...The “Banking” Concept of Education In Paulo Freire’s essay “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education, Freire allows us to have a look inside his thoughts on his current education system. Even though this essay wasn’t written for our time period, it still is very applicable to our education system today. Every student can probably say they have had one teacher that treats them like an object, and makes it their mission to stuff as much information into them in one hour as they can. This system is known to be the Banking System. Freire’s definition of the banking system is, “In which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits [made by teachers]” (p. 318). This is a system where the information isn’t put into use by the students and they cannot learn to their best ability because of the lack of creativity and communication in the learning process. Freire would say that the student’s agency (ability to act) would be rather low in this system. The students are somewhat useless after this system is used on them because they won’t retain and apply the information to their lives in the future. In this system, the teacher thinks of themselves of having complete dominance over the students in power and knowledge; this leaves the students dehumanized and less willing to engage in learning or asking questions to help them understand the information. The teachers are also looked at as oppressors to the students, looking...
Words: 1134 - Pages: 5
...few simple words. A plethora of descriptive definitions are still incapable of summing up such a Renaissance man. Max is such an extraordinary student that he can be compared to Paulo Freire’s idea of a student, as explained in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In it, Freire disparages the modern education system, “the banking concept of education,” by noting its destructive abilities of creating complacent students who regard themselves as inferior by those above their educators. This method is based on the idea that the teacher simply force-feeds knowledge to students, only to have it regurgitated back at them (Freire 72). Freire is concerned because students are educationally restricted by this method,...
Words: 1320 - Pages: 6
...the key ingredient of a good education? Education itself is undoubtedly an important component of success. So important that frequently students graduate college with debt the size of mortgages. But is it a quality education; and what dictates a quality education? Paulo Freire, a Brazilian ideologist believes he knows. He asserts that a solid education can easily be acquired if students and teachers have a strong relationship. One in which questions and conversation can flow freely. In our educational system today however, this is not always the case. There is a method of teaching occurring in almost every school in the nation where the teachers play the role of the ‘all-knowing.’ This teacher prefers to force-feed information to students whose only job is to take detailed notes on everything the teacher is saying. No questions or differing opinions are allowed. Freire, coined this student-teacher phenomena ‘Banking Education.’ He thoroughly investigated this in a published essay he called “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education”. His essay attempts to bring to light the flaws in our traditional education system and offer a potential solution. He writes, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action...
Words: 1243 - Pages: 5
...Understanding “The Banking Concept of Education” People learn by different methods of teaching: visual, auditory or tactile. A visual learner favors reading or pictures, an auditory prefers listening and a tactile person learns by a hands on approach. (The Learning Styles) In Freire’s excerpt “The Banking Concept of Education”, he describes how the relationship between students and teachers suffer from narration sickness (Freire). Freire explains in today’s modern education the teacher has become the depositors of information and the students are the bank receiving the information. This essay will explain the meaning of Freire’s excerpt and provide an understanding of his two concepts of education, banking and problem posing. Although auditory is a method of learning, Freire argued how education today is more focused on memorization rather than a two-way street of communication. In order for a car to run, it needs a tank full of gasoline; this same theory can apply to Freire’s theory of “The Banking Concept of Education”. He describes how students have been turned into “containers” to be “filled” by the teacher (Freire). This was evident while attending the Non-Commissioned Officer’s Academy in February 2008. During the 5 week Professional Military Education course, the instructors stood at the front of the classroom the students were exposed to what we termed, “death by PowerPoint”. Each day was filled with instructor narration of material that culminated...
Words: 948 - Pages: 4
...Our Time and Our Secret greatly emphasize that how someone is raised and the events that happen in his or her life can shape who they are and what decisions they make. For example, Himmler’s strict and oppressive childhood led him to become a heartless Nazi leader in the massacre of Jews and Robby’s grief over the death of his closest friend led him to become a thief and a murderer who will spend the rest of his life paying for his crimes .The “Banking” Concept of Education, although not a narrative like the other two passages, does explain that education plays a large role in students’ life experiences. Freire believes that the “problem-posing” method of education will be more effective in helping students tackle real-life situations to make...
