Paulo Freire: ‘Banking’ Concept of Education

Paulo Freire is saying that the teacher-student relationship is poor because of the fact that the teacher is just narrating about the subject of which the students are just listening and are not really involved. Freire is knowledgeable on the subject that the teacher is narrating, but the students are having troubles understanding the narration because of the words that the teacher speak of being foreign to them. If the teacher would go more into detail about the subject and not just lecture about a portion of the subject but get the students involved, they would not feel so alienated on the subject. Students can’t learn much just by memorization and repeating what they see or hear such as, “four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem.” “The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of “capital” in the affirmation “the capital of Para is Belem, “that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil.” In which I totally agree on because all through school I was a student that would just copy or say the subject without really learning what I was copying or saying. Students are similar to empty receptacles, and teachers knowledge is what goes into the receptacles the more the teacher teaches the students the more the empty receptacles ( the students ) will fill with the knowledge of the subject of which the teacher is teaching about.
Paulo Freire speaks of the banking concept of education in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Thus this is the student’s only account on what the teacher has taught them. I feel that the banking concept has its faults because both the students and the teacher can learn from one another. Which none of one or the other is the depositor nor the depository when they both are learning from each other. Freire contradicts himself with the sentence. “Education must begin