Example Of A Article Response Article Review

Briefly answer the questions below1. Define the 'banking concept of education' in your own words.
The banking style of education is defined as an educational system wherein the student is viewed as a sort of bank, where educating is an “act of depositing” (1), the teacher a depositor, and the student receptacle, “receiving, filing, storing the deposits” (1). In this way, the student is supposed to passively receive and absorb the knowledge that the teacher determines suitable and necessary.
2. Describe the student-teacher relationship found in the banking style of education.
The teacher is seen as the all-knowledgeable actor, whereas student is the receiver, passively waiting for the transmission of knowledge from the teacher. The students’ creativity is suppressed because they don’t transform their knowledge into usable information. The students only collect and catalogue it and so are not truly human without true knowledge. The teacher is expected to provide a gift of knowledge but they consider students to be ignorant.
The teacher’s role is to organize and systematize the information that the students receive and the students’ relation to that information, whereas the students do not expect to manipulate or control their knowledge.
3. What are the effects on students of the banking style of education?
Under the banking style of education, the students are oppressed and are slave-like, under the terminology adapted by Hegel. They no longer human, lacking true knowledge, which is knowing how to understand, manipulate and measure creatively their knowledge. The students suffer and can never become active in the society.
4. State in your own words some of the attitudes and practices of the banking style of education which mirror oppressive society as a whole.
The article uses the term “absolute” in reference to the students’ supposed ignorance on the part of the teacher. Absolute often alludes to an absolute monarchy, like 17-th century France under Louis XIV. In this way, the banking style of education intends to remove all competition, all other forms of education that inspire creativity, that lead man out of ignorance or out of the Hegel’s slave condition.
The student is maintained as a passive being. In Freire’s list, the students often are the subjects of passive verbs: to be taught, to be thought about, to be disciplined, to be objects. The active verbs that are permitted to the students demonstrate their subordination to the teacher: know nothing, listen-meekly, comply, adapt. Freire emphasizes the freedom of choice that the teachers have in imposing knowledge and subjects on the students who must passively accept. The typical classroom paradigm insists that students are present to learn and that the teachers are knowledgeable on every subject, particularly in those subjects which s/he chooses to prescribe. The student is truly at the mercy of the teachers’ whims.
5. How is the banking style of education a form of oppression?
6. What does Freire offer as a remedy to the banking style?
Freire discusses the libertarian education as an alternative, or remedy to the banking style of education. According to him, the libertarian form of education attempts to reconcile the roles of teacher and student, recognizing that both the teacher and the student learn and teach. This system of education would transform the structure instead of attempting to force the “marginal” individuals into the system. Libertarian education must refuse completely the ideology of the banking style of education, and must humanize without attempting to make another deposit of humanization. This style of education encourages a constant discovery of the reality that exists and changes with every moment. Just like the reality, the consciousness of the reality changes, and the conception of education, especially with the problem-posing education, must adapt and remain flexible.
A partnership must exist between the students and the teacher, the teacher must trust the humanity of the students, and the creative power that accompanies humanity. He proposes a different type of learning situation, what he terms “a problem-posing education” in which the student is active in the process of cognition, whereas in the banking style, the teacher has an authority over the cognitive processes (5).
This doesn’t exist yet, but it is based on the nature of man to be creative, and so must exist in the future.
7. What experiences have you had with the banking style of education? How might these have affected you?
A big part of my educational experience has been, I realize now, of the banking style of education. Students are not expects to produce as much creatively, and can sit in the back of the classroom and absorb. Several teachers were criticized by the students for being too difficult because they did not teach the material in the traditional way. Students were expected to discover difficulties and solutions on their own. Looking back, those classes were some of the better classes of that school, because I had to adapt creatively and I had to learn for myself. Some additional help from the teachers would have aided the process, but for the classes, it was suitable. It developed in me the ability to solve problems on my own, without relying entirely on a teacher-type individual. I was more conscious of the type of work required and that it would be possible to resolve any issue on my own. In the banking style of education, we were asked to sit down, stay quiet and take notes, because whatever the teacher said would be on an exam. We did not learn because it was important, but because we did not want to fail the final exam. Everything became fair game. These classes restricted creativity and I quickly learned that the teacher was king/queen and that they were omniscient. It created doubts about my own abilities and productivity.