The banking concept of education

Education

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze Paul Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed." Specifically it will focus on an incident from my own educational experience and interpret it as Freire would. The incident happened many years ago but remains fresh in my mind. My History teacher in middle school assigned us a term paper on something in recent history that would remain an important historic event throughout the 21st century and beyond. I chose the 1969 first steps on the moon as something that changed history and would remain important throughout time. My paper included the word "gamboled," which had been a vocabulary word in my English class the week before, and my teacher accused me of copying the word from one of my sources. He said it sounded more like "National Geographic" than me. I remember the anger I felt when I saw the comment on my paper, and my feelings of being wronged simply because the teachers obviously did not communicate or work with each other at all. I never confronted my teacher, and I think today this was a mistake. I should have told him his comment was wrong, but I was afraid to, and afraid of his authority. This indicates the roles that Freire discusses in his writing on pedagogy and oppression, because that is exactly how I felt - oppressed and without power or voice.

Early in his essay Freire notes, "His [the teacher's] task is to 'fill' the students with the contents 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 a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity" (Freire). This applies to my own situation in several key ways. First, my teacher was disconnected from his students, and only interested in his own interpretation and narration. He did not take into account that we were a group of advanced students who might have stronger vocabularies and voices than the average middle school student. In addition, he was detached from reality, in that he simply did not even take the time to verify the word was plagiarized from the source, or not. He simply "filled" up the classroom with his own narration while he alienated the students with his pedantic and boring diatribes on world history.

I remember this teacher being quite fond of lecturing, and of giving his opinion throughout the class. He rarely took attendance; he was not interested in who was in class, only that he had an audience to spout his own opinions. He was opinionated and gave his own opinions on historical happenings, whether we wanted to hear them or not. He was an excellent, even shining example of the "narration" of education that Freire discusses in this essay. Indeed, most of our tests were based solely on memorization of dates and events, rather than on any thought-provoking or enlightening topics. We listened, memorized, and promptly forgot what we had learned by the following semester. Freire continues, "Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into 'containers,' into 'receptacles' to be 'filled' by the teachers" (Freire). That is exactly what we were - containers that this teacher filled every year,-year in and year out. It almost drowned out my interest in history, but not entirely.

Freire begins his discussion of education as banking by talking about the teacher "depositing" information into the students and leaving it there to compound. In this, my teacher and his students were playing the exact roles Freire is discussing. We were too meek to stand up and defy out teacher, and he ruled over the classroom and the information we received. It was a very one-sided arrangement, and it stifled creativity and free thought. In fact, it makes the students passive and non-aggressive, just as I was with this teacher. History comes alive in the right hands, but it died in this teacher's hands. Many students are raised not to question the authority of their teachers, and many teachers use this to become mini-dictators in their own classrooms. This deadens the educational experience and the whole idea of learning, and indeed, and Freire notes, it dehumanizes the process, too.

Society and culture play an important position in these roles students and teachers play. In our society, as Freire notes, teachers are supposed to know everything, while students know nothing. In addition, teachers are looked up to as role models by many students (and parents), and they are expected to impart knowledge and make it last. They have a difficult role to live up to, and many teachers simply do not have the talent and ability to thrive in these roles, but they are expected to anyway. In addition, they are expected to keep order in the classroom, maintain control, and see to the welfare of their students. These are all important societal roles, and they are difficult to maintain excellence in all areas.

Perhaps the most interesting and true statement in Freire's essay is his discussion of the teacher's role and his lack of recognition of solidarity and true communication. Freire writes,

The bank-clerk educator does not realize that there is no true security in his hypertrophied role, that one must seek to live with others in solidarity. One cannot impose oneself, nor even merely co-exist with one's students. Solidarity requires true communication, and the concept by which such an educator is guided fears and proscribes communication (Freire).

Indeed, this teacher may have been insecure in his own role, and unable to truly communicate with his students, and so, he was guided by fear and insecurity, and passed this on to his students. This may have been one reason he felt so compelled to share his own opinions about history - he needed to make himself feel more important and in charge. It does not seem that this teacher could have survived at the collegiate level, and perhaps he felt he was doomed to deposit history into the heads of loutish students forever. What he failed to recognize was that at least some of the students were quite interested in learning, but were deadened by teachers such as himself who succumbed to the banking form of education.