English Banking Concept Essay

Kaleb Blackburn
English l
Period 1
English Banking Concept Essay

When considering what the proper form of education is many different concepts come to mind. One of the most controversial concepts is known as the banking concept of education, in which students are required to memorize facts and later on be tested on them. Another important component of education is the relationship between the teacher and their students. Many argue on what the proper makeup of a successful educative system should consist of and whether or not the banking concept of education is a resourceful and effective way of teaching
Paulo Freire was an ideologist whose unique ideas have shaped the modern usage of education. The “banking concept,” as termed by Freire, is essentially an act that hinders the educational growth of students by turning them into, “receptors” and “collectors” of information that have no real connection to their lives.
What Freire means by this is that the banking concept imposes a schism between a person (teacher and/or student) and the “real world”, resulting in the evident demise of his or her true consciousness, since the former can only be realized through the relationships and connections the individual draws from the material to their life. In this view, Freire claims that by assuming the roles of teachers as depositors and students as receptors, the banking concept thereby changes humans into objects. Humans (as objects) have no autonomy and therefore no ability to rationalize and conceptualize knowledge at a personal level. And because of this initial misunderstanding, the method itself is a system of oppression and control.

The banking concept is a chance for instructors (or "oppressors," as he calls them) to fill students with information as they submissively accept it; in his vision of education, there is no reciprocal learning or sharing between teacher and student. In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, , negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. The students accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence—but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate the teacher.
a. the teacher teaches and the students are taught;b. the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;c. the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;d. the teacher talks and the students listen-meekly;e. the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;f. the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;g. the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;h. the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;i. the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;j. the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects . Freire continues in this vein and thoroughly illustrates how these assumptions truly are a part of most educational systems. But he also provides a different perspective as well. But in offering the most effective method of moving from the obvious banking mold, he claims that "one does not liberate men by alienating them," indicating that these individuals who see his reasoning would do well to clearly attempt to change the education system, rather than openly oppose them, as is seen in many cases involving education where groups instill their own methods in a very alienating manner. In Freire's proposal he illustrates that "Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of problems of men in their relationship with the world" . This idea of consciousness is incredibly enlightening in relationship to education, which And in relationship to other countries, this type of education, i.e. banking, can easily be spotted.