When bell hooks talks about the conferences she held to help teach her fellow instructors how to be more multicultural in the classroom, she states that "Hearing individuals describe concrete strategies was an approach that helped dispel fears" (38). The paradigm shift is tricky, yes, and often painful, but I was willing to go along for the ride. From the rest of the reading, however, I felt primarily that hooks was telling me what not to do in the classroom, giving me little by way of actual strategy. However, the few concrete strategies it did promote were compelling and useful, many of them things I have often questioned in the course of my own higher education.
The most concrete and best articulated strategy hooks includes is particularly relevant for English instructors. That is: question the canon. Are we not including works by authors from disenfranchised groups because these works don’t exist? Because they are not good or thought-provoking? Or are we not including these because these weren’t included when we were taught? After all, it is English departments who, to a large extent, create the canon. (Nobody took Moby-Dick seriously until Carl Van Doren wrote on it and taught it at Columbia University in the 20s.) If we continue to set aside minority groups as they were set aside for us, even in canons that we consider sealed or established, the consciousness can never properly shift. I know that I will take this into consideration when constructing text lists for future classes.
I still would have liked more concrete strategies. I feel like this is a common thread throughout the semester, really, reading theoretical approaches, deciding what I like and don’t like about them, and having no idea as to practical application. Perhaps it’s a fault of my own, that I just can’t think critically enough to put these ideas into practice; after all, hooks’s text wasn’t even as lofty as most of the others we’ve read. Even so, I can’t help but wish that each theorist could speak more openly, not only about which approaches to avoid in order to conform to their theories, but which ones to incorporate, as well.
I agree with her best strategy: question the canon. I had to take four-semester long course at PC called The Development of Western Civilization (I mean, can you get any more white male than that??). That class was all about the canon, so it was exciting to get to take English classes that questioned the canon and taught me something different. I think the lack of hooks' concrete strategies is that she is trying to get an awareness more than give a guide as to how to incorporate such strategies in the classroom, but I feel your pain. Just give me an idea of how to do this!!!
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