Paulo Freire's The Banking Concept Of Education

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Ghida Kharfan Instructor: Maya Sfeir English 203 8 October, 2015 A confusion Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher whose distinctive visions have influenced the perception of people towards traditional education. In his essay “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” in the book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Paulo criticizes the current educational approaches and teaching methods, comparing the depositing of information into the students to the act of depositing money into a bank account, and offers another positive way of teaching as an alternative to such approaches. Although Freire could convince his audience of his opinions using his own way, his hypocritical descriptions of the points he talked about have failed him to reach…show more content…
His aim was to convince people interested in education, whether they are teachers or students, that the current educational approaches and techniques are bad and such awful ways of teaching, which he calls the “Banking Education”. After that, he provides an alternative way of teaching, which is the “problem posing method”, and which he claims could reduce all the complications. He started proving his point by giving simple examples that anyone could understand about math and geography. It was when he said (2005, p.257): “Four times four equal 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 this example, he could easily show how students just listen to what the teachers say without getting the chance to think or to question the knowledge they are…show more content…
Until one day he got us exercises that we had to solve in class all together, almost all of us were participating and fighting for the answers. This situation could be a proof to Freire’s thoughts about the current educational approach. When the teacher brought these exercises with him to class, he gave us the freedom to communicate, to participate and to use our creativity to solve the problems. This is an example of the “problem posing education” which he promotes in his essay, and which could also stand against his idea because it is actually happening in some places unlike what he said, and which means that the educational approaches are not the same everywhere, they depend on many
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