Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

bell hooks’s collective body of work focuses on the intersectionality of race, class, gender, sexuality, and culture. In Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom she shows how this intersectionality impacts the classroom. hooks argues that dominator culture—which she perceives to be an extension of white supremacy and patriarchal ideologies—has shaped traditional educational models. In a classroom defined by dominator culture, the teacher is an authoritarian and disciplinarian who presents material in lecture-style presentation. Students are submissive and passive receivers of information. They have no personal connection to the material, and they are taught only about white, and primarily male, writers and thinkers. hooks argues that this model leaves students out of the learning process entirely. They have no personal connection to the material, and they are forced into a system of colonization of mind.

For Black students and other students from marginalized groups, dominator culture classrooms are especially challenging: “Imagine what it is like to be taught by teachers who do believe that they are racially superior” (2). hooks describes her own experiences in these types of classrooms. As a child, she had teachers who believed in her ability and intelligence, but when she first arrived at college, her professors repeatedly reinforced the idea that she was not on the same academic and intellectual level as her white male peers. Some even questioned that she was the author of her writing, insisting that female writers could never reach the same level as their male counterparts. However, hooks did have a few progressive professors who saw education as liberation and transformation, and they provided her with a model for the power of true learning. When she became an educator, she quickly learned that she wanted to be like those educators who made her feel like she had worth and purpose.

hooks advocates for a pedagogical approach that enables students to think critically and to dismantle bias and dominator culture. Collaboration through discussion and the sharing of personal stories enable students to see the perspectives of their diverse peers. This serves as a catalyst for students to decolonize their minds, and it provides a roadmap for teachers to decolonize their teaching practices. Dominator culture instills in students a sense of self-hatred and destroys their self-esteem through shame and guilt; learning through community and love liberates. hooks describes learning as a form of spirituality in which the inner life is fostered. She describes many ways to cultivate the inner life, such as through reading, touch, and humor. As students develop their intellectual selves, they gain self-esteem. When students cultivate their inner lives and learn to think critically, they are liberated from the internalized self-hatred of dominator culture.