Based on the demands of our educational system, our society is forced to conform to the level of education that they want us to be at. This educational distortion is beneficiary to the educator's realm and the way of governing education . We are seen as merely objects rather than subjects and are fed only facts/information that the educator only wants us to memorize not actually comprehend it or even ask questions or give our opinions to given facts/information. This is what makes the educator the oppressor and us the oppressed. Paulo Freire's "Pedogogy of the Oppressed" deals with the concept of oppression in the school system and suggests an alternative method of education. There is an absolute need for students to "Tear down the wall" (Pink Floyd) of conformity in education and express their individuality.
Education in itself can be a contradiction. The teacher (oppressor), is there to educate/teach the student (oppressed) but is he really? As Freire indicates "Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are." (67). He also goes on to say "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 communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat."(67), and he refers to this as the "banking system" where the student goes "only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits."(68).
This "banking system" method of teaching, really is not teaching the student(oppressed), but rather they are given facts/information by the teacher(oppressor) that they do not fully understand, and so there really is no learning. Also the "banking concept" holds the student down because he is told what to learn, and he is not allowed to work to his full capacity. It is because if this that the student lacks "creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system."(68). If this type of educational method keeps on, then there will be no change, therefore the minds will be filled with fac...
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...critical thinker, and not only that but no longer becomes an object but rather a being who can share ideas with the teacher. In that fashion of education the teacher could also learn from the student and all can give different input on a given subject. This would allow each student to break the mold and become individual thinkers who can express their knowledge in different ways.
Overall the methods used for teaching are very inadequate. Instead of telling the students what is to be memorized, the teachers should apply problem-posing techniques to get the students learning themselves. Once this teaching method can be applied, students shouldn't actually just rely on the facts/information given to them but rather go out and seek and find out for themselves the truth and reality of all things. Everyone
Is able to share their ideas and can learn from each other.
I feel that Paulo Freire does an excellent job in making us aware of the reality of things in our educational system. I agree with the fact that we should have more of the problem-posing method of teaching, because it will not only involve us and make our ideas heard but will actually expand our way of thinking.
Paulo Friere’s essay “The ‘Banking’ concept of education” is a short passage from his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" that explains the two primary types of education that exist according to Friere. Friere describes the two types of educating as the banking concept, which is briefly described as the transfer of the knowledgeable teacher, to the ignorant student "Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." (Friere 1), and the problem-poser, which he describes as two way communication in which the students and teacher both teach and learn from one another "Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with
Freire disagrees with the traditional form of education when he says, “Oppression...is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression is also necrophilic” (Freire 261). Freire argues that learning via oppression is the death of learning. Oppression is necrophilic, as Freire says, because, instead of appreciating intelligence, people hang onto the death of language and education. To some this may not seem important, but there is a death of learning and the practice of learning. The Banking Concept is not the way to teach. Oppression in teaching is more prevalent than thought. An example of this is when people only call attention to pitfalls and negativity instead of cherishing positivity and successes. This is not a beneficial environment for the majority of people. Freire and Plato both illustrate that darkness and oppression symbolize the dearth of
Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.
The realm of education tends to shine a negative light on younger generations labeling them as menace to society and ultimately excluding them without fair opportunity. Every child is different; some may require more attention from teachers than others. Schools tend to forget this unique characteristic of human life once standardized testing and grading comes into the equation.
The first text, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” highlights the importance of liberatory education for students from marginalized backgrounds. Freire points out that oppression dehumanizes both the oppressors and the oppressed, and that liberatory education serves to humanize both. Liberation must come directly from the efforts of the oppressed, as they are the only people that truly understand the nature of their oppression. Education
The banking concept is “ a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those who they consider to know nothing'; (Freire 213). The goal of the ‘banking’ concept is to deposit as much information into the students as possible. This results in disconnected memorization without the real understanding and discouragement of creative thought.They cannot think for themselves. As Marx writes, just as there are two types of learning, ‘banking’ and problem-posing, he explains that society is this way also. There is the upper class and subordinate classes. They both struggle for economic and political power and the primary way the upper class keeps its power is through their beliefs and values. They are allowed to think. The subordinate classes believe they are subordinate due to the upper classes prestige and way of thinking. Like Freire’s ‘banking’ concept, education is the way to keep students down and this works because the students accept all knowledge from the teacher, just like the dominant class in Marx’s ideology, keeps the subordinate classes submissive.
