Bettina Love to speak on ‘Abolitionist Teaching’

Bettina Love, award-winning author and associate professor of educational theory and practice at the University of Georgia, will speak at Wake Forest University on Wednesday, April 24, at 7 p.m. in Pugh Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. No videography is permitted.

Love’s work focuses on how teachers and schools working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged schools rooted in social justice for the goal of equitable classrooms.

Her most recent book, “We Want to Do More than Survive,” (recently released by Beacon Press) calls for American public education to push beyond getting students to just the next grade. She argues for dismantling tweaks to curriculum and testing that perpetuate inequality in schools.

The talk will discuss the struggles and the possibilities of committing to an abolitionist goal of educational freedom, as opposed to reform, and moving beyond what Love calls the educational survival complex. Abolitionist Teaching is built on the creativity, imagination, boldness, ingenuity, and rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists to demand and fight for an educational system where all students are thriving, not simply surviving.

Love has been interviewed in various media outlets, most recently on Georgia Public Radio: Through Abolitionist Teaching, American Educators Can Help Kids ‘Do More Than Survive’.

The talk is sponsored by Wake Forest’s Department of Education, The Humanities Institute at Wake Forest, and The National Endowment for the Humanities.