Better education Throughout the years there have been many arguments on how to educate and in whether changing the mode of education, and what is the best strategic concept to be used in mainly public schools. In the article “The Banking concept of Education”, Paulo Freire is leading an influential figure to guide students into helping them develop their critical thinking and consciousness of freedom. He noticed and studied a dichotomy between the teacher and the student, and realized that there is a “banking concept” being presented in the modern education(Freire 319). He refers to this “banking concept of education” to be a fractional action of communication from the teacher to the student. However, in liberating education, which is called “problem-posing” in Freire’s article, perfectly results in the liberation of the students, students and teachers carry on a dialogue to teach one another. The world is seen as always in the process of becoming, students are seen as parts of that. Therefore, students are active, becoming empowered to criticize the world and so change it. For my English 122 class, I was totally attractive and paid full of attention in the class discussion. Whenever we were assigned into a group and begin to discuss various topics, I was actively participated into the discussion, I would hostly say that each one of us always learn something new from others. Even some question required critical thinking, I welcome to open mind discuss it and totally love this class, thus I am taking with the same instructor for my English 126 class this semester. Problem-posing education allows the students to be creative in their learning and really expand their learning techniques because it depends on communication, where students are encouraged to ask question, recognized the relationship between people and the world, and lead to transformation. More in other way this style of education allows people to develop their human natures fully. At the beginning of the article “The Banking Concept of Education”, Paulo Freire talks about what makes up an education system. In somehow he specifically demonstrates the role of teacher in a traditional setting are the subject and the students are the listening objects(318). Regarding this “banking” approach as a sickening process because it does not allow the students mind to grow. It keeps students in the commonplace of always doing just what the teacher wants them to do or what they need to know to get by in school. Due to me being in the situation where I was not always allowed to give my opinions or talk on certain things. There are a lot of things in Economic class that I am still unsure of how to handle today, but I remember talking about them in class. My teacher always rushed when we discussed things that students thought was relevant to our lives. Instead of giving discussion time to students, teachers are tend to pay more interested in their power point slides and keep talking for the whole lecture. Freire sums up how my educational experience was like from Economic class, which was why I was always unmotivated to openly participate in class. It was boring and uninteresting to go to class. Having been not allowed to have spoken in class would have helped me grow as a person and completely shut down my mind. Freire expressed that most, if not all the time, he agrees when he writes that students are mainly memorizing the information being presented to them because the teacher continuously instructs to them and does not allow the students to give feedback on certain things that may cause wonder in their minds at a particular time. “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor, the teacher issues and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat”(Freire 318). The quote here reminds us to think of the banking concept as the students being the depositories and the teachers are depositors. We, the students, are merely robots and the teachers are there just to fill up with information that they feel we should know. By extension Freire makes more clearly “This is the “banking” concept, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as fare as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits”(320). We can only know what the teacher know, other than that it is a arduous job to cross boundary because we are living in a society, where the teacher pass on the knowledge that they experienced only. Things that they did not recognize we won’t acquire for sure. With this educational system, it would not allow us to change the traditional way of educating the students’ minds, which in other words it totally limit the scope of students’ learning. Freire says that this is the way that teachers dehumanize students, they make students their property in the sense that they are supposed to be dependent upon them. They rob students from experiencing their true potential in terms of challenging certain issues and making their brain energetic. The author goes more in depth on why he believes the problem-posing educational system calls for a better way students see the world around when they are placed in real life situations. Those who use the problem-posing approach perceive through their relation with reality, and that reality is really a process. It takes long time for me as a physics student to get into the formula F=M[pic]A that I first learn in junior high school, where F is stands for Force, M represents mass and A for acceleration. It states as acceleration of a car is directly proportional to the magnitude of Net force and inversely proportional to the mass of the car. This simple equation can be apply to our everyday life. We will be able to solve certain things like F=M[pic]A to determine how much of the maximum goods that the track can exert at one time because we were taught how to go more in depth with physics learning capabilities on the reality; we were taught critical thinking skills, which we can use it, easily resolve the problems and test it in our real life. The only solution to the problem-posing by traditional educational system is getting the teacher and the students in a situation where they have to share their knowledge and experience with each other. “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teachers, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow”(324). By doing and committing to this process, the teacher and students would be able to reflect on their own selves just by being open to engage in certain conversations that allowed them to learn from one another. Freire further demonstrates “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. It is a learning situation in which the cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act) intermediate the cognitive actors-teacher on the one hand and students on the other”(315). Dialogical relations between teacher and student is become indispensable to the capacity of cognitive actors to work together in capturing the same cognizable object, or are otherwise impossible. Teachers and students must become partners in critical thinking and quest for mutual humanization. Freire points out “For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human”(319). It is true that people have opportunity to pursue knowledge in the world, but the fact is that people themselves who are inhibited their creativity, transformation and knowledge as a single learner in this misguided system can not become fully human any more. As a result, the problem-posing method would allow students to develop and enhance their critical thinking and communication skills in public education. In a lot of places, public schooling is a failure to most of inner education system. The old ways of teaching are starting to become banal and students are looking for change. The problem-posing educational system not only get the students more interested in the classroom but more open for discussions on various topics, in this way students are prepared for what is going in the real world. This method allows the students to prepare for their future because it makes them become more aware that their lives are incomplete. They realize that life is going to be an ongoing process and they have to make sure they are ready for it. Freire seems to propose this method to the whole world because changes are inevitable and we all have to prepare of the students for what is really can change in the world.
Work Cited Freire Paulo. “The ‘Banking’ Concept Of Education.” Ways of Reading Ninth Edition. Bartholomae David, Anthony Petrosky. Boston; Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, 316~329.
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Cited: Freire Paulo. “The ‘Banking’ Concept Of Education.” Ways of Reading Ninth Edition. Bartholomae David, Anthony Petrosky. Boston; Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011, 316~329.
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