Words: 407 - Pages: 2
...Education is one of many things life has to offer,it's also a major stepping stone success. We need education so we don't end up on the streets or working in a fast food restaurant for the rest of our lives. But what people don't understand is that education should be so much more than knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, knowing how to read and write, knowing the compounds of the elements on the periodic table. Education should be that and so much more, in school you need to learn how to be a good citizen, how to act in certain settings, all the different ways to express yourself peacefully, how to stand up for what you believe in. Education should be so much more than academics, education should also be about learning how to excel in life, but educators who use the banking method of education limit that. In freire’s The “Banking” Concept of Education he expounds on the flaw of the current education system and offers an approach that he believes can help the disorder of learning and teaching in classrooms. The flaw of the system that Freire explains is the oppressive “depositing” of information (which is where the word “banking” comes into play) from the teachers to the students. According to him the problem-posing method is a “liberating” educational practice. The “banking concept” is essentially an act that hampers the intellectual progress of the students by turning them into “receptors” and “collectors” of information that pretty much has no connection to...
Words: 1315 - Pages: 6
...Gen Wang Verdie Culbreath College Writing June 29, 2013 Freirean Interpretation of My Partner’s Story In the essay “The “Banking” Concept of Education”, Paulo Freire reviews the dominant and popular concept of education, the “banking” model of education. In this approach to education, students are only able to listen to the teacher and memorize what teacher says, including facts, formulas, disciplines, etc. They do what the teacher requires, without question. In this relationship, students and teachers are not equal. The teacher is the person who dominates the entire class and has absolute authority. The students are the audience – they cannot have their own opinions but recenive their teachers’ “narration.” It is not difficult to imagine the scene: students like bank accounts and teachers “deposit” knowledge in these accounts, whether the students are willing or not. This is how Freire describes the “banking” model of education. In the following paragraph, I’m going to further discuss “banking” education according to my partner Yang’s experience. In today’s China, the “banking” model of education is a phenomenon. One can observe it almost in every school, no matter what kind of school. They all operate in the same mode: teachers elaborate how to solve typical problems to their students and leave them a lot of homework, then check their homework and help them to correct their errors. Everything is proposed by the teacher, and students are discouraged from thinking critically...
Words: 1391 - Pages: 6
...Paulo Freire: ‘Banking’ Concept Of Education Paulo Freire is saying that the teacher-student relationship is poor because of the fact that the teacher is just narrating about the subject of which the students are just listening and are not really involved. Freire is knowledgeable on the subject that the teacher is narrating, but the students are having troubles understanding the narration because of the words that the teacher speak of being foreign to them. If the teacher would go more into detail about the subject and not just lecture about a portion of the subject but get the students involved, they would not feel so alienated on the subject. Students can’t learn much just by memorization and repeating what they see or hear such as, “four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem.” “The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of “capital” in the affirmation “the capital of Para is Belem, “that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil.” In which I totally agree on because all through school I was a student that would just copy or say the subject without really learning what I was copying or saying. Students are similar to empty receptacles, and teachers knowledge is what goes into the receptacles the more the teacher teaches the students the more the empty receptacles ( the students ) will fill with the knowledge of the subject of which...
Words: 345 - Pages: 2
...Reading this chapter by Paulo Freire, and discussing the “Banking Concept of Education,” brought up many thoughts on what really is the meaning behind the concept. From reading this packet, Freire is criticizing the way education is given out to students. You may say, the students are vessels, and the teacher is supposed to fill them with knowledge. The part that was strong on this meaning was on page 73, the list from chapter two. “The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.” “The teacher teaches and the student are taught.” These two readings are straightforward but, hold a deeper meaning. Normal education is pictured as, the student comes to class and the teacher is obliged to teach them. By this I mean the teacher...
Words: 370 - Pages: 2
...English 106 27 January 2013 Understanding Paulo Freire’s “The Banking Concept of Education” In Paulo Freire's essay, "The Banking Concept of Education" he explains his view of the education system, and the faults within it. Freire describes how the teacher-student relationship is an important concept when overcoming oppression. Freire believes teachers and students need to constantly work together beginning to develop the knowledge and consciousness that is necessary to overcoming oppression. There are various methods which can be used to overcome these obstacles associated with the teaching of education. They are the banking method and the problem-posing education method. Freire explains the majority of the education system as being a "banking" education, he explains to be the wrong method. The "banking" education concept is described as a negative way to educate; “teachers present a subject to their students they also present a point of view in that subject.” (Freire p ) Teachers assume students are passive, take all control, enforce their opinions; determine what will be learned, and "force-feed" information to students. The world is seen as static. Students are encouraged to "fit in to" the world as it is. Banking encourages students to accept the world as it is, separates the learner and the learner's consciousness from the world, and so contributes to oppression. Freire refers to the “Banking Concept” as a metaphor that teachers see students as a bank “depositing”...
