Keeping Close To Home Class And Education By Bell Hooks

Hooks is also criticized for the way she writes her books. Unlike most college-educated authors, Hooks doesn't use footnotes in her writings. Other authors warned her that this act or lack thereof would "make the work less credible in academic circles" (101). But Hook refused to include these in her writings because she feels that "footnotes set class boundaries for readers" (101), which is something she didn't want to do.

“But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.” The 2007 film Freedom Writers, based on the 1999 novel The Freedom Writers Diary, includes many well-known celebrities including Hilary Swank, Patrick Dempsey, and Mario and was directed by Richard LaGravensee (Dargis). The motion picture gives viewers a look into Erin Gruwell’s freshman and sophomore English classes at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California. Gruwell, a new teacher, is hired to teach an incredibly diverse class consisting of blacks, Asians, and Latinos, many of whom are involved or have been influenced by the gang war occurring in their area. Erin soon realizes that she is not going to be able to simply teach the children in her class, she must be creative to find a new, interesting way to get her point across and received. The film demonstrates that through patience, courage, and acceptance much can be accomplished. Freedom Writers contains an apparent theme of prejudice that still applies to the world today.

The movie “Freedom Writers” is based on a true story. Hilary Swank as Erin Gruwell plays an inspirational teacher at Wilson High School. She is ready to take on the teaching world as she steps inside Wilson High School for her first day. Her class, varied with teenagers of different ethnic backgrounds, wants nothing more than to just get through the day. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, gang members, and much more are from poor neighborhoods, that all share a similar hatred for each other. On the first day of teaching she is very scared and unsure, but she knows she has to stop the racism in the class as well as their attitude towards life. Despite her students' persistent refusal to participate

How often do you see a white teacher transform a class full of recalcitrant students from different races and backgrounds to a class full of great individuals? That is what happened in the movie Freedom Writers. Erin Gruwell is the white teacher and the students are class 203 of Woodrow Wilson High School. At the beginning, class 203 is just a bunch of people who hate learning and have no future. However, it all changes since the presence of Erin Gruwell. She approaches this unteachable class and starts to develop their emotional intelligence. From students who like to neglect the lesson, refuse listening to the teacher, and do not care about each other, they start to show changes in their learning skill. Ultimately, two of the

It is important that we hold onto and cherish our past so that we may never be divided from it. One way hooks remains faithful to her working class past is by speaking or writing in an "anti-intellectual" way. When hooks feels she has an audience this would apply to, despite the criticism she may receive, she uses eye contact, speaking directly to the audience. As hook points out, "..., the use of a language and style of presentation that alienates most folks who are not also academically trained reinforces the notion that the academic world is separate from the real life, that everyday world where we constantly adjust our language and behavior to meet diverse needs" (90). It is important that people work to keep the academic world from being a separate world as bell hooks has done.

Bell Hooks is one of the most important author when it comes to feminist movement. In her book, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, she breaks down some of the barriers of the miscommunication that is seen with being a feminist.

In this chapter, bell hooks describes her experience with class privilege in college. Her race and socioeconomic status made her stick out from her classmates, which made her a target for their stares and torments. Her financial situation also made it hard for her to get into a college that she felt comfortable at. Hooks’ struggles ultimately made college hard for her, and left her feeling bitter and troubled about her achievements.

Bell Hooks was born in Kentucky on September 25, 1952. She went to all black schools until she was in high school, and after the shift to an integrated school she felt that black students were seen as not “really belonging” she says this experience “taught [her] the difference between education as the practice of freedom and education that merely strives to reinforce dominance.”(teaching to transgress 4). After high school she received her bachelor’s degree from stanford university and her master’s degree from UC Santa Cruz. She experienced racial and sexual discrimination throughout her life, and when she was in college, Bell Hooks was exposed to the women’s liberation movement; a feminist movement from the 1970’s that fought for issues that affected women. This movement gave her an outlet to express her ideas about feminism. Bell Hooks fought for women’s rights through literature and created a more inclusive feminist movement by exploring how race and class factor into women’s oppression.

bell hooks, American feminist writer and literary critic, once said, “The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.” Even when she wrote these words over 20 years ago in 1994, there was a clear, unsullied idea of what a child’s education should be composed of─possibilities. In the time of hooks’ writing, America’s people were being tested on their strength as the deindustrialization of major cities occurred, leaving most of the factory workers without money and homeless. After Reagan left office, there was an abundance to clean up. The country’s people were trying to create possibilities that might work out. The American school system remains about what hooks said: possibilities. Even with the media continuously

The film, “A Class Divided”, was a film about how discrimination can affect the way we think and act towards people who are not the same as us. The film centers around Jane Elliot and her former 3rd grade class who are all grown up. The film showed the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment that Elliot had created to teach her class about discrimination and the lasting, life-long affects the experiment had on former 3rd grade class. The film also presents the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment on a group of adults who work in a prison with minorities and how the experiment affected them.

Freedom Writers tells a story that mainly happens between a young teacher named Erin and her students of different races. Erin needs to balance the demands of her husband Scott and her students. She takes two extra part-time jobs to support her education career, which is ridiculous for normal people. However, some people think it is worth being a teacher like that. Yet others hold opposite views about what Erin has done for her students. The relationships Erin forms with her students inspire admiration and deep attachment in readers’ hearts. It is obvious that home life and social life affect education.

Bell Hooks the author of Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, is an African American activist, educator and a empowering writer. Bell Hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins on September 25th, 1952 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, a small segregated town. Hooks explained how her community turned all their brutal hardships that were created due to racism into strength. The strength to overcome all the negativity, the strength to build a backbone to withstand all the negative words that were constantly thrown at them. Bell Hooks also explained how the situation she was in provided her with the resistance to racism and all the positive and negative criticism shaped her voice into a strong independent woman, all of this which shaped her feminism. On

In Hook’s essay titled “Keeping Close to Home” she uses many of her own personal experiences to transition into analyzing society. A few personal experiences of Hook’s that caught my attention were how she discussed the barriers that were created by economic class differences between students. Coming from a working class family , when she attended college she felt a sense of inferiority to the other students. This inferiority made it difficult for her to discuss her financial situations or home life with any of her peers. Hook stated “I talked to no one about the sources of my shame, how it hurts to witness the contempt shown to the brown-skinned Filipina maids who cleaned our rooms, or later my concern about the $100 a month I paid for

Notably she mentions in her writing Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory that in the event that white women (who were given a platform to speak on their exploitation and discrimination) were given the opportunity to go out and get jobs other than housewife that the women who would be brought in to do their jobs would be black women or poor women whose voices on oppression were silenced. Hooks says that oppression is simply the absence of choices. In the case of Jane, Bell Hooks would ask the race of the woman Jane. Without that information she would only be able to say that Jane is certainly a victim of sexism and that is all. If Jane is in fact a white woman then Hooks would say that she benefits from racism, and if that is the case then she would not be a victim of oppression but a victim of exploitation and likely discrimination. To say more about this, if Jane is a white woman then, to Hooks she would not be oppressed because she would be a member of the group who does the oppressing and thus a beneficiary. Hooks would also say she is not oppressed because she is not restricted in multiple directions from moving. You could argue that Jane is restricted in multiple directions because she cannot go out and get the type of job she wants and if she does stay at home she will be bored and unfulfilled. But

As hooks is an academic, she worked to reach her position, and she faces a threat because of her refusal to participate in the black self-hatred that is reinforced by white supremacist teachings.