Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching

by Madeleine R. Grumet

The text is arranged in a pattern that mirrors Grumet's argument that women who teach make this passage between the so-called public and private worlds daily and that is also what we teach children to do. The chapters go back and forth between the experience of domesticity and the experience of teaching, between being with one's own children and being with the children of others, between being the child of one's own mother and the teacher of another mother's child, between feeling and form, family and colleagues.

The first and last chapters address the familial relations that fall under the category of reproduction, a frame designed to emphasize the relations of reproduction and their importance to educational theory. The chapters closest to this margin are those that address women's work in schools, and the juxtaposition is chosen to accentuate the dialectical relation of our public and private meanings. The middle chapters are the ones most directly concerned with curriculum, that provisional ground that Grumet is naming as our mediating space, the place where we can heal. The fundamental argument of this text is that knowledge evolves in human relationships.

Genres: Teaching

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic. Cannot believe it has taken me this long to read it!

[Jaana · Rating 4 out of 5]

DENSE, but very good. Enlightening, but definitely an academic read, not necessarily pleasurable, per se.

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

whoa. heavy as in the nancy chodorow breastfeeding lesbianism heavy. but really good.

[NAOMI POINDEXTER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Especially chapter 8- Redeeming daughters- page 162-3. So powerful and beautifully written.