Critical Perspectives 28/09/2017 – Teaching – Introduction. Hooks. B

Bell Hooks published her book in 2010. Many things changed, many stay the same. As a young white woman, I can have a completely different point of view. In the introduction, she tries to acquaint us with her route of education. Considering the time of her education I can agree with some of her points but there are few, which make that I have many more questions. In her text she highlighted that Stanford University was predominantly white collage. I am assuming that people (black and white) had a choice (as Bell Hook) about university, so why most of the students were white if everyone had access to it? I do not think that they needed “more autobiographical accounts of the first generation of black student” to enter the university. University should be independent and accept student based on their grades. It is nobody fault that some people learn better than the others.

Bell Hooks also complain about teachers who did not believe that they are “fully human” or hate them. For me her attitude of avoiding lectures because of that is ridiculous. First, she should have needs to show that the lectures were wrong. Her thinking was unproductive.

The next aspect was going to collage to become a teacher when she did not feel the desire. How is it possible to choose the course if you do not want to do it? It is like taking any course from the list and say, “maybe I will like it, maybe not”. It is wasting time and place for people who really want to do it and feel desire. I know that later she loved it but I still think that it is not a good example for people who face the problem of choosing the right course.

Las but not least is the stereotypes as “an angry black woman” about which she wrote. I have never heard about this. Wikipedia tells that “the angry woman myth assumes that black women are aggressive”. To be honest I do not think that it is only stereotype. I have been working in the customer service area and it happened lots of times that black women are rude or aggressive towards me. Of course, there are some white customers who are behave inappropriate but It happens more often when black people, predominantly women are the customers. So now should I tell that they were not aggressive, they just have temperamental character? I do not want to tell that if I have completely different experience and I know that I did not do anything to provoke this kind of behaviour. 

O.