Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

“So much academic training encourages teachers to assume that they must be right at all times. Instead, I propose that teachers must be open at all times, and we must be willing to acknowledge what we do not know.”

Central to hooks’s work is Engaged Pedagogy and a Community of Learning. hooks views teachers and students as part of a partnership based on trust and love. She argues that many teachers fall into traditional methods of teaching because they fear the outcome if they embrace engaged pedagogy. However, hooks suggests that the responsibility of learning does not fall solely on the shoulders of educators: Both students and teachers bring learning to the table.

“Progressive Educators continue to honor education as the practice of freedom because we understand that democracy thrives in an environment where learning is valued, where the ability to think is the mark of responsible citizenship, where free speech and the will to dissent is accepted and encouraged.”

hooks contrasts traditional methods of teaching with progressive education and engaged pedagogy. She cites her own teachers who believed that education was a pathway to betterment and who promoted Learning as Liberation. This form of education emphasizes resistance and critical thinking over passive and submissive learning.

hooks contrasts traditional methods of teaching with progressive education and engaged pedagogy. She cites her own teachers who believed that education was a pathway to betterment and who promoted Learning as Liberation. This form of education emphasizes resistance and critical thinking over passive and submissive learning.

hooks believes that education is lacking in integrity. Students read the works of great thinkers who promote ideas like liberty and reason while simultaneously oppressing marginalized groups. This lack of integrity reveals a conflict between thinking and action. She asserts that wholeness can be returned to education when students can think critically and challenge the status quo.

“Throughout the history of education in the United States, both in the public school system and in higher education, imperialist capitalist white-supremacist patriarchal politics has shaped learning communities, affecting both the way knowledge has been presented to students and the nature of that information.”

Throughout the text, hooks carefully dismantles the different processes in education that have been influenced by dominator culture, including the role of the teacher as authoritarian disciplinarian and the student as passive receiver of information. Engaged pedagogy challenges this hierarchy while still maintaining reverence for educators. Rather than presenting material in long lectures, educators can invite students to participate in meaningful discussions about the material, ensuring that the learning lasts and is accessible to everyone. 

“Collaborating with diverse thinkers to work toward a greater understanding of the dynamics of race, gender, and class is essential for those of us who want to move beyond one-dimensional ways of thinking, being, and living.”

In this chapter, hooks speaks directly about educators’ collaboration with colleagues. She believes that teachers can enrich their understanding of material and improve their pedagogical practices by entering meaningful collaborative relationships with other educators. She describes her own relationship with a teacher named Ron Scapp, with whom she frequently discusses ideas and conflicts.

“Learning and talking together, we break with the notion that our experience of gaining knowledge is private, individualistic, and competitive.”

While hooks focused on collaborative relationships among educators in the previous chapter, in this section she examines how collaborative relationships within the classroom benefit students. Engaged Pedagogy and a Community of Learning allow students to learn from one another. Students are no longer expected to learn in isolation, and knowledge is not kept away from certain groups.

“I had been trained to believe that anyone who relied on a personal story as evidence upholding or affirming an idea could never really be a scholar and/or an intellectual, according to dominator thinking via schools of higher learning.”

hooks frequently describes her own experiences unpacking dominator culture and how it has impacted her teaching practice. She suggests that a focus on academia is often misdirected toward an authoritarian-style classroom. When she first began teaching, she avoided incorporating stories into her academic work—either her own or her students’. Engaged pedagogy leaves space for students’ stories and recognizes that experience enriches the meaning of the material.

“The soul murder I felt as a child was no longer the mark of my being; by telling stories I had entered a redemptive space. I had entered a world of soul retrieval.”

In this section, hooks connects Critical Thinking as Radical Openness with engaged pedagogy. She explains how using stories to understand material and to explore the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and class engages students in healing the broken parts of themselves. By healing, students understand how others’ perceptions shaped how they viewed themselves and become more open to challenging their biases.

“Imagination is one of the most powerful modes of resistance that oppressed and exploited folks can and do use.”

The text outlines many ways in which educators can embrace engaged pedagogy and lead students through a process of Learning as Liberation. Incorporating opportunities for students to use their imagination connects them to thinking processes that many have not used since they were children. 

“Genuine learning, like love, is always mutual.”

hooks argues that there can and should be a place for love in the classroom. Many teachers fear loving their students because they worry it will make them too vulnerable or that they will not be able to handle the weight of their students’ stories. hooks suggests that love leads to liberation and that true learning cannot take place without it. 

“Classes where students are learning new ways of thinking and knowing that may challenge all the belief systems they have heretofore held dear need humor as a mediating force.”

In this chapter, hooks explores another aspect of teaching that is left out by dominator culture: humor. Academia dictates that humor has no place in the classroom because it is not directly connected to knowledge or reason. However, hooks shows how humor plays a significant role in the classroom by making students feel safe and included. 

