The main theme I came up with from the chapter of Bell Hooks' book was the desire for inspiration.
I think that the author is trying to say that in order to reach the point of self-actualization, one needs to feed off of the insiration the recieve from another. In this chapter, the inspiration discussed is a professor or teacher. I can really relate to part where Hooks says "Most of my professors were not the slightest bit interested in enlightenment. More than anything they seemed enthralled by the excersize of power and authority within their mini-kingdom, the classroom" (70). Even in my first semester of college, I had 4 of my 5 professors be completely disconnected with what they were talking about and had more fun pointing out kids that were using their cellphones. It is hard to get inspired about a topic or a certain problem if the one educating you on it doesn't care about it. There was however one professor who really inspired me to reach my full potential. Because he cared about me as a person and what he was trying to teach me, I, to this day, feel so inspired by him and feel am a better student because of him.
Also, Hooks goes onto say that there are a few teachers, however, that do inspire us and those are the ones that help us reach our goal of self- actualization. (70)Because I am going to be a teacher one day, I feel this opened my eyes. After reading this chapter, I now know how much harder I will have to work so that I can be one of the few teachers that in the end, does inspire students. I will never be the teacher just going to teach because it is their job. I am going to teach because I am inspired myself, by a few passionate teachers, to follow in their footsteps as inspirational leaders.
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I'm so glad that you tried to figure out what hooks means by "self actualization" and you made the connection between how a teacher who used a "holistic" approach in teaching (and thus is working on his/her own "self actualization" can't help but contribute to the "self actualization" of students -- as you experienced.
ReplyDeleteI loved that you talked about one of the teachers you had that was more concern with "enlightenment" than "filling your academic container" when I was reading Hook's and Freire's articles I was so deeply saddened that they saw their professors, and teachers as so vapid in their methods. I had a couple of amazing teachers who still inspire me just thinking about them. I even wrote one of my high school professors after reading these two articles and told him about it because I was so shocked that these scholars, these intellectual minds that wrote these articles found no inspiration in their learning.
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