Essay Example: Education Is Suffering From Narration Sickness

(Freire, p. 256) According to Paulo Freire, a philosopher and an influential theorist of critical Pedagogy, the Banking Concept of Education is a traditional education system where students are metaphorically assumed to be the empty containers(Depositories) while the teachers are the bankers(depositors) (p.257 para.4).The teacher being the narrator, his sole aim is to fill the students with contents of his narration. They deposit knowledge into the students minds and they are to patiently receive the information, memorize and repeat. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized and predictable.(Freire, p.257, para.1).In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider knowing nothing.(p.257, para.5) This fortifies a lack of critical thinking and knowledge in students which in turn reinforces oppression. Paulo Freire thus recommends the problem posing concept of teaching claiming that it instills a sense of critical thinking for the purpose of liberation. This method allows the students to learn creatively in relation to the world around them. The practice of problem-posing education resolves the teacher-student contradiction. ...the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.(pg.262, para.4)

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Analysis

The Banking Concept of Education aims at turning the students into automatons like some sort of robots. It is a one-sided relationship as the students just receive the information fed into them. This system tends to assume that the students are passive. They do not possess the ability to think critically about the information they consume. This system does not focus on the transforming power rather than the sonority of words.(p.257) They cannot relate the information to their direct environment consciously. According to Freire, this system limits the students power of conceptualizing details and critically analyzing the information in relation to the outer world they live in. As he explains students are set to receive the information as transmitted by their teachers, memorize and repeat it. For instance, Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem The student records, memorizes and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means or realizing the true significance of capital in the affirmation the capital of Para is Belem, that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil. (p.257, para.2).This system also hinder the ability to be innovative and creative enough to build their own systems. The more students work at strong the 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. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.(p.258)The students are dominated by the teachers. Freire indicates that in the banking system the teachers are best known to (dichotomizeeverything).He further explains that they distinguish two stages in the action of the educator that is; he cognizes the cognizable objects while he prepares his lessons in his study and expounding to his students about that object.(p.263, para. 1). Thus the rise of preservation of culture and knowledge; the student is subjected to the oppressor.(p.263)

Contrary to banking education, problem-posing education does not dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student. The teacher is bound to reform their reflections.(p.263)

Although the dialectical relations between women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the form of action they adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, the teacher-student and the student-teachers reflect simultaneously on themselves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action and thus establish an authentic form of thought and action(p.265)

According to the banking education system, the students are not legible to have any sort of knowledge whatsoever but they are bound to memorize what is narrated to them according to the understanding of the teacher.

The Problem-posing education system, on the other hand, provides the student with the opportunity of relating to the environment, thinking critically and creatively with the ability to solve problems.

This system seeks to solve the contradiction posed the banking education system....the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.(pg.262, para.4)

The solution provides a platform for the growth and development of both the teacher and the student. The arguments based on authority are no longer valid; in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not against it.(p.262)

Problem-posing education primarily focuses on delivering constant unveiling of reality.(p.263)

The educator also constantly reviews and reforms his reflections and perceptions in the reflections of the students.(p.263)This system of education instills a sense of responsibility and independence to the student. They are capable of having their own views and have the platform to strongly air them. As Freire states; the students will feel challenged and obliged to respond to the challenges in the world and those relating to the world as posed to them.(p.263)

Paulo Freire, the pedagogy, attempts to explain the nature of education as the practice of freedom as opposed to education as the practice of domination. He clarifies that education as the practice of domination tends to deny the fact that man is abstract, isolated, independent and unattached to the world. It also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people.(p.263, para. 5)

He states that education is constantly remade in the praxis (p.265)

He declares that the relations of consciousness and the world are totally simultaneous.(p.263, para.5)The banking education denies a man and a woman their ability to use their minds psychologically to decipher what is around them. In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.(p.264-65)

Banking education concept tends to mythicize reality which consists of concealing certain facts such as how human beings began to exist in the world while problem-posing tries to demythologize.(p.265)Paulo Freire argues that the banking education resists dialogue between the teachers and students treating the students as objects of assistance while the problem-posing concept seeks to develop critical thinkers and treat them as so.(p.265)

As Freire attempts to differentiate the two systems he strongly rebukes the banking education concept stating that it inhibits creativity and domesticates the purpose of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming fully human. Problem-posing concept, on the other hand, concentrates on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality.(p.265)

He majorly emphasizes on the fact that human beings are unfinished and are continuously growing as taught in the problem-posing education. Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the becoming- as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality.(p.265) Paulo further explains that while the banking method directly or indirectly fortifies mens fatalistic perception of their situation, problem-posing method presents that as a challenge to be resolved(p.266)

Conclusion.

The problem-posing concept aims at developing both the student and teachers intellectually as subjects of the educational process by conquering authoritarianism in the banking method. His main goal is to enable people to subdue their false perceptions towards reality.

Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation.(p.266) This system, according to the pedagogy can transform the world. Freire's goal for this method is to enable us to understand the world better than we do.

ReferencesPaulo Freire The Banking Concept of Education.