Community, not safety, is the right frame for radical classroom learning

Evidence

Rather than focusing on issues of safety, I think that a feeling of community creates a sense that there is shared commitment and a common good that binds us. What we all ideally share is the desire to learn — to receive actively knowledge that enhances our intellectual development and our capacity to live more fully in the world. It has been my experience that one way to build community in the classroom is to recognize the value of each individual voice. In my classes, students keep journals and often write paragraphs during class which they read to one another. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 88

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘community’ as the operative concept from the overused word ‘safety’ in pedagogy.
• XREF: connects to: Apparent classroom neutrality can feel unsafe to students of color — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 86; Counterstory pedagogy must preserve intra-communal diversity to avoid flattening perspectives. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 490; The classroom is the academy’s most radical space of possibility — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 36 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural synthesis means educators learn with people rather than transmit anything #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 579
• Liberating educators dialogue with people rather than explain action to them #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 127
• Classroom conflict can be reframed as a catalyst for learning #complicates (0.75)
• Learning from below requires mutual ethical responding with a compromised teacher #expands (0.75) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2217