Abolitionist Teaching

Abolitionist teaching, also called abolitionist pedagogy, is a set of teaching practices and approaches that aim to abolish educational practices its proponents consider inherently problematic and oppressive. The term was introduced by education professor and critical theorist Bettina Love, most fully in her 2019 book We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, and Love went on to found the Abolitionist Teaching Network in 2020. Proponents raise concerns about standardized testing and academic integrity policies and question conventional literacy and math curricula, while critics of the approach have focused on its integration of activist perspectives on policing, economic systems and international conflicts into classroom teaching.