Paulo Freire Education

Teachers are the subject in that they have knowledge that they then infer knowledge onto students. Students, in turn, are objects that receive, memorize, and repeat. The concept of banking prevents students from using their full intellectual capacity.

Paulo Freire is an author who poses questions and arguments that challenge everything that his readers think and know. “The Banking Concept of Education” from Pedagogy of the Oppressed poses the question about the education system and how teachers are narrators and students are recorders. In his essay he discusses how the students – who he refers to as containers – receive their information from teachers. However, the teachers never communicate with their subordinates. The idea of “banking” suggests that students are only receiving, memorizing and receiving facts from the “depositor” which made the students “depositories.” The main ideas drawn from this article are related to education, knowledge and communication.

After meticulously analyzing the relationship between students and teachers, Freire came to a grim conclusion, claiming “Education is suffering from narration sickness” (57). Already, in the first paragraph, Freire gets straight to his work’s purpose. He defines this sickness as the loss of knowledge coming from the verbal sharing of information. When a teacher narrates information to students, the students lose the ability to truly learn what the teacher is teaching. Without the experience received from answering a question themselves, it is impossible for a student to genuinely understand a concept.

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,

-Roles are assigned to give them a part that challenges them, but they are able to complete.

Students are being taught the wrong way according the Freire. Freire mentions "narration leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into containers, into receptacles to be filled by the teacher"(pg. 1). In other words this means that 's a teacher 's or instructor 's job is to teach the children all the requirements that are needed and they expect them to know all the

\item The teachers always want their lessons to be interesting and they introduce the real life problem before they can go deep into the content of the subject.

Paulo Freire believes that the world is primarily dominated by the “banking” concept in regards to education. Under the “banking” concept, Freire describes the relationship between students and teachers as “involv[ing] a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)” (216). Freire later goes on to symbolize students as empty receptacles awaiting teachers to dump their knowledge freely to fill the empty spaces. Memorization, obedience, oppression, and dominance all describe the inner workings of the “banking” concept. Students lose their ability to become cogitative thinkers as they memorize lectures, never speak their voice or dissent to teachers, and give all of their freedom to their professors. Students then become slaves to the classroom, and rather than a symbiotic relationship existing between students and teachers, the road is very one way. If Freire were to analyze

Later, he explains what he believes is the larger consequence of the banking concept. He claims that through “banking”, imagination is deprived along with dialogue. The teacher narrates information for the students to memorize, anticipating no input them in that topic. Since what they have to learn for the course is being crammed onto them, they accept it as their only choice. This limits the student’s chances to think critically and embrace their creativity.

But not every student is the same. Some students may find it easier to use the “banking” concept for their way of learning. It all depends on which learning environment the student is more comfortable in. Also, I believe that it depends on which type of class the student is taking. From my experiences, I have noticed that both methods have worked for retaining the necessary knowledge, but each method is best used for different subjects. For more of the memorization type classes, like math and history, I would learn more from the banking concept because those classes are mostly about remembering and memorizing certain formulas and dates in history. Any other way of remembering those math formulas and history dates wouldn’t be as effective. Even as young children we would learn the alphabet and words through memorization. At that young age the children are not mature enough to go through learning by the problem-posing method, they need to use the banking concept. But as for the subjects like the physical sciences, students would benefit more from the problem-posing method. Being involved and actually experiencing how the sciences work is much more beneficial than being lectured on the information.

Freire has made valid points as to why the banking concept of education can be poor at times. Freire expresses the attitudes and practices of society within the banking concept of education and lists that the teachers know everything and the students know nothing (319). When my teacher messed up halfway through solving the equation and I caught the mistake should I have not said anything because teachers know everything, right? In reality people make mistakes as do teachers.

The greatest thing about humans is that they have the ability to think. Thinking is what differs people from each other and makes people who they are. Freire understands the importance of thinking and wants to start a discussion on the school systems attempt to restrict thinking. This is what he tries to do in his article, something that he does pretty well. He believes the school system solely cares about facts and numbers. The teachers feed their students information and expect them to memorize it, and spit it back on paper. “The reason the banking system continues to thrive is to serve the purpose of the authority, whose peace of mind rests on how well the oppressed fit in the world created by the oppressors, and how little they question it (Freire, page 219). Educators have to understand that the classroom is a leveled playing field, teaching and learning simultaneously through discussions with each other.

Before reading Freire’s essay, I thought the school was making me think in a way I never

He saw education (specifically, literacy) not merely as a means of transferring information as if one were filling a box, but instead as a means of liberation and revolution, that instruction should teach students how to think, not what to think, and give them the power to call into question the facts of everyday life (Gibson). In Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he suggests that the common people are constantly oppressed and forced to become submissive, and that in turn, they will oppress others in a similar fashion. Traditional education is one of the first vehicles for this cycle of oppression and submission, and therefore Freire insists that educators must stimulate students to think through acceptance and equality; that a teacher "is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach…authority must be on the side of freedom". According to Freire, it is critical that this student-teacher equality exist in order for a student to develop his or her ability to think individually.

John Dewey once said “Education is not preparation for life; Education is life itself." Meaning that learning is an active process that should occur to enhance one 's living and understanding thereof. When one only views education as a temporary thing they miss the big picture , and fail to grasp the what life truly is. Paulo Freire believes in having the opportunity to discover for oneself all that the world has to offer with the slight guidance from a teacher. He also says that “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by recoiling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” Freire introduces the idea that we can and should all learn from each other, that no one person is ever higher in the world of education. We all have a unique perspective and take on things, and teachers should allow us to discover and interpret for ourselves.