In "The Banking Concept of Education," Paulo Freire argues that education, as it is portrayed now, treats students as empty vessels into which teachers simply pour information. This is seen as fundamentally flawed, as the students are mistakenly assumed to be incredibly passive, and does not take into account any semblance of critical thinking. The result is an oppressive school system that leaves little input from the student; they are less critical thinkers themselves and merely repositories, vessels for the teacher's specific brand of information: “Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into ‘containers,’ into ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher” (Freire 71-72). Freire, looking at my education, would find many parallels between the banking concept of education and my own experiences; the process of education started to change and 'bank' me, as I started to change myself as a result of the lessons I was learning from y teachers.
This equalization happens through the intervention of the teacher, according to Freire; the teacher performs a type of 'oppression' by suppressing one's own set of knowledge for another, claiming it to be more important, or pertinent to the real world. However, Freire wishes to rebel against this notion of oppression: "you need to develop a power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves" (Freire 706). The act of education itself has an indelible effect on the students; entrusting their personalities and knowledge to the teacher, the existing school system treats them as mere repositories of information just waiting to be filled. The implicit trust students place on these teachers does even more damage to their existing identities: "The more completely [students] accept the passive role imposed on them, the more than tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them" (Freire 707). Instead of aiming their critical lens at reality, a teacher informs them of what reality is, overriding their own experiences and desires for the sake of expediency and convenience on the part of the teacher. The relating of information is no longer tied to any social or interpersonal experience.
The loss of identity that Freire would argue comes at the hands of an oppressive education is very clear; schooling has a two-stage process wherein the student is first taken out of the context of the family and then brought into the classroom. This has a fundamental effect on one's personality and behaviors, as the act of education often leads to chances in who you were before you went to school. Freire would argue this is one major effect of 'banking,' as the teachers are depositing their information and agendas on the student, thus replacing their own fears and hopes with those of the teacher. “The teacher’s task is to organize a process which already occurs spontaneously, to ‘fill ‘ the students by making deposits of information which he or she considers to constitute true knowledge” (Freire 76). My overall education experience somewhat left me with a colder relationship with my family; by the time I had fully invested in the traditional education system, I could barely speak to my family. The education I received made me a different person who simply could not communicate on an equitable level with my parents or previous peers anymore.
Looking at my education experience, Freire would say that I should not have had to become a different person in order to enjoy a quality education; I should have been given greater opportunities to think critically and absorb this new information without being molded so much from the outside. Freire would say that the opportunities for me to mold myself were taken away from me; the distance that I experienced with his family could have been avoided while still having greater knowledge of the world around him. After all, I had the power within me to reject my teacher’s ‘banking’ of information within me through simply not assimilating that knowledge: “The teachers thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking” (Freire 77).
In conclusion, Freire's assessment of 'the banking concept of education' would lead him to pity my education experience. I, like Freire, am aware of the fundamental changes that the act of traditional education and 'banking' has on the student; however, Freire believes that the system should be reformed to avoid banking however possible. Freire would see the separation of myself and my parents as tragic; instead, with a proper education system, the student would not have become so fully entrenched in rote education that I would no longer be able to figuratively speak the same language as my family. Freire, in his perfect world, would see to it that I kept my education and his family at the same time.
Works Cited
Freire, Paolo. "The Banking Concept of Education." in Ways of Reading (9th ed.). Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011, p. 81.
Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Hughes, Michael. Sociology: The Core. McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.
Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. Chapter One. 1959.