Words: 401 - Pages: 2
...Paulo Freire writes “The “Banking” Concept of Education” to inform readers about the education system and to persuade readers with his opinions and statements that the “banking” concept of education should not be adopted in the education of students rather it should be the “problem-posing” method. In his writing he explains the education system as “A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)… Education is suffering from narration sickness.” Freire believes that education is suffering from a relationship of a teacher that speaks and a student that just listens to what the teacher will narrate. For example, “the outstanding characteristic of this narrative education… is the sonority...
Words: 678 - Pages: 3
...Response to “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” In response to Freire’s essay, I will be stating what I think is the best concept for education and why I agree or disagree with Freire. What if education today was fully based upon the banking concept? Would education be the same with or without the banking concept, even with the higher level of education? Age groups, the level of education a student is in, and the way that he or she learns intertwines with both problem-posing and the banking concept. I personally think that the banking concept and the problem-posing concept have negative and positive results. My thoughts on the banking concept contradict one another, because it has elements that do not relate to certain age groups but it also has great points about education. I think that age plays a huge role in education because the older a student becomes the higher education and higher knowledge is gained. Students are not always ignorant when it comes to learning new material in education. Freire states, “The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;” (pg. 217). This quote is true yet untrue; a student in kindergarten cannot give information about World War II, while a student in high school could participate in the class and inform the teacher and his or her peers. I agree with the parts of problem-posing concept, because elements that are included allow the students to interact with the teacher. Freire says, “In problem-posing education, people develop...
Words: 587 - Pages: 3
...problems to education based of a concept narrative of the teacher. This concept of narration is a problem because is based on filling the student without the option to explore what learned. In this type of education Freire says that can more the sonority that the transformations of the words. That means that the education tends to be mechanical where the creativity is invisible and not seen like a valid option. In the lecture Paulo Freire inserts the banking concept of education, where the student is like an account of the bank, the teacher is the costumer and the education is deposited and filed. The banking concept of education lacks of wisdom, since the stiffness of this education don’t allowed the imagination to build beyond the learned. The students don’t recognize that they also can educate the teacher and this is because are immersed in the ignorance where this system of education maintained. According with Freire the individualistic concept of teacher and student has to be overcome to be a unifying concept in which the teacher and the student learn from each other. The banking concept has a distorted vision of generosity, distortion that the students don’t see; its mission is to forge an adaptation that leads to domination. The banking concept had the domestication concept where the student is submissive because there is no interaction of ideas between the teacher and the student. The domestication doesn’t coincide with the liberal education. The liberal education promotes...
Words: 486 - Pages: 2
...February 2014 The Strength of a Problem-Posing Approach to Education The dialogue over the most effective means of facilitating education has been a hotly debated topic over the last few centuries. There are many different models used throughout history and numerous strategies utilized today to teach people from kindergarten all the way up to the post-secondary education level. One of the many great educators of the 20th century was Brazilian philosopher, Paulo Freire. His excerpt “The Banking Concept of Education,” published in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1970 established him as an important and controversial theorist. He wanted to create an education theory that would benefit the needs of the poor and the politically oppressed. His model rejects the aspect of treating education as a banking system, introduces the problem-posing approach for education, emphasizes the collaboration of the students and teachers in the classroom environment, and explains how knowledge emerges through training and constant patience. Mary E. Boyce wrote a pedagogy on critical teaching that directly supports Freire’s model of the problem-posing approach. Paulo Freire’s model of education directly opposes and rejects the traditional “banking system” model of education. Freire describes this model as “’banking,’ in which teachers deposit knowledge into students’ minds, which are empty until these deposits are made” (62). The banking system can be seen as the professor lecturing for an entire...
Words: 1418 - Pages: 6
...What Freire Has to Say about Education and My Reflection on What He Says In debates of the author Paulo Freire, one controversial issue has been that the critique of the traditional education system should not be authenticated into being viewed as fundamental academic success. On one hand, Freire argues that the “banking concept” reinforces a lack of critical thinking and knowledge ownership of students which reinforces oppression. On the other hand, many teachers use this type of educational process to lead students to scholastic triumph. Numerous educators maintain this sort of concept, mainly because this is how they have achieved academic success. My own view is that the “banking concept” of education is detrimental to the reasoning of the pupil in study. This concept disallows the student to think freely, in turn adapting to the world instead of being a change in the world....
Words: 588 - Pages: 3
