Banking Concept of Education: Paulo Freire Dislikes

Paulo Freire severely scrutinizes the banking concept of education. He dislikes everything about the traditional teaching method, where the teachers just fill the students with information and hope the students retain it long enough to spit it back out to them on tests. He argues that students are led to “memorize mechanically” the information lectured by a teacher. He would strongly oppose the use of grades in the schooling system. Truly, students are getting graded on how well they can memorize random facts as the tests that encourage memorization of material make up a very large portion of the grading system. In his strong argument against the banking concept of education, Freire gives in a little to the opposition, as he admits, “they [students] do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store.” I feel that this is the key to individuality in school. Freire is correct in the way that he portrays the schooling system. Students mostly just receive and memorize information from their teachers; thus, they never really critically think about the material. Nevertheless, the techniques that each individual student learns and masters to accomplish these demands shape his/her success later in life.
I agree with Freire that, with respect to truly learning the material and retaining the knowledge for a long period of time, simple memorization is very poor. Last year, I took an AP United States History course. The material covered in the course was the same as the material I “learned” in my eighth and ninth grade United States history classes. The only difference was that this time around, we were going to study the content further in-depth, which Freire might find pleasing. Once the course got underway, I soon realized that I had to completely relearn the material, as I had completely forgotten everything I learned in the eighth and ninth grade classes. It was not because I did poorly back then, but because