good-bye bell

I've finally finished Teaching to Transgress (took me about 6 months, go figure) and I'd like to quote bell hooks and just mention that this book is wonderful, though 10 years old, still very relevant, at least to me. And so

It saddens me that colleagues are often suspicious of teachers whom students long to study with. And there is a tendency to undermine the professorial commitment of engaged pedagogues by suggesting that what we do is not as rigorously academic as it should be. Ideally, education should be a place where the need for diverse teaching methods and styles would be valued, encouraged, seen as essential to learning. Occasionally students feel concerned when a class departs from the banking system. I remind them that they can have a lifetime of classes that reflect conventional norms. (203)