Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom

When hooks encourages older individuals to attend college, she often hears the argument that school is boring. These individuals fail to recognize the classroom as a space of mutuality:

They do not think of the classroom and what happens there as created by the mutual interplay between professor and student. To them, the classroom “belongs” to the professor and she or he is the sole factor determining what takes place there (117).

hooks had many teachers who struggled to engage their students. Often, when their instruction failed to captivate her attention, she devoted herself to the reading material. Teachers must express to students the role they play in developing the dynamics of the classroom. When students talk to hooks about classes they do not find engaging, she asks them what they are contributing. Students are in a unique position to challenge teachers who are disengaged. hooks encourages them to write a letter to the teacher. Most educators do not want to be boring or fail to reach their students.

Unlike public school teachers, graduate students who will one day become university professors are not trained in pedagogy. Therefore, they never learn the nuances of how student self-esteem impacts thinking and learning.