Blog Post #5: Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” Chapter 2

I’ve observed many lessons in the last two years of my college career. I’ve seen a wide range of teachers teach different subjects. I’m not an expert in the educational field, but I’ve been around enough teachers to see how this concept of constructing their teaching styles around this banking method is detrimental to students and teachers. Freire used quite a few complex notions in regard to how students are being oppressed, but I think his most valid and logical point was when he was talking about the banking method. I loved the comparison between how banking works and how a student’s mind works. Freire stated, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.” Thinking back to