Paulo Freire's Model of Education Essay

Paulo Freire called for praxis in the education system. He taught the poor in Brazil to teach him how to teach them. He did that with spectacular results that the military dictatorship made him stop. Learning is something that is constantly remade in action.

Freire shifts his focus to talk about the current consciousness state of the students. The consciousness of the students is the key to keeping them oppressed, by being able to change their consciousness it makes the students easier to control.

I think that Freire connected many things amongst education, to politics. So, in this case of mass causalities due to gun violence, I think he would really want the government leaders step up and take more initiative in controlling this problem. I also believe Freire would see society as a source for the continuous gun violence in schools as well. As society, we sit and watch our evolution come undone by acts of violence through guns that facilitate destruction. Freire stated that "It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice". (Freire, 2015). Freire is saying that, as a society we can't complain about the tragedies that happen in our country, but sit back and do nothing out of fear that we don't have enough power to make a change. We have to take action and speak up for what is right, for justice to prevail.

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.

It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruption to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair”(Wiesel). Wiesel is making a point on how, we would rather take the easy way out and avoid acknowledgement. Also just like how he states later on,”their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest”, even when we notice the incident we tend to see the picture, like who is around and who will see you helping the victim; or even when we know we can help but don't want to go out of our way to assist another. Resulting from this indifference is a variety of outcomes, such as poverty, suffering of women, genocide,etc…, the list keeps going going, but all that matters is that it is all starting from indifference towards one another.

On the other hand, Paulo Friere argues about the authority educators exerts over the students, how educators believe they have more power and knowledge than their students. “His task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration” (Frierre 1, paragraph 2). We memorize other people’s information and we think we are doing a great job, but what would happen if one of us unfolds and break the boundaries between authority and communication. What will be the consequences for us; are we going to fail the class for thinking outside of the box. We are not empty receptacles to be filled with recited words; we have the right to express our point of view and listen to our way of thinking. When are going to get the benefit of the doubt, what educational system do we have to follow, we are lost between consumerism and the lack of

Although Mark Edmundson and Paulo Freire believe that a higher form of education such as, a stronger teaching ethics, deeper understanding, and more passionate students is needed to correct the issues at hand. In their essay they both adopt a different style to present tis idea. Paulo Freire wants the individual to form himself rather than be formed. To this end, he proposes that educational topics or opportunities be taken from the daily experience the individual constantly encounters and avoid the current educational pitfall of resorting to artificial experiences. While, Edmundson is trying to show how education has change due to the leak of consumerism into universities. Edmundson acknowledge his own conformity and promise to change back to what he thinks will make a good class and challenge his students to think on another level.

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher, examines why that is by looking at the different forms of oppression in schools dating back to the 19th century in chapter two of his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire compares two concepts of education that are present today, banking and problem-posing. In the banking system students are looked at as banks and teachers as customers. Teachers simply "deposit" pre-selected information into students who are then expected to memorize and repeat what they are told. Freire believes this way of teaching needs to be eradicated and replaced by a problem-posing system where teachers are influenced to emphasize critical thinking among their students. When students are taught to think critically they start to speak up and release their rage, they do not stay quiet. People of color refuse to ignore racism when they are taught how to identify and combat it. Schools hold the key to the liberation from

Freire’s thoughts on the ability of the educator to channel the fear of being fired or being targeted as a radical into a powerful force was inspiring. It was great how he took something negative and turned it into a tool that can be used in a positive way, he encouraged educators to talk about it and

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

In Chapter four, Freire discussed "the oppressed", "oppressors" and "revolution" in depth. Oppressed people have different relationships with the oppressors and the revolutionaries. Freire believed that it was necessary to get the communion to achieve transformation. The oppressors

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.

Freire begins Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed by stating his interpretation of the educational system between teacher and student, focusing primarily on the “banking” system, which is exceptionally biased due to oppressive teachers who direct their own misguided inquiries upon their oppressed students. Freire continues on by maintaining “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those

Only in the end of his essay does Freire focus more on his own system, and explain its privileges without resorting to the faults of the currents system, but even then he uses the latter tactic several times. The essay ends on a political note, calling the new revolutionaries to realize what the name they call themselves means, and to change the current ways not only on the outside, as they have done before, but also internally to make radical changes to their philosophy and their ideas about education. This concluding device stirs up some doubts as to the point of the whole essay. It might seem from the author’s concluding point that the underlying purpose of the essay was not to expand on the more beneficial ways of education, but to criticize the ways of political leaders in his, or some other country. Nevertheless, the rest of the essay shows little evidence of such a plot, and this point is at best marginal.

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.