Freire revised summary
- 1. Harlee Tanner Freire Summary In Chapter 2, “The Banking Concept of Education”, of Paulo Freire’sPedagogy of the Oppressed, he explains his view of the educational system, and the faults within it. Freire describes the educational system as being “banking” education, which he explains to be the wrong method, and proposes a new method of “problem-posing” education which he believes to be more effective and just. Banking education is described as a negative way to educate. Banking education is based on the concept that the teachers are narrators and the students are containers or receptacles that are just there to be “filled” with the information being told to them by the teachers. As said by Freire “…which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.”(1 Freire).From this idea Freire believes that students really aren’t learning and gaining true knowledge, but are simply just memorizing whatever their teacher is telling them. This also goes into the idea that the students aren’t fully living because they aren’t expressing ideas or exercising their own thoughts and opinions on the material being discussed by their teachers. From this the conclusion can be made that students aren’t gaining knowledge at all because they aren’t learning how to bring the knowledge into their lives, and into a form for which they can truly understand it. Due to the unfit way of banking education, Freire discusses an alternative form of educating, problem-posing. Problem-posing education is the opposite of banking education in the sense that it is based around the student, and really educating the student.In problem-posing education, it isn’t as black and white as the teacher teaching the student and the student listening,
- 2. as in banking, but it allows the teacher and the student to be taught by each other. This is explained by “The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re- considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own.” (7 Freire). By this Freire is explaining that when the teacher discusses material, the student is able to ask and propose questions off of the conclusions they have made from the material, in the same way that the teacher can learn from the student’s observations. With problem-posing education the learning process is for both the teacher and the student, and this allows the student to gain adequate knowledge because by being active in the learning process, they truly understand it. The concept of intentionality relates to problem-posing education. Intentionality is the idea that thought can’t exist without a purpose, and that thinking is always thinking of something. This idea relates to problem-posing because with that type of education students are learning in a way that relates to life and how to draw conclusions from it, which is practicing the idea of intentionality because they are really thinking. This further distinguishes banking education from problem-posing because banking is based around memorization, not thinking. Intentionality is also connected to liberation of all kinds. If you aren’t able to generate your own thoughts, then the only form of thinking you are practicing is memorization of others thoughts, which isn’t liberation. If you don’t have your own thoughts then in a sense you are under whosever thoughts you have memorized, and are not your own person.