Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that practising “education as the practice of freedom” requires pedagogy and texts that do not simplify or pacify but provoke and agitate and foster a just relationship with the context of learning.

Paper long abstract:

Is the university classroom operating as a space to safeguard and privilege every student’s experience and feelings, rather than one where we can interrogate and reflect on experiences and contexts that reproduce power structures? This paper examines the feasibility of implementing "Education as the Practice of Freedom" at Teachers College, Columbia University, through bell hooks' writings on education and change. It is based on my engagement and ethnographic work during a four-month long course devoted to studying selected texts by hooks. I ask if texts and pedagogy can radicalise cis men to organise and deconstruct the privilege they gain from patriarchy (and other power structures if they do so). This is inspired by my observation that my white male peers and I (as a caste privileged cis male student), were not uncomfortable while working through hooks’ texts with the collective mission of deconstructing (any) benefits some of us gain from power structures. I argue that questions over pedagogy and content cannot be separated from the context of the classroom and the institution. Learning about the demographics of students, professors and staff in the institution and its various programmes, the history and political economy of the institution and neighbourhood, including organising efforts by students, staff and professors, and degree-related requirements is key to learning about the context. I argue that practising “education as the practice of freedom” requires pedagogy and texts that do not simplify or pacify but provoke and agitate and foster a just relationship with the context of learning.