Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

When people think about love, their minds often turn immediately toward romantic relationships. hooks criticizes the feminist movement for emphasizing power over love. She asserts that this focus on power disenfranchised many women from the movement who still wanted loving and meaningful relationships. Female teachers have a responsibility to show female students that women can choose an intellectual life and still be emotionally healthy. They can do this by focusing on self-love first. hooks argues that women are obsessed with outward love because of the immense difficulty they have turning their love inward. Patriarchal culture has taught them that the self has little worthy of love. She provides her readers with a call to action: “Think of love as the most heroic and divine quest life calls us to pursue. And let that journey begin with the quest to be fully self-loving” (168).

In this chapter, hooks speaks directly about the experiences of Black female academics. She sees Women’s Studies as a necessary and vital part of the feminist movement and the decolonization of education. Educators must remain vigilant to include the works of Black female writers and thinkers and never forget that their influence has been and can be again easily erased. hooks suggests that the world’s attitude toward Black women is a direct reflection of their own future: “We are called to see clearly that the fate of black females in the world is the mirror into which everyone can look and see all our destinies unfolding” (171). Black women are faced with oppression at every turn, continuously combating racist, classist, and sexist ideologies. They face violence and silence. hooks’s students come into her classes with no knowledge of Black female writers or feminist thinkers. Many academics speak about the work of Black female writers without ever acknowledging their contributions. Teachers must work to infuse their practice with love and continue to advocate for progressive education.

hooks challenges the silence that pervades discussions about sex, even within the feminist movement. hooks identifies as a “sex radical,” and she admires Audre Lorde for bringing the erotic into a discussion outside of sex. Lorde viewed the erotic as a form of powerful energy that could develop relationships, politics, and society. However, much of mainstream dominator culture views sex as perverse and dirty. hooks asserts that self-actualization requires conversations about the erotic.

Teaching is a vocation that requires looking to the future. hooks explains that educators teach within a framework of the type of world they hope to create: “It demands of us allegiance to integrity of vision and belief in the face of those who would either seek to silence, censor, or discredit our words” (181). As an English teacher, she is aware that people have strong connections to their former English teachers. hooks also had an English teacher who had a profound impact on her life as an academic. While facing apartheid and the beginnings of desegregation, hooks and her classmates were relieved to have a teacher who valued their humanity and gifted them with the power of a challenging and meaningful education. This teacher taught hooks how to be a critical thinker. Like her former teacher, hooks hopes her students will learn to think for themselves and achieve self-actualization.

Many teachers are not intellectuals or critical thinkers. Nevertheless, hooks argues that all people must use forms of critical thinking in their everyday lives, and the power of critical thinking can transform the classroom and students’ lives. Critical thinking helps people to live better lives: Rather than passively accepting what is handed to them, critical thinkers daringly pursue something better. Educators can harness critical thinking by placing it within the context of experience. For hooks, critical thinking helped her to imagine possibility outside of her own oppression: “Seeking to know and understand fully gave me a way to create whole pictures in my mind’s eye, pictures that were not formed through reaction” (186). Teachers who foster critical thinking in the classroom encourage students to be radically open; in turn, they become lovers of the truth and engage with wonder.