“The Banking Concept of Education”

                        “The Banking Concept of Education”

          In Paulo Freire’s essay “ The Banking concept of education “, he discusses the teacher-student relationship. Specifically, he argues that in the banking concept, the subject of education is the teacher who leads the learner on rote memorization of content. Learners are thus a kind of "container" in which "deposits" knowledge.  The teacher does not communicate , he only deposits information and the rest of the students just sit there in silence . 

          Knowledge, then, is a gift. Those who have the knowledge they give to those who are considered ignorant. Ignorance is absolutized as a result of the ideology of oppression, so is the other who is always the holder of ignorance. Thus, banking education is an instrument of oppression that seeks to transform the mentality of the students and not the situation in which they find themselves.

          According to Paulo Freire’s essay “ Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat”. This means that there is no dialogue and they only treats students as objects of assistance.

           Freire notes, however, that even a banking education can bring about reaction of the oppressed, because, although hidden, accumulated knowledge in "deposits" highlights the contradictions. However, a revolutionary humanist educator should not rely on this possibility but identify with the students and aim to release both.  But both the educator and learners, as well as the leaders and the masses, are involved in a task in which both should be subjects. And it is not only to discover and critically understand but also to recreate the knowledge.

          Unlike animals, humans possess the ability to think critically, which means that we have the power to create our own world and the capacity to make critical decisions. Now days we can see that many people suffer from the “ I know everything” symptom, which is in charge of blocking every kind of new information and then taking it to the trash “literally”. As humans is our work to build a strong communication with each other because everything that we are now is thanks to the communication and the global network that we have been building since the creation of the human race.

           In my opinion, there’s a really distant relation-ship between the teacher and the student, where the teacher is like some kind of  “ super man” and knows everything and we just sit there like robots and listen to their lectures without showing any kind of interest.

           In other words, the problem with this method of education, is that instead of learning new skills, we’re starting to look like “memory cards “ by just keeping information without even knowing how to use it.

           Clearly “ the banking education” is not the best learning system, instead students should integrate the Problem-posing system which according to Frere’s essay is about a more open communication between the teacher and the students, where the student is able to question and even challenge the teacher’s perspective.

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