Response 6: PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED

I have written before about the pedagogical crime of teachers acting as the knowledge depositors and students acting as the account in which the knowledge is deposited. This article speaks to the ineffective banking style of education. One layer deeper on this concept I gleaned from Mr. Freire is how the banking style rests upon the assumption that the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing...which is entirely untrue! I see how banking-style teaching also places a monopoly upon knowledge itself, making it seem inaccessible to students directly. Knowledge should be accessible to everyone, and students should be encouraged to access it. The goal of teaching should be to create lifelong learners, which is impossible under the banking pedagogy style.

Indirectly, banking style teaching perpetuates individuals who follow the status quo, right or wrong. While authority is important and rules and laws matter, we do not really want a society that blindly follows whatever was done before them. Humans are capable of so much creativity and innovation, it would be a shame to discourage one of the coolest elements of our nature.

I really like the idea of changing the classroom climate to one of mutual respect, where both teacher and students have opportunities to teach and to learn: “the teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students' thinking”. Classrooms modeled this way will appropriately prepare students for life in the 21st Century. People will need to be collaborators, team players, and synthesizers; all of which require higher order thinking skills. The modern world is all about making connections with each other, with different pools of information, with ideas. Our students need classrooms that encourage making meaningful connections.

Overall, I felt this article almost had a hippie Ralph Waldo Emerson vibe to it, with the whole consciousness rant. While I totally agree with the main idea of the article, I am not really a “philosophy” person so it hurt my brain a little to work through it.