Adopting critical perspectives on race causes real personal pain and estrangement

Evidence

Students taught me, too, that it is necessary to practice compassion in these new learning settings. I have not forgotten the day a student came to class and told me: “We take your class. We learn to look at the world from a critical standpoint, one that considers race, sex, and class. And we can’t enjoy life anymore.” Looking out over the class, across race, sexual preference, and ethnicity, I saw students nodding their heads. And I saw for the first time that there can be, and usually is, some degree of pain involved in giving up old ways of thinking and knowing and learning new approaches. I respect that pain. And I include recognition of it now when I teach, that is to say, I teach about shifting paradigms and talk about the discomfort it can cause. White students learning to think more critically about questions of race and racism may go home for the holidays and suddenly see their parents in a different light. They may recognize nonprogressive thinking, racism, and so on, and it may hurt them that new ways of knowing may create estrangement where there was none. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 91

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: hooks describes the overlooked cost of teaching critical consciousness — students lose the ability to ‘enjoy life’ and may become estranged from family. Contrasts with celebratory accounts of critical pedagogy.
• ADDENDUM: Relates to my frameworks on the psychological cost of paradigm shifts in learning settings.