Andrew's Reviews > Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

bell hooks is someone whose influence is everywhere, even if her name isn't. Any time the concept of intersectionality is invoked in the blogosphere, or an educator writes an article in Salon or Slate about the need for an educational method that addresses the needs of working-class youth, you can trace a direct line to hooks' thought, and Teaching to Transgress evidences all of these connections. She writes not only from a theoretical perspective, but places it firmly in her experiences both as a student and as an educator, and the practices of countless others. The result is a book about education that celebrates the open classroom, but at the same time demands academic rigor. Likewise, she demands that educators not only pay lip service to radical approaches to pedagogy, but also put it into practice in their classrooms. It's a vision I find it hard not to get on board with. As with the best theory books, it helped me expose some blind spots in my own thought, which, in my mind, is the highest praise I can give to a critical theorist.