Oppression in Schools

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7/2/14
Professor Budd
Final Draft
Oppression in Schools

Oppression is defined as an unjust or cruel exercise or action of power. Throughout life, everyone has experienced oppression at least once. We have only recently begun to stand up and fight the effects of oppression to gain back our freedom. There are many forms of oppression in American schools, including inequality in education, the banking concept of education, and college lectures. Oppression has divided us to keep us from maintaining our freedom, what little of it we have left that is.
Inequality in schools can affect how a child develops in life. A child with a solid educational background is bound to have a greater chance of achieving success in life. The upper class students usually have parents with solid bank accounts who can afford to get them a good education. Sadly, poor children are often held back later in life because of their lack of a good education. A child that goes to a suburban school is likely to get better learning materials and teaching methods than a child who goes to an urban school. The race of students going to a school, unfortunately shows how a school district feels about the students and faculty. American schools being segregated simply shows that America has not moved forward from the Jim Crow laws. In “Still Separate, Still Unequal” Johnathan Kozol doesn’t believe the condition in inner-city schools has anything to do with economic factors. But in “From Social Class the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, it’s a different story. She believes the conditions have everything to do with someone’s economic status. Kozol visited an elementary school in New York and spoke to a third grade girl, Alliyah, and got her thoughts of the conditions of her
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school system. Kozol says “New York’s Board of Education spent about $8,000 yearly on the education of a third grade child in a New York City public school. If you could have scooped Alliyah up out of the neighborhood where she was born and plunked her down in a fairly typical white suburb of New York, she would have received a public education worth about $12,000 a year” (68). Wealth and race shouldn’t determine the quality of a child’s education but it does. It doesn’t do anything for the student, but hurt them in the long run.
Many teachers and students do not know that the banking concept is ineffective and harmful to the student. The banking concept is when a teacher throws information out at a student and expects them to receive, memorize, and repeat it. The educator does not have any type of communication with the students and the relationship between the two is poor because the teacher is just narrating about the subject and the students are just listening and not really involved. In “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Paulo Freire says, “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.” (85) In this quote Freire is saying that educators are automatically assuming the students do not know anything at all. So the educator’s knowledge is a gift to the student. In a way “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of work” relate to one another because teachers are not putting work and creativity into their teaching materials. Whether it be because it’s a low income school and the educator does not care or because the educator thinks the students are already ignorant. The banking concept is considered oppression because of numerous reasons, students are just being fed the information without questioning it or being challenged, the teacher doesn’t learn from their students, and this concept effects how our future learns.

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College lectures kind of tie in with the banking concept as well. Students are being thrown information quickly and are expected to catch it and understand it. Why do lecture classes exist if students dread going to them? Well, colleges would rather put a lot of students in a lecture hall instead of dividing students up into smaller discussion classes. A professor in a lecture hall is responsible for teaching more than 50 students at a time versus ten or twenty students in an interactive classroom. The large number of students prevents professors to create a relationship with each student. If students are not paying attention to the lectures and are not putting work or creativity into the lectures they’re both wasting time and energy and the student is wasting their tuition money. In “College Lectures: Is Anybody Listening?” David Daniels says “Students need to question their professors and to have their ideas taken seriously. Only then will they develop the analytical skills required to think intelligently and creatively.” (108) He’s basically saying students should not just sit in class and gather the information without participating and asking questions about what’s being taught. College lectures are a form of oppression because it’s limiting the way students have to learn. Students learn differently and with college lectures there’s only one way to learn which is verbally.
Oppression in American schools will continue to be present until we as a society stands up and put an end to it all. Not only is it hurting and limiting the potential of the students affected by it, but it’s giving the educators and the school a bad look. Although there are many other forms of oppression in American schools today, inequality in education, the banking concept of education, and college lectures seem to be popular topics. When will people realize it is affecting the future doctors, lawyers, and educators of America?