Paulo Freire The Banking Concept Of Education Summary

In today’s society, education has shifted the way in how one thinks, making a basis were they acquire everyone in a classroom to grasp the knowledge being presented to them at the same pace. Those that are unsuccessful to comprehend in the way that was instructed to them are viewed upon as the most needed and deficient. Having a structured way in how one should apprehend certain information, sets barriers in the process of thinking. It prevents the mind to think of other solutions, and to stick to the certain idea.

People begin their education from day one till the day they die. Therefore, every day, we always learn new things in different ways such as education, news, magazine, internet, etc. An ideologist, Paulo Freire, in his narrative essay, “The Banking Concept of Education,” present the modern concept of and approaches to education. Freire’s purpose is to compare the two educational systems, the “banking concept” and the “problem-posing concept”. Throughout his essay, he argues strongly to support his creative own and make his readers believe that problem-posing education is more efficient than the banking education.

Freire talks about the “banking concept of education”, explaining that students in this system are receptacles that are to be filled with the “content of the teachers narration”.(Freire, 1) These receptacles are expected to regurgitate information given in class, on tests, quizzes, and anything that requires an answer that is “word for word” what the teacher says. In a banking classroom, the teacher is the authority and the students are oppressed. Freire writes, “The more students work at storing deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.” (Freire, 2).

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action

Education gives common people the means to turning dreams into reality. Education allows common people to open up their minds to various possibilities, that will arise from becoming educated. But, yet there are times where our education systems do not uphold student/learners to a high norm. Although, problems with education systems rarely occur, inadequate performance in school can be feasible if there are issues within the child’s household. Nonetheless, students who face inconsistent dilemmas, fail since they attempt to solve both problems.

This “flawed” concept in education today is the oppressive “depositing” of information (banking education) by teachers to students. “Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way people exist in the world…” (p.224) The “banking concept” is an act that hinders the intellectual growth of students by turning them into “receptors” and “collectors” of information that have no true connection to their lives. The “banking concept” is essentially turning humans into objects. “Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human.” (p.224) This type of education

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.

Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave” and Paulo Freire’s “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” both contend that education is a process of freeing the chains of deception and false images that make us prisoners in the cave of ignorance. I agree with both Plato and Freire in saying that without education, like the prisoners, our perception of reality is distorted by our lack of knowledge.

The past educational experiences I've had that led me to UWB have been a dissatisfaction with the banking model of education. Freire is indeed correct that the banking model is demoralizing to both the teacher and the student, and does a tremendous disservice in the task of getting the student prepared to engage in the world. "The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to 'fill' the students with the content of his narration contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity" (Freire, 71). This is precisely the type of experience that I had in the traditional educational arena which led me to both reject this model of teaching, and push me to find an institution that also rejects this model, like UWB. Earlier, in life my parents were in charge of my education and they generally selected schools for me which were considered "good" located in safe neighborhoods and with reasonably satisfactory test scores for the school at large. Schools like that generally mediocre and run of the mill thrive on the banking model of education and believe that the student's job is to "learn" facts via

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.

What do students obtain through education? Freire in his essay ‘The Banking Concept of Education’ argues that students gain useless and meaningless knowledge through education, and I agree with Freire because education has become an act of depositing meaningless information into students. Freire believes the current educational system is flawed due to the “Banking Concept”, which Freire describes as, “an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor”(Freire 72). Freire implies that teachers are only telling students what to know rather than conversting with them, which explains why Freire insists that “education is suffering from narration

I also agree with Freire's that the schools are just like banks where the students’ empty accounts are deposited by the teachers. The banking system of education discourages the students think critically and creatively. According to Freire, the banking system is practicing in schools to control the minds of the students. This system makes the students thoughtless and quiet in the class, so the teachers can be overruled easily on the students’ mind. (Monchinski,

Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry” (58). If knowledge is treated as a gift, then who is worthy to receive it? In this oppressive society, only the minority of the upper class is treated as worthy. If a teacher treats students as if they are beneath his worth, how can students be expected to learn? In the society Freire wishes for, knowledge would be shared. Teachers would learn hand in hand with students to develop critical thinking skills. Not only does Freire make clear that he does not support his current government’s way of education, he flat out despises it. He continually refers to his country’s current teachers as “oppressors” (60) and calls the banking system “necrophilous”(64).

In “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Revised Edition, Paulo Freire discusses two different types of education: “banking” and problem-posing. The banking concept of education is when teachers “make deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (318), and ‘problem posing’ is when the teachers and students are equal. Instead of being treated as human beings that have their own thoughts and ideas, students are treated as containers that are simply filled by a powerful being, a teacher. In school, teachers are dominants that provide knowledge to the students, the subordinates; the knowledge that students learn are limited to what they’re taught by teachers. Similarly, in Kurt Wimmer’s ‘Equilibrium’, Librians are treated as reservoirs for knowledge.

Education can be defined as a learning process in which a student and a teacher are involved. The work of the teacher is to pass on the message to the student while the student understands and applies what has been taught. It is also considered as a process of developing skills, knowledge and character of an individual. Education, whether formal or informal, has a function both to the individual and the society, these functions are either manifest or latent. There is a distinction between the manifest and latent functions in that the manifest functions are those that are intended whereas the latter are the unintended functions (Douglas, 2003).