A Student’s View of Paulo Freire’s "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"
Freire was one of the most radical insistent educational thinkers of his time. He proposed his own educational theory for society. His argument was for an educational system that focused on creative learning and freedom. Freire’s method was known as "the problem posing" concept. It would allow students and teachers to communicate through dialogue while both are equally responsible in the learning process. Freire’s assessment of education did not support a system that mechanically deposited and reproduced pre-selected information with no communication or dialogue from the student. He feared this would manage and oppress society. This method was known as the "banking" concept.
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I agree that the problem posing concept is somewhat correct because my experiences with certain subjects in high school confirm it. These subjects were often elective choices made by a student, such as art and creative writing. I had an art teacher who would allow her students to be creative and express themselves to their full potential. With a full discussion with class members, we would pick out what we wanted to do and proceed. The teacher would give her view of the work, and we would either agree or disagree with it. In the end the final choice was ours, because it was our work of art. The canvas was allowed to become a part of our soul as we gave definition to it. I had a teacher in a creative writing class who also took up this point of view. We were given the opportunity to put on paper what ever we wanted to write about. He gave us no boundaries, being able to write in this manner was so much fun. It was like we were teaching each other because we shared our unique writings together in a group atmosphere. Although I agree with Freire up to a point that being allowed to use the
Freire was a proponent of the problem-posing method of teaching. This method relies on one 's metacognitive awareness. It is important for the student to know where they are in their understanding of the material. Further, this method of teaching encourages self-reflection in that a student thinks of how they are thinking. The problem-posing method encourages critical thinking whereas the banking concept does not.
According to the "The Banking Concept of Education" by Paulo Freire, I believe that Freire does a good job of showing the reader his idea about education. He makes the reader think about him/herself by the way he shows the fact obvious in their life. He hopes the reader know the depth of difference between the banking system and the problem-posing system. Therefore, this essay is talking about learning can only be achieved by communication with others and this can't be achieved through the banking concept. He describes, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Friera, 257). He thinks that the banking concept as narration because the teacher report to lead the students memorize and
In “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” Paulo Freire tells of the complex relationships that contrast narrative versus instructive teachers and compliant versus existentially aware students, in regards to the various methods of instructing and acquiring knowledge. Although this reading is only a particular excerpt from Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire does an exceptional job by capturing the immense reality of certain educational methods. He explains the “banking” system of teaching, which portrays the teachers as “oppressors” who enforce themselves with an authoritative, commanding position upon the “oppressed” students. By introducing scholars to this “banking” concept of education, the teacher has no regard for the student, inhibiting further questioning and analyses, which only “negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.” (Pedagogy) Freire applies negative connotations to help better demonstrate the contents in which these teachers apply towards their students, stressing that this simply is not well defined enough when the time arrives to properly educate the students.
In Paulo Freire’s “Banking Concept of Education”, he explains his view of the educational system, and the faults within it. Freire describes the educational system as being “banking education”, which he explains to be the wrong method, and proposes a new method of “problem-posing” education which he believes to be more effective and just.
To solve the problem plaguing the education system, Freire offers a solution which involves a “problem-posing education”. In this system the roles of teachers and students become mixed and left more open to interpretation. Both the teacher and student actively participate in effective communication to gain an understanding of the information being taught instead of just memorization. According to Freire, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient,
In Paulo Freire’s essay “The Banking Concept of Education,” he discusses the flaws he has seen in the education system. Specifically he argues that in most education systems the students are just empty receptacles being filled by their teachers, there is no dialog between the teacher and students. Freire thinks that in education learning should not be a one way thing, there should be a dialog going on between the teacher and students. Another big point Freire emphasizes in his essay is active learning, so that everyone is learning and participating. In Freire’s essay he proposes a new way of learning/a new concept of learning called the “problem posing concept.” Another point Freire makes in his problem-posing concept is that education is
In the excerpt from “The Banking Concept of Education” the author, Paulo Freire explains the critical flaw in the current education system. He continues by offering his believed solution to this problem. The two concepts Freire discusses in this excerpt are the “banking concept” of education and the “problem-posing method” of education. The “banking concept” is talked about rather negatively, whereas the “problem-posing method” is talked about highly. Freire believes in the “problem-posing method” and that students should have free-will to a certain extent in the classroom with less authoritative power from the teacher during discussions.
