Professors can espouse liberatory theory while practicing domination in class

Evidence

Even those professors who embrace the tenets of critical pedagogy (many of whom are white and male) still conduct their classrooms in a manner that only reinforces bourgeois models of decorum. At the same time, the subject matter taught in such classes might reflect professorial awareness of intellectual perspectives that critique domination, that emphasize an understanding of the politics of difference, of race, class, gender, even though classroom dynamics remain conventional, business as usual. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 358 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Fear of losing control in the classroom often leads individual professors to fall into a conventional teaching pattern wherein power is used destructively. It is this fear that leads to collective professorial investment in bourgeois decorum as a means of maintaining a fixed notion of order, of ensuring that the teacher will have absolute authority. Unfortunately, this fear of losing control shapes and informs the professorial pedagogical process to the extent that it acts a barrier preventing any constructive grappling with issues of class. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 377 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Academic objectification tolerates abuse as long as the mind functions — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 45; Freire’s banking model of education was met with active hostility from university professors — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 39; Openly gay teachers often perform palatable identities that reinforce dominant norms. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 1258 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• Professors can teach radical content while enforcing bourgeois classroom decorum #exemplifies (0.95) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 358
• Liberatory struggle requires claiming theory as practice, not merely critiquing misuse #complicates (0.78)
• Professors’ fear of losing control blocks any class critique in the classroom #expands (0.75) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 377
• Authoritarian pedagogy produces docility that serves the oppressor’s interests #complicates (0.72) — , The Rod and the Child, 5000
• Avoiding authoritarianism without directives can become neglectful laissez-faire teaching #complicates (0.72) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 736
• Academic institutions structurally reward conventional teaching and punish engaged pedagogy #corroborates (0.70) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 403