The present day educational system has perpetuated the banking concept, a concept coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and allowed schools to become an authoritarian entity rather than one that exhibits a foundation for critical learning. Teachers are perceived as dictators and “sole creators of knowledge” and students are expected to be receptives bodies that memorize information and then regurgitate it. Students progress, in sum, has become a gain to produce high test scores instead of the exploration of intellectual freedom. In writer and feminists, bell hooks, book “Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom”, she states,
To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone can learn. That learning process comes easiest to those of us who teach who also believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is scared; who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin. (13)
To start this revolution of freedom, teachers must use the resource of literature to begin critical discussions about significant matters such as race, gender, and how they fundamentally intersect. By engaging in this idea, teachers are then also engaging the idea that the classroom is essentially a learning community and the contributions from student discussions are inherently resources within that dynamic. Discussions become essential into the exploration of literature, experiences, and the dynamics of the culture that oppress and inhibit marginalized g...
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...ho are actively becoming aware of systems and their own structured beliefs, and their students are done with the intent to produce active individuals who want to create change. Shifting students and themselves into the frame of active thinkers and individuals shifts paradigms. Their actions produce important and imperative discussions and dialogue. These, essentially, are the starting points to the revolution of liberating education again.
Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: The Contimum International Publishing Group, 1993. Print.
hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routeledge, 1994. Print.
Macomber, Kris, and Sarah Nell Rusche. "Using Students' Racial Memories to Teach about Racial Inequality." Feminist Teacher 20.3 (2010): 214-225. Google Scholar. PDF file.
Authors Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton in Chapter Five of Courageous Conversations About Race broach the topic of race, by asking the reader to evaluate his or her own consciousness of race. According to the authors, in order to address the achievement gaps between African American students and White students, educators should shift their energy towards focusing on the factors that they have direct control of inside the classroom rather than on the factors that influence this achievement disparity between races outside the classroom.
Delpit, Lisa. “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children.” Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom. New York: The New Press, 1995.
1) Carbone II, Steven A. (2010). Race, Class, and Oppression: Solutions for Active Learning and Literacy in the Classroom. Student Pulse, 2.01. Retrieved from:
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” – Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed [retrieved October 8, 2017 from https://www.goodreads.com]
“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. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is men themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, men cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through
Education is not only the most necessary way to inherit knowledge, but also the most significant factor to determine our human being’s future. Nowadays, the most widely education model is called banking concept education in the whole world. The banking ‘concept’ of education is characterised by the storage act of relationship between teacher and student in schooling. For instance, the “banking” education is regarded as a banking system in schooling. The teachers do the act of teaching like a depositor to “banking” knowledge to students. Meanwhile, the students in banking education are like depositories to fully receive what teacher taught in class, and do their best to regurgitation. This kind of education model in Paulo Freire’s essay is called
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
Lacking the necessary support, many start to devalue the importance of doing well in school deciding that perhaps school isn’t part of their identity. In Susan’s case she’s eliciting multiple forms of subordination, and within each dimension she’s being subjective to different types of oppression; racial oppression, gender oppression, and class oppression, she’s experiencing cultural alienation and isolation and is not only based on her ethnicity as a Latina but is also influenced by how she is treated as a female, as a member of a certain socioeconomic class, and in relation to her English language proficiency, and even her perceived immigration status. In this sense, students like Susan experience different forms of discrimination or marginalization that stems from
Equality, America is driven by this one simple word, but how much of America is actually equal
By reflecting on my experience as a child, I was able to clearly ask myself, “Does this teaching method affect the oppressed students in my classroom, and if so, how?” As mentioned before, I had a student that struggled with math and writing. This student, along with about 3 other students in her class, was a Black female. Most of their writing prompts consisted of content that was all about a Caucasian male that went into space, or did something with his wealthy, loving family. Besides the fact that these girls cannot relate to these types of prompts, it also leads them to believe that women don’t often do big things like going into space or become wealthy with loving families. Although I never had the chance to teach a full class in an anti-oppressive way, I have made sure that I take every student’s culture, ethnicity, ability, class, and language into consideration when teaching/mentoring.
During most meetings this fairly homogeneous group of people eloquently and thoughtfully engage in passionate conversations about children of color and their inequitable schooling experiences. Dialogue in the room turns into subtle conversations about students’ academic traits, neighborhoods, language, parents, and poverty levels as they relate to the educational misfortunes of students of color. And then it happens, a white colleague or group of colleagues ...
Hooks, Bell. Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Vol. 4. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print.
This book, Dare The School Build a New Social Order by George Counts, is an examination of teachers, the Progressive Education Movement, democracy and his idea on how to reform the American economy. The book is divided into 5 different sections. The first section is all about the Progressive Education Movement. Through this, George Counts points out many downsides and weaknesses of this ideal. He also talks about how he wants teachers to lead society instead of following it. In the second section, he examines 10 widespread fallacies. These fallacies were that man is born free, that children are born free, they live in a separate world of their own, education remains unchanged, education should have no bias, the object of education is to produce professors, school is an all-powerful educational agency, ignorance rather than knowledge is the way of wisdom, and education is made to prepare an individual for social change.
Education serves as the foundation to a lifetime of learning. Since every child is unique, I believe that it is important for them to learn in an environment that is both secure and stimulating. By creating this type of atmosphere, the students will be able to realize their intelligence and use it constructively. As a future educator, it will be my goal to establish a classroom that is, 1) non-authoritarian, 2) student-centered, and 3) focused around student experience. These three elements are part of Progressivism, the educational philosophy I plan to incorporate in my classroom.
Freire states “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly” (Freire, 2000, p. 47). Therefore; students must be aware of their oppression and fight for their freedom and autonomy in the school system. Freire also suggests a method of education that will help solve this issue: problem-posing education. The dynamic concept of problem-posing education integrates both teachers and students role’s to create a unified teaching process in which the teacher teaches the student, and the student teaches the teacher. This process “reinvents” knowledge, and teaches the student critical thinking. Instead of knowledge being deposited to students, problem-posing education presents information to students but allows them to draw their own conclusions and form their own, unique