A Closer Glimpse on the Key Terms
As previously observed, it is possible to draw parallels between the following essays and movies and play “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire and Dead Poets Society, “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez and Six Degrees of Separation, and “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger and The Matrix. All three works raise a number of important issues, manifestations of which may be found on the example of the characters of these films and plays. Thus, there are such key terms notions as critical thinking, education, class conflict, racial divide, and power of perspective, which can be seen by comparing the concepts, about which the authors of books write, with the deeds of heroes of the films and play.
In his essay, Freire argues that existed for many decades, the education system is transformed into an act of placing information on deposits, during which students are storage, depository, and teachers play the role of investors, depositors. Instead of communicating the teacher gives out a message, makes contributions (like the deposit in the bank), who patiently student receives, stores and plays back.
This is the "banking" or limiting concept of education, in which all that students are allowed is to take, spread out on the shelves and keep deposits. However, they have the opportunity to be collectors of things they store. But in the end this, to put it mildly, is an incorrect system, the man himself is excluded due to the fact that it no creativity, no opportunities for transformation, no real knowledge, because apart from the knowledge and in isolation from the practices of people can be truly human. Watching the reaction of students to the new eccentric teacher, you will notice that it is implicit manifestations of the old education system, which is firmly left its mark on the perception of education students, it prevents them from start to think freely.
Knowledge only comes as a result of more and more new discoveries, which people seek, exploring the world tirelessly, eagerly, inspired hope, is inseparable from the world and from others of their kind. Thanks to this technique, people can learn to read and write, to come to a new consciousness and begin to critically assess the social situation in which there are often even take the initiative in their hands and begin to transform society, previously denied them this opportunity.
In the film Dead Poets Society, teacher Keating uses this approach to teaching his students. His approach to education and the calls to begin to think critically and independently have a distinct similarity with the concept of education of Freire. "Banking" concept of education regards man as a controlled and capable of being adapted. The more the students are engaged in collecting deposits transferred to them, the less they develop a critical thinking that could arise if they interact with the world as the creators and transmitters.
According to Freire, those who are truly committed to liberation must completely reject the "banking" concept, and instead embrace the concept of humans as thinking beings and the consciousness-oriented world (McLaren, 51). It is obvious that teacher Keating uses problem-posing education in his practice.
It embodies a particular characteristic of consciousness - to understand, to realize - not only by dipping into an object but also by internal reflection. He understands that liberating education consists of acts of cognition, not of transfer of information. Therefore, during his classes, he tries to reach the resolution of the contradictions between teacher and student.
In the film, Keating ceases to be the one who teaches, and becomes one of those, who are learning in the process of dialogue with the students, and those, in turn, teach, learning at the same time. In fact, as the school authorities try to control teacher Keating and force him to conduct training in accordance with the standard educational approach, it is possible to see an implicit confirmation that the old system of education is deeply rooted in the educational institutions and the situation calls for drastic changes.
Autobiography of Richard Rodriguez, “Hunger of Memory”, describes the personal experience of spiritual and creative development against the background of the author’s operation in various cultural contexts and in collaboration with different traditions (Rivera, 5).
As a scholarship boy, Rodriguez, during his studying, worked on his academic success and denied his past. He notes that education created a gulf between him and his parents and racial identity.
Such a change can be observed in the field that in the pursuit of scholarship and a new position becomes not who he is real. Behavior and life story of the character of the play Six Degrees of Separation, the black-colored student Paul, is an implicit parallel argument Richard Rodriguez in his chapter, "The Achievement of Desire."
The protagonist of the play, being a person of another culture and race, wants to achieve success and recognition through artificial connection to the main culture. The attempt to assimilate the rich culture of the white man is his loss of his true nature, identity and desire.
Thus, Rodriguez arguments are traced to how the working class black man, wanting to pour in a foreign culture, which promises him a better life, losing his identity and culture, replacing it with another one for the sake of gain. Paul mimics of who is not, for the sake of assimilation of the culture of white people, he denies bicultural life as Rodriguez writes in his autobiography (Rivera, 5).
Model of complete assimilation, coupled with the complete failure of the native culture, offered Rodriguez, self-contradictory, because it makes him pass through the pain and irresistible nostalgia, but it is still stubbornly approved by the author as the only possible action, the alternative of which he sees only the complete alienation - unwanted and ungrateful way.
Finally, analyzing the work of Berger and the film The Matrix, one can see some implicit parallels. For example, well-known works of art and typical advertising image Berger shows that along with direct messages almost every picture, every visual object of mass culture carries an ideological charge. In the essay, it states that the role of art greatly transformed in the era of reproduction.
Berger believes that the art lost its former influence and power: a man, looking at the original picture, takes only a way previously seen numerous reproductions. With the help of art, people can more accurately describe their experience in areas that are not adequately described in words.
Here it is talked not only about personal experiences, but also about the most important historical experience of human relationships with the past, that is, about the experience of the search for meaning in life and trying to understand the history and the world, in which a man lives. So, through the art of people perceive reality.
However, with the help of art, television and advertising people also depart from reality, replace it with dreams. Berger believes that the images that people see in advertising imposed on them and that they have a direct impact on human decisions about how their reality should look like.
The protagonist of the film The Matrix, Neo, is aware that replacement will lead to the collapse of reality, that it is very important not to perceive reality through abstract things that people see around. Neo says he does not believe in destiny, and that he wants to control his life himself, not to succumb to the influence of the artificial world.
The reality of the Matrix is a passive reality for him, and something that happens with him forcibly. However, many people do not notice this, because they are used to perceive what is shown around and such as that should be.
Berger's idea that art has elements of religion, history, and philosophy can be seen in the movie The Matrix (Wartenberg, 19). In his book, Berger also says that there are people who like to be deceived, to live in an illusion - it saves them from the real perception of the world (often harsh, merciless), but because it makes a person more vulnerable. As the author writes, knowingly nature first opens man’s eyes, and then allows gradually to understand sounds and to speak. However, it is not enough just to look at something, a man should be able to see, as Neo in The Matrix.
Works Cited
McLaren, Peter. A Pedagogy of Possibility: Reflecting upon Paulo Freire's Politics of Education: In Memory of Paulo Freire. Educational Researcher, Vol. 28, No. 2. JSTOR.1999. Web.
Rivera, Tomas. Richard Rodriguez' Hunger of Memory as Humanistic Antithesis. MELUS, Vol. 11, No. 4, Literature of the Southwest, pp. 5-13. JSTOR. 1984. Web.
Wartenberg, Thomas E. Beyond Mere Illustration: How Films Can Be Philosophy. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 64, No. 1, Special Issue: Thinking through Cinema: Film as Philosophy, pp. 19-32. JSTOR. 2006. Web.
