Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

Teachers often find it difficult to navigate intense emotions in the classroom. Many female teachers are fearful of crying in the classroom because they do not want to affirm stereotypes of weakness or irrationality that pervade academic culture. Like her colleagues in academia, hooks believed that tears had no place in the classroom. She both heard stories of, and experienced firsthand, the ways students could use tears to manipulate discussions and outcomes in the classroom. This technique was used most often by white female students. hooks explains that white female students often have difficulty confronting the shame and guilt that emerge during difficult discussions about race. hooks learned to alter her reaction to these emotions when she began to reflect on her teenage years and her reputation for emotionality in class.

When hooks was young, her siblings made fun of her for crying so often, and her teachers and classmates often ignored her tears in class. No one was willing to confront her grief or recognize its source as being one of a few Black students in a predominantly white and recently desegregated school. As an educator, hooks makes a judgment call about how to handle student emotions based upon her knowledge of, and relationship with, her students. Teachers must decide whether a student’s tears can become a teaching moment or if it is best to ignore them. hooks also discovered the power of allowing her own emotions to show. While speaking about a recently deceased colleague with whom she had a difficult relationship, hooks began to cry. Her display of emotions brought the community of the room closer together and enriched the discussion. 

In this chapter, hooks responds to a growing trend among educators to develop “safe” classrooms that avoid conflict and tension. As a student, hooks disliked professors who adhered to this practice, because she felt it was an indicator of the educator’s insecurity and disabled meaningful discussion. As classrooms become increasingly diverse, students find it more difficult to connect with one another across boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Good dialogue often devolves into anger or sadness. hooks argues that it is a mistake to respond to this conflict by trying to develop a non-combative atmosphere. Doing so imposes silence upon teachers and students.

hooks understands why teachers may feel a need to create these types of classroom environments. She has many students who feel so strongly about conventional ideas that they are disruptive to the learning and destructive toward their peers. hooks suggests that it is important to see safety as knowing how to cope with risk rather than avoiding risk altogether. She likens this to a romantic relationship. Once the honeymoon period wanes, a couple may enter periods of conflict. However, in most cases, individuals do not feel that conflict in a romantic relationship is a threat to personal safety. Conflict is an important part of growth and learning, but it must be built upon a foundation of trust.

Prior to the feminist movement, patriarchal notions of male domination pervaded educational systems. Sexist thought was delivered as hard truth. hooks argues that this form of education stripped academia of its integrity, but the feminist movement has helped to endow the profession with honor. Women in academia contributed to the evolution of the feminist movement. Their work, alongside their male colleagues, proved the value they had to offer to various intellectual fields. Beyond representation, the feminist movement also altered patriarchal knowledge and classroom expectations. Anti-feminist movements actively work against these important strides by arguing that feminism is a threat to the white male canon. Teachers must remain vigilant to ensure that education continues to evolve.

hooks highlights the racial disparity that continues to persist in education. Schools remain largely segregated, and Black educators—especially Black female educators—are underrepresented in academia. Many Black teachers work in predominantly white schools where they must constantly stake claim to their authority and position. hooks explains that Black female teachers face challenges different from those Black male teachers face. They are subject to racist and sexist stereotypes, and their students and colleagues often fail to see them through a lens outside of their own personal biases.

White supremacy is at the core of this dynamic. Individuals internalize the messages of dominator culture that Black people are intellectually inferior. They feel threatened when their assumptions are challenged. hooks’s students have accused her of being racist for asking her classes to confront points of view that may conflict with their personal biases. For Black educators, pushing back against racist and disruptive behaviors comes with its own unique set of stereotypes: “to assert power while deflecting negative projects that would deem all these assertions as evidence of bitchiness” (100). Educators have a responsibility to teach students to examine and understand different perspectives and to challenge these racist stereotypes.

As a young girl, hooks’s favorite card game was called “Authors.” The deck included an all-white cast of literary giants, but it did not occur to her to question its lack of representation. As a teenager, hooks sought books by Black writers, but her teachers assured her that Black writers had little to contribute to the canon. By the time hooks entered college, the landscape had changed, and educators were beginning to understand how biases had shaped their curriculum and instruction. Students took classes with professors who were willing to challenge racist and sexist hierarchies in class, and those professors who were unwilling to evolve were left behind.

Backlash to the civil rights and feminist movements spread false media messages asserting that colleges were abandoning white writers and thinkers. hooks explains that no feminist educator would discourage students from reading white authors. Instead, feminism asks students to read while using critical thinking. Some of hooks’s favorite authors—including William Faulkner and Wendell Berry—have racist and sexist elements in their works. hooks asserts that one can read works from authors who utilize prejudicial thinking by remembering that a writer always has multiple intentions.

Young children come to school with reverence for their teachers. hooks suggests that this reverence comes from the respect and trust of parents for elementary school teachers. As students get older, that reverence disappears. Many public-school teachers acknowledge a severe lack of respect from students and parents. hooks cites several reasons for this attitude, including the conflict of a teacher’s promotion of self-actualization and the values of dominator culture at home and the notion of education as a commodity and teachers as low-level workers.

The classroom will always have an unequal distribution of power. While teachers may like their students, they are responsible for holding their students responsible for intellectual work. Students struggle to revere teachers when they feel this exercise of authority, especially when dominator culture has taught them to view people like their educators as inferior. A classroom is not equal, and teachers can abuse the power they are given. Mutuality in the classroom shows students that positive regard can be paired with accountability.