Dr. Patricia Hill Collins on Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities

The May 2009 talk by Professor Patricia Hill Collins on Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools and Democratic Possibilities can now be viewed online on CSPAN's BookTV. The talk was held at Busboys and Poets (where Teaching for Change operates the bookstore) with an introduction by Teaching for Change Special Consultant Renee Poussaint.

Another Kind of Public Education provides a strong argument for the need to focus not on "frameworks of reform and fitting in" but instead on "how to tell a sustained story of practicing resistance." Through her own experience she shows that public education can both silence students and teach them to resist. She outlines the ways in which young people are influenced by racism and the media, highlighting the role that schools can play to help challenge oppressive messages and make democracy a reality.

Professor Collins is one of the leading writers on African American feminist thought. Her work blends the personal and the political to draw attention to how race and gender affect our lives. Dr. Collins is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park. Among her major works are Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment and From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism.