Prompt for 11/4

Question: How does Freire help you rethink your definition of education?

Freire’s banking concept is really weird to me because I can’t say I’ve ever really felt victimized by the education system, I guess because it has served me so well. A section of the reading that particularly stood out to me was:

• the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
• the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
• the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
• the teacher talks and the students listen -- meekly;
• the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
• the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
• the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
• the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
• the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
• the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

Again, I’ve never felt purposefully oppressed by the education system or my teachers, but this at least gave me something to chew on. Some of these points I don’t agree with. I think I can safely agree with the first point, that teachers teach and students are taught; however, I’ve had very few classes in which I felt like my teacher thought they knew everything and we knew nothing (although I can recall some teachers who were that arrogant). Another point I don’t necessarily agree with is the teacher always talking and the students meekly listening. While this has been true sometimes, I definitely had some classes throughout my primary education in which class discussions were encouraged. The rest of Freire’s descriptions basically fit into the category of education I have known my whole life. In that case, it made me think about how active teachers are and how passive students can be in this system. There are some exceptions of course, a handful of teachers who like to challenge the system and keep students engaged. The majority, though, seem to follow this pattern pretty well. I don’t like thinking that I have been merely an object in which teachers have deposited information into my whole life, but Freire’s ideas surely do make me question if I have been. With the system remaining as-is, I think the best thing we can do as students is to keep an open mind, and try to take everything with a grain of salt, to a degree. I don’t necessarily mean questioning everything we are told, but actually caring enough to examine the facts given to us. This will, to some extent, help keep us clean while participating in a system that no longer seems quite so spotless.


Thought Questions
1. Have you ever felt victimized by the education system?
2. Have you ever challenged the current education system?