to think critically become frustrated, because students fear thinking and choose to avoid it.

Critical thinking is an active and interactive process in which the individual uses discernment and mindfulness to deconstruct ideas and see things from the others’ viewpoints. It requires openness. hooks asserts that engaged pedagogy requires participation and openness from both the student and the educator. This creates a community of learning. 

hooks describes what it was like to grow up in the fifties and to live in a country that boasts its commitment to freedom and democracy while denying civil rights to many. While she was in school, her teachers advocated for democracy and taught their students to engage with social justice. Conservative culture attacked, and continues to undermine, democratic values in education by challenging affirmative action, cutting funding, and promoting private over public schools. By the 1990s, conservative culture had succeeded in deradicalizing education, and teachers who continued to provide democratic education were marginalized or forced to leave education. hooks encourages educators to continue their commitment to social justice and democratic education.

In this chapter, hooks defines “engaged pedagogy.” She suggests that engaged pedagogy is founded upon the belief that teachers and students learn best when they share in the learning together and view education as a practice of community. hooks quickly learned in her teaching career that students learned best when they were given the opportunity to bring their stories to the classroom. Simple writing exercises in which students are asked to write about themselves or their experiences lead to richer conversations and more meaningful learning. hooks also explains that she participates in these tasks: “I never ask students to do an in class writing assignment that I am not willing to do” (21). These tasks encourage wholeness and vulnerability.

Engaged pedagogy gives every student a voice, but it does not assume that every voice should be given equal time or should dominate the conversation. Instead, engaged pedagogy recognizes that each student brings unique abilities that contribute to the community, including those students who excel at active listening or those who speak only when they have something of great depth to offer.

The civil rights and feminist movements drew attention to the ways education reinforced colonizer ideologies and white supremacy. hooks explains that education functions as a tool for colonization. For example, the lesson of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America ignores the presence of a vast population of Indigenous cultures. Feminist challenges to education exposed the dominance of male thinkers and artists in curriculum and instruction. Radical and vigilant criticism deconstructs the role of education in maintaining systems of control.

Passive acceptance of these systems leads to colonization of mind: “Without a decolonizing mentality, smart students from disenfranchised backgrounds often find it difficult to succeed in the educational institutions of dominator culture” (26). These students do not have the skills they need to deconstruct daily messages of colonization. One challenge educators face is confronting students who believe a decolonized and unbiased education is a threat of corruption. hooks responds to these students by explaining that she does not intend to mold students in her own image. Instead, she hopes to give them what they need to think critically and decide their own perspectives.

Since the beginning of American education, colonizer culture has shaped the type of information presented to students and how it is presented. Curriculum and instruction rooted in white supremacy ensure that Black students internalize self-hatred. Furthermore, patriarchal values and rules actively teach that women have little to contribute to the academic and cultural conversation. hooks explains that these systems of domination strip education of its integrity. However, there have always been teachers who actively challenge hegemonic practices. These teachers restore integrity to the classroom.

Although society at large is preoccupied with determining purpose and meaning in life, teachers do not often think about their purpose as educators. Many teachers view their work through the lens of their own experiences in education: “To a grave extent, my understanding of a teacher’s role was defined by knowledge received from the teachers I had observed as a student” (33). hooks divides teachers into three categories: those who teach because they saw it as an easy career, those who teach to disseminate information, and those who teach to help students grow and learn. hooks understood her purpose clearly, but she did not have the skills she needed at the start of her career to combat the negative perceptions of her colleagues or the ingrained colonizer mentality of her students. She worried that her position would be threatened by her challenges to educational norms. However, she saw individual successes with her students, which encouraged her to continue striving toward education as a practice of freedom.