“Emotional awareness and the expression of emotions necessarily have a place in the classroom.”

Just as hooks explores the way humor can give students a sense of community, she asserts that academia has falsely avoided emotionality in the classroom. Engaged Pedagogy and a Community of Learning invites students to bring their whole selves to the classroom, including their emotions.

“The pressure to maintain a non-combative atmosphere, however, one in which everyone can feel safe, can actually work to silence discussion and/or completely eradicate the possibility of dialectical exchange.”

hooks suggests that it is a mistake to structure a classroom around the avoidance of conflict. Tension is a natural part of learning, especially as students begin to dismantle biases and beliefs. Teachers can combat the negative effectives of conflict by teaching students how to manage the consequences of risk and to love, even while disagreeing.

“We must teach students to first see that perspectives vary depending on the degree to which any of us have been socialized to have blind spots in our thinking based on race, gender, and class.”

In her teaching practice, hooks often confronts students who feel negatively toward her for challenging their preconceptions. In this passage, she confronts a white student who insisted that her Black housekeeper felt valued and loved in her work without ever asking the woman her own feelings. hooks suggests that teachers must take the time to prepare students to hear thoughts that may challenge what they believe or think and learn how to handle the emotions that arise as a result.

“Letting students know that they were participants in creating and sustaining a constructive classroom dynamic helped to lessen my initial sense that it was solely my responsibility to make the classroom an interesting place.”

Engaged Pedagogy and a Community of Learning removes the pressure from the teacher alone to contribute to the learning environment. Instead, both students and the teacher participate in a mutually beneficial relationship of growth, development, and engagement. To her students who find certain classes boring, hooks suggests to bring engaging discussion and contributions to the classroom. 

“It soon became apparent to me that if lack of self-esteem served as a barrier to students’ learning, then I would have to help them work at removing that barrier so that the information and knowledge I hoped to share could be constructively grasped by them.”

Many teachers do not feel that emotional work should be a part of their pedagogy or practice. However, hooks reveals how emotional issues like a lack of self-esteem can inhibit students from learning. Teachers who use engaged pedagogy understand that developing students’ emotional well-being prepares them for Critical Thinking as Radical Openness. 

“Much intellectual work embraces the art of the possible; it is like an archaeological process where one goes deep in search of truths that may constantly change as new information comes to light.”

Critical Thinking as Radical Openness is a process that never ends. Students who learn how to think critically in their classes become lifelong learners who never stop unpacking their biases and adding to their knowledge. In her work, hooks models this idea by sharing stories of times when she had to reevaluate her thinking. 

“Critical thinking in the classroom is one way to cultivate greater awareness. It enables students to better recognize the interconnected nature of life and by so doing brings them face to face with the sacred.”

In this chapter, hooks considers spirituality as an element of teaching and learning. She defines spirituality as the sacredness of knowledge and the cultivating of a rich inner life. Fostering critical thinking in the classroom enables students to practice it in their everyday lives, contributing to a better, more fulfilling internal life.

“Love’s place in the classroom is assured when there is any passionate pursuit of knowledge.”

In this chapter, hooks enfolds the three themes of the work into one comprehensive idea: love. She suggests that engaged pedagogy must be built upon a foundation of trust and love, and that students experience Learning as Liberation when love leads them toward critical thinking.

“The female search for love has to begin with the work of self-love.”

While hooks argues that teachers can and should love their students, she asserts that this cannot happen until educators engage in self-love. This is particularly challenging for women in academia who have experienced education through shame and guilt.

“For love as the foundation of all social movements for self-determination is the only way we create a world that domination and dominator thinking cannot destroy.”

This quotation provides hooks’s central argument for why love must be a part of the classroom. She views education as a transformative experience of liberation and resistance, and her collective body of work focuses on love as a powerful weapon for good. By combining love and learning, hooks presents a pedagogy that marches toward a new future.

“The erotic, particularly in the realm of the sexual, can lead to spiritual and emotional self-actualization, even if the place where it begins, where desire places us, is imperfect, unequal, and, yes, potentially dangerous.”

In this chapter, hooks explores how education has been designed to focus only on the brain and ignore the body. She suggests that teachers should recognize the wholeness of students, including their bodies, and how their bodies contribute to learning and understanding. By harnessing desire and passion for learning, teachers can embrace eros. 

“Shaming is one of the most common strategies used by educators in classrooms where prejudices prevail. Shaming dehumanizes.”

hooks cites shaming as a key tool of traditional pedagogy, and she explores how shame and guilt played a part in her own educational upbringing. The type of learning that takes place in this environment is quickly forgotten, while meaningful learning through engaged pedagogy is lasting and affirming.