Teaching Critical Thinking (bell hooks)

Author bell hooks (who uses lower-case for her name for some reason) is all the rage at my institution. People have read and extolled her earlier books on teaching, and since I'm interested in improving critical thinking, I picked up her latest. I was very disappointed. It's not that what she has to say is incorrect or that it is not useful, but it is not what I was expecting from a book subtitled "Practical Wisdom." I want to know how to increase the kind of scientific skepticism that is fundamental in my profession; she wants to increase her students' freedom from what she calls the "colonization by a paternalistic dominator culture." There are no specific, practical ideas here. She offers generalizations such as: "Negative conflict-based discussion almost always invites the mind to close, while conversation as a mode of interaction calls us to open our mind [sic]" (p. 45). How, specifically, does one make conversation work in the classroom? She is silent on this. This book is wonderful if you want a philosophical, moral, and feeling-based discussion of what is important in education. It does not help with the day-to-day structure of a class, at least not for me.