On Critiques and Possibilities

Abstract

The narratives of low-income (LI), first-generation (FG) students in this book reaffirm that college is a far cry from paradise for many students. However, these same narratives also include experiences and spaces that, though imperfect, provided an oasis of belonging and meaning making in the educational journey for many nontraditional students. These students’ experiences and aspirations, from their first year and beyond, underscore the idea that the purpose of multicultural and critical pedagogy is to challenge educational inequality by creating possibilities and opportunities for all students. The classroom, and indeed, U.S. higher education “remains a location of possibility” to create democratic multicultural communities and challenge social inequities; it is how we, as educators, will nurture this possibility that is still a question.

The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom with all its limitations remains a location of possibility.

—bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom