The Banking Concept Of Education By Paulo Freire

“Despite tremendous advancements in technology, human rights, and social awareness, the system engineered in the 1760’s by King Frederick the Great still succeeds in dampening the creative spirit of its students, fostering mediocrity, and ensuring a subservient population. Deeply ingrained into our collective psyche, the legacy of the centrally controlled, highly scripted classroom continues. Trapped in an educational model explicitly engineered to breed submission and apathy, it is not surprising that student results remain dismal.” (Meshchaninov, 8)

What do students obtain through education? Freire in his essay ‘The Banking Concept of Education’ argues that students gain useless and meaningless knowledge through education, and I agree with Freire because education has become an act of depositing meaningless information into students. Freire believes the current educational system is flawed due to the “Banking Concept”, which Freire describes as, “an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor”(Freire 72). Freire implies that teachers are only telling students what to know rather than conversting with them, which explains why Freire insists that “education is suffering from narration

In Paulo Freire's essay "The Banking Concept of Education," he discusses the idea of the human mind and thinking. Specifically, he argues that education uses a system which limits the children from using their ability to think. This system is displayed in his idea of “The Banking Concept of Education. Freire’s main argument is that the way schools teach today is purely based on the idea of feeding information to the youth instead of allowing them to interpret it themselves.

In Paulo Freire’s article, “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” he discusses how there is an absence of imagination and critical thinking in the “banking” method of education. Paulo Freire contends that the “banking” method of instruction is not a viable strategy to educate students. In the film, Dead Poets Society, directed by Peter Weir, Mr. Keating, an English professor in the film, liberates the student 's mind by making them confront the issues exhibited to them. The "problem-posing" strategy was utilized as a part of the film, yet since the students’ were used to the "banking" method, they did not know how to face the issue, rather they found another approach to dispose of it. “Problem-posing” method demonstrates that the "banking" method is by no means the only type of instruction out there. Weir’s film and Freire’s article demonstrate how well a teacher-student relationship can be when using the “problem-posing” method and the“banking” method, in other to understand Freire’s explicit and implicit message.

Albert Einstein once said, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” This quote describes the responsibilities and standards of teaching children. I believe that teachers should be held to high standards for being the foundation of a student’s education and well-being. For my future students, my responsibilities as a future educator include supplementing the growth of a variety of students’ knowledge and creativity, abiding as a role model for students and colleagues, and understanding the issues in the foundations of education.

In “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Revised Edition, Paulo Freire discusses two different types of education: “banking” and problem-posing. The banking concept of education is when teachers “make deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (318), and ‘problem posing’ is when the teachers and students are equal. Instead of being treated as human beings that have their own thoughts and ideas, students are treated as containers that are simply filled by a powerful being, a teacher. In school, teachers are dominants that provide knowledge to the students, the subordinates; the knowledge that students learn are limited to what they’re taught by teachers. Similarly, in Kurt Wimmer’s ‘Equilibrium’, Librians are treated as reservoirs for knowledge.

In an oppressive society, a group of individuals are expected to adapt and be controlled by a more powerful group without question. Similar to a “banking concept” of education, at times it seems the student is not expected to think for themselves. They listen to what the teacher “deposits” into their mind, and they adapt. I strongly agree that this limits comprehension and creativity and forces you to adapt to thinking like a robot. He makes a strong case with his analogy, “Four times four is sixteen……The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means.” It’s easy to get discouraged in school when it feels like information is being thrown at you without much encouragement to fully grasp it. It’s nearly impossible to truly understand a concept when you’re forced to memorize it immediately for a test. In conclusion, teachers with this mindset should understand that to be a true educator is to encourage the student to take the time to comprehend the material

Philosopher and educator Paulo Freire once said, “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.” In Freire’s work of “the Banking Concept of Concept”, he describes how the education system is failing to help student find success in the real world as well as it provides a framework for the “teachers” to oppress the “students” through the distribution of power.

“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” ― Paulo Freire

Freire talks about the “banking concept of education”, explaining that students in this system are receptacles that are to be filled with the “content of the teachers narration”.(Freire, 1) These receptacles are expected to regurgitate information given in class, on tests, quizzes, and anything that requires an answer that is “word for word” what the teacher says. In a banking classroom, the teacher is the authority and the students are oppressed. Freire writes, “The more students work at storing 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.” (Freire, 2).

In “The Banking Concept of Education”, written by Paulo Freire, the author analyzes the modern day education system by comparing students to “containers” or waste receptacles that are meant to be “filled” by the teacher, or the depositor. The idea that teachers are meant to teach and students are only to listen is the main problem is today’s society. The concept is that a teacher is deemed more reputable “the more she fills the receptacles” while students are better the more they “permit themselves to be filled” (Freire 1). In turn, the “banking” concept of education is born suggesting that education becomes only an act of depositing instead of communication between both students and teachers. When students are denied their creative freedom,

One of the passages that is impressive in its ability to appeal to the reader uses a few unique techniques. Some are the introduction of new concepts where “the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-students with students-teacher” (218). Here the author uses new words that he invented himself to

Secondly, students are not able to think critically for themselves. Banking system of education greatly reduces the critical thinking power of students and their creativity is also greatly affected. Freire writes, “The capability of banking education to minimize the student’s creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed not to see it transformed” (Freire 261). The writer from this quote has rightly pointed out one of the major ill effects of banking education, that it reduces the student’s creative power and they are forced to believe that whatever the teacher is saying is true. Rodriguez did not have his own point of view. He also admits that “In these various ways, books brought me academic success as I hoped that they would. But I was not a good reader. Merely bookish, I lacked a point of view when I read. Rather I read in order to acquire a point of view” (Rodriguez 202). Though the writer read books about well known authors he lacked

Factory workers are being produced today, although the age of factories has long passed. Students are dehumanized from their first graded assignment, their first report card, the first time they step into school until they graduate. At that point, they are completely stripped of critical thinking and creativity and see learning only as memorization for a test. There seems to be no meaning beyond the face value of what teachers say and possibly less. All that is needed is to memorize word for word what the teacher says. They don’t perceive “what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of “capital” in the affirmation “the capital of Pará is Belem,” that is, what Belem means for Pará and what Pará means for Brazil” (240). Freire introduces the banking system as the cause of dehumanization, but it is not the system in general that causes it. It is the use of grading. They are used to measure the value and intelligence of students, so this is all students focus on. They only do what they need to receive the highest marks. However, this means the students don’t have time to truly understand their material or realize that they don’t have to spend that much time with the material. After all, the purpose of the banking system is to just fill students with information.

The math teacher was babbling on about how this specific formula worked and halfway through her example I noticed that she had made a mistake. I hesitated a hundred times before raising my hand. It felt almost wrong because usually no one spoke up unless they had to go to the bathroom or get a drink which we all know that was just an excuse so we didn’t have to hear the teacher talk about something we weren’t interested in at that moment. According to Freire, we were taught within the banking system of education to accept our ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence (319). In other words, students were “trained” in a way to keep