In Paulo Freire’s article, “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” he discusses how there is an absence of imagination and critical thinking in the “banking” method of education. Paulo Freire contends that the “banking” method of instruction is not a viable strategy to educate students. In the film, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir, Mr. Keating, an English professor in the film, liberates the student 's mind by making them confront the issues exhibited to them. The "problem-posing" strategy was utilized as a part of the film, yet since the students’ were used to the "banking" method, they did not know how to face the issue, rather they found another approach to dispose of it. “Problem-posing” method demonstrates that the "banking" method is by no means the only type of instruction out there. Weir’s film and Freire’s article demonstrate how well a teacher-student relationship can be when using the “problem-posing” method and the“banking” method, in other to understand Freire’s explicit and implicit message.
In Walker Percy’s “The Loss of the Creature,” he argues that having a preconceived image of something can create a symbolic complex, a situation in which one loses the true meaning of an experience due to the images already made up in their mind. He argues that in order to rid their minds of the symbolic complex, people have to overlook the biases projected to them. Percy also describes a loss of sovereignty in the world due to people following the path of others and not letting their curiosity guide them. He believes sovereignty can only be regained by venturing from the overused path. While Percy believes that people should avoid conversation with others because dialog allows for structure and guidance, Paulo Freire in “The Banking Concept of Education” believes that conversation amongst others and proposing questions are crucial steps in the process of learning, otherwise known as problem-posing education. He argues that the banking concept is a burden to academics because it forces students to let their teachers take the reins, giving them all the power to tell them how their minds should work. Percy and Freire have different ideas regarding communication and how people should interact in society. Does communicating actually limit sovereignty instead of promoting it? The banking model completely eliminates sovereignty by taking conversation out of the picture and creating a symbolic complex of the expectations of education. The problem posing model, meant to stimulate communication, is not so innocent regarding sovereignty because it forces students to think in specific ways. However, eliminating these methods of teaching would ruin education altogether because they both rely on each other’s ways of communicating.
Freire strongly disagrees with the “banking” concept of learning and he believes that it should not be used for education. Instead, he believes that the “problem posing” concept will let the students become a
In Paulo Freire's essay "The Banking Concept of Education," he discusses the idea of the human mind and thinking. Specifically, he argues that education uses a system which limits the children from using their ability to think. This system is displayed in his idea of “The Banking Concept of Education. Freire’s main argument is that the way schools teach today is purely based on the idea of feeding information to the youth instead of allowing them to interpret it themselves.
memorize. The other concept of education Freire talks about is the problem posing, which he
I strongly agree with the Freire views on problem-posing. Problem-posing is the best way to go about teaching students. The students have the opportunity to express themselves through communication. By expressing themselves, they are vulnerable to learning and experiencing the benefits of problem-posing. Students become interactive with the teachers who are positioned to promote a comfortable environment. This assists in creating friendships. With problem-posing, men and women are able to experience freedom and success. As a mentor for the incoming freshmen in high school, I created an atmosphere that allowed the freshmen to feel comfortable enough to be confident in who they were.
In his essay “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education”, Paulo Freire condemns the current beliefs about education, and argues strongly to support his own, new, and somewhat radical ideas about how he believes education should work. It is clear from his writing that he wishes to convey very strong feelings in this essay. At the very beginning, after a very brief description of the “current” education, he states that “education is suffering from narration sickness” (212), and later continues to say that in our current system “[words] become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity” (212). These statements, especially at the very beginning of the author’s analysis, convey an amount of
The original Social Contract tradition has had many authors, but for the purposes of this paper I will focus on John Locke’s work as one political system that might be used by a nation and the problems it entails that would have to be discussed for modern uses. Locke begins by describing a state of nature that entails equality and a state of perfect freedom for mankind to live as they want within the laws of nature (Locke 2009, 370). Locke’s work argues for his view of property, where a man has the right to the fruits of his labor but not to another man’s (Locke 2009, 372). In his view, the government is meant to prevent on man from seeking punishment that is unfit for the committed crime and that people join together for protection for themselves and their property (Locke 2009, 371-372). He argues also that no one man should be in charge and that a democracy should be used instead (Locke 2009, 371).