The very nomenclature of Freire’s concept of this pedagogy manifests the idea itself. In a streak of intellectual suppression, the instructor plays of the role of the knowledgeable counterpart who bestows his or her static knowledge on the students who are simple containers of the motionless content about which there can be no question raised. Students are simply like accounts to be filled with whatever is deposited in them as mere vessels. Even if the deposited content is irrelevant to their reality, they are supposed to simply carry and represent the exact static narrative. Students will simply record, memorize and reproduce the precise content taught. This very pattern or concept of depositing, preserving, and representing has been termed The Banking System of education. And this is the point where the oppressive nature of this pedagogy is manifested clearly.
The transformative nature or communicative function of content is completely ignored here. Content is simply to be received and catalogued; there is no place for query, creativity or change. Hence human intellectuality is oppressed by turning learning into simply an act of transmitting and not of transforming. Knowledge is simply deposited and reproduced with not even the least possible change. Invention is the key to human transformation for the better which is completely absent in this system. Education is completely denied its existence as a process of enquiry while its nature should be an interactive one in the pattern of discovering new knowledge.
In this banking system of education, Education itself is a static and fixated body of knowledge which has nothing to do with the reality of the learners mostly. In this system, the teachers are considered the knowledgeable source that is attributed with the role of bestowing knowledge to students. Students are considered individuals who know nothing at all and should be grateful custodians of the knowledge projected on them. Their job is to simply receive without understanding, store with complete and exact authenticity, catalogue subjectively and reproduce precisely in an expected pattern. However, it sound deceptively simple if its sociolinguistic magnitude is considered.
In a blend with the patriarchal social mechanism and pattern at the root, this pedagogy has its purpose embedded in a much deep rooted plain. In implication, this pedagogy intends to identify the learners with the world in a controlled pattern by determining, directing and in turn restricting how learners absorb the world around. It intends the learners to internalize the life aspects that are being delivered about the world around, but does not intend them to alter the situation through invention or diversity or creative practice. This, at a much deeper level of social implication, serves the interest of maintaining the locus of control in the hands of the oppressor; providing them the dominant impact and position on the long term. That is exactly where the basic pedagogical purpose is failed completely. As learning is a natural mutual transaction where two parties must reconcile their alternating roles between that of a receiver and a giver of knowledge, this one sided and restrictive system of so called pedagogy remains static in terms of impact; denying the transformative, transactional, communicative and innovative nature of learning its natural course as a system.
Indeed, pedagogy is not a system of depositing set content as knowledge with no opportunity of further transformation or multiplication of it; nor is it a one sided directive dominance which can ever lead to true learning about this world and lead it to changes for the better. Turning human into vessels of precise content or ideas and consideration of individuals incapable of further contribution or understanding of the world, hardly have anything to do with contributing to the worldview and knowledge that runs life. It is through invention and re- invention of the same reality or context that leads to advancement, enhancement, transmission, transformation, and transcendence of the knowledge of the world. No pedagogy can lead anywhere when it is as restrictive as filling up only fixed knowledge with absolute conformity and lack of inquisitive interest.
References
Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Retrieved from
https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/freire_pedagogy_oppresed1.pdf.
