bell hooks and Holistic Education

By Marissa D’Orazio

Influences

• Witnessing racial integration firsthand

• Feminism

• Progressive ideals

• Postmodernism

• Paulo Freire—social and political activism

Early education: engagementdetachment

• Early education in black school: “sheer pleasure”

“To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.”

“To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone. Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of who and what I should be. School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.”

Early education: engagementdetachment

Integrated schools: subjects less relevant to students’ lives; expected to be quiet and soak in information like a sponge

“Bussed to white schools, we soon learned that obedience, and not zealous will to learn, was what was expected of us.”

Works• Ain't I a woman : Black women and feminism• Feminist theory from margin to center• Talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black • Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics• Black looks: race and representation • Sisters of the yam: black women and self-recovery• *Teaching to transgress: education as the

practice of freedom• Outlaw culture: resisting• Killing rage: ending racism• Bone Black: memories of girlhood

Holistic Education

• Cooperation, not competition

• “Flame of intelligence,” not just fact

• Intrinsic love for learning, not for grades

• Real-life experiences and recent events rather than textbook learning

• Use of theatre arts

“Teaching is a performative act... that offers the space for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the unique elements in each classroom."

Holistic Education

• Engaged pedagogy—demanding

• For students to be empowered, a teacher must be “committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well-being”

• Praxis—reflection and reaction in education for student and teachers

“Disembodied Voices”

• While teaching, hooks once realized that teachers deny basic bodily needs like using the restroom—like a machine

• Concerned with educating the “whole”—mind and body

• Use of movement, body language in class

• Questioned the logic of this

• A place for Eros in the classroom

How to use bell hooks in teaching

• Allow your passion for the subject to show

• Tie things relevant to students into the curriculum

• Don’t be afraid to care about your students

• Reflective teaching

Sources

• Burke, B. (2004) "Bell Hooks on Education.” Infed. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/hooks.htm

• hooks, b. (1994) Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process. In H. Giroux and P. McLaren, Between Borders: Pedagogy and the Politics of Cultural Studies (pp. 113-116). New York: Routledge.

• Haley, S. (1995) Review: Practicing Freedom. The Women’s Review of Books, Vol. 12 (No. 6). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4022111

• Miller, R. (2000) “A Brief Introduction to Holistic Education.” Infed. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/holisticeducation.htm