Teaching Critical Thinking : Practical Wisdom

by Hooks, Bell

• ISBN13: 9780203869192
• ISBN10: 0203869192
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781135263492
• Copyright: 2009-09-16
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• More Book Details

Summary

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 Transgressand 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction

critical thinking

democratic education

engaged pedagogy

decolonization

integrity

purpose

collaboration (written with Ron Scapp)

conversation

telling the story

sharing the story

imagination

to lecture or not

humor in the classroom

crying time

conflict

feminist revolution

black, female and academic

learning past the hate

honoring teachers

teachers against teaching

self-esteem

the joy of reading

intellectual life

writing books for children

spirituality

touch

to love again

feminist change

moving past race and gender

talking sex

teaching as prophetic vocation

practical wisdom

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.