I believe that schooling should enable its students to identify the flaws in society and seek to take action to address these flaws. While I do not believe that society, as is, is terrible, I do acknowledge that there are clear flaws in many social and political systems in this country. Thus, I believe that schools should serve as the educational means for identifying these issues. I believe that society and schooling depend heavily on each other. Schooling should not serve as a mechanism to maintain the current social order – in fact, it should do the opposite. Society should look to schooling to fix its flaws, and schooling should view society as a permanent work in progress. Schooling cannot act as a politically neutral entity, meaning that school should act to advance the political views of its students. Schooling can interrupt social reproduction by being politically explicit and enabling its students to think about these social systems which may oppress certain groups. As Bourdieu
Freire believes that the “more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented reality deposited in them” (73). Percy claims that this dependency stems from the belief that “sovereignty [must be] surrendered to a class of privileged knowers” (54). Freire believes that due to this loss of sovereignty, the ones with authority attempt to “indoctrinate[e] them to adapt to the world of oppression” (78). Consequences begin to mount as students begin to mold into the world of oppression. Freire’s strongest belief is that, due to the banking system, a student simply becomes “the possessor of a consciousness: an empty ‘mind’ passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside” (75). This mentality causes students to become constricted thinkers, or mindless robots, only letting the engineer program predetermined ideas that the engineer deems them fit enough to know. “What has taken place,” claims Percy, “is a radical loss of sovereignty” among the students because in the way education is currently being utilized, educators perceive that knowledge can simply be placed into students, however, this method is sorely inhumane
The Banking Concept of Education, revolves around the concept that education and the teacher, student dynamic is supposed to indoctrinate the teacher into believe they are only meant to teach, and that the student is only meant to learn. Friere describes the teacher as a depositor of knowledge into a receptacle, the student without really going into complex details in a way that’s detached from
Humanization, dehumanization, oppression and oppressors are all main concepts in the opening chapters of pedagogy of the oppressed by Paulo Freire. Freire entertains the idea that school system oppresses students through dehumanization tactics and curriculum. Terry Wotherspoon in The Sociology of Education in Canada explains that teachers and students are the agents in schooling, and subsequently affect each other. The teacher-student relationship has been examined closely and both Wotherspoon and Freire have important ideas on what it entails. Without the understanding and analysis of how teachers and students relate, it is impossible for us to make any positive, and progressive changes to education.
Many have the belief that in order to know where to go, there needs to be an understanding of where one has been, hence the idea of “Tradition”. The education system that society has become accustomed to having, follows the idea that the teacher reflects how he/she was taught and uses the same process to mold his/her students. In the article “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education”, (1970), Paulo Freire describes the traditional teaching and names it the “banking-education” system. Freire states that the students have no creativity, they are expected to absorb information, memorize and satisfactorily test to be considered knowledgeable. The 1989 film directed by Peter Weir, “Dead Poets Society”,
In The “Banking” Concept of Education, Paulo Freire effectively uses tone, ethos, pathos, and logos to argue that his proposed Problem-Posing education system is better than the common banking concept of education (Freire 33). The audience that Freire is writing to is going to consist of teachers and students. Teachers and students are effected most of all by the system of education that is used, and they are the ones that care most about how students are educated. In The “Banking” Concept of Education, Freire compares the current method of education to a monetary banking system where the information is deposited by the teacher into the students, and then the teacher withdraws the information when they please (27). Freire argues that the banking
The overall essence of education or knowledge acquisition is reflected in an axiom by Confucius which says “Tell me, and I will forget; show me, and I will remember; but involve me, and I will understand. Back then, it was clear that learning was a comprehensive process which involves passionate exchanges between students and their teachers; unfortunately this is not the case in most modern classrooms. Instead of the expected bidirectional communication between learners and teachers, in the modern learning environment there is a unidirectional system which involves the teacher incessantly hurling facts at students who, due to their passive roles as mere receptacles, have fallen asleep or; in the case of “best” students are mindlessly taking notes. This leads to a situation where knowledge has neither been conferred nor acquired.
Initially, through my pursuit of knowledge in the Bahamas for more than 12 years, I experienced a more liberating education that Freire depicts as problem-posing education. During this experience, where I was given a poem entitled "Dulce Et Decorum Est." in which the object of the assignment was to analyze the poem and interpret its meaning. Rather than the teacher asserting their ideas onto me, I was able to discuss with her and other classmates my interpretation of the poem. The interaction between the teacher, my peers and me created a “liberating education.”(p. 262) Freire would view this as problem-posing education because it stimulates the interaction and consciences of the mind, allowing me to form my own ideas. Problem-posing education is the best style for educating our Bahamian students because “it rejects communiqués and embodies communication.”(p. 262) In my case,...
The second chapter described the "banking" approach to education in which Freire suggested that students were considered empty bank accounts and that teachers were making deposits into them and receiving nothing back. The banking concept distinguishes two states. In the first, the educator cognizes a cognizable object and prepares a lesson. During the second, he expounds to his students about it. (67) Freire argued that the underclass could be empowered through literacy. He also pointed out that education could be used to create a passive and submissive citizen, but that it also has the potential to empower students by instilling in them a "critical consciousness." (45) Freire wanted the individual to form himself rather than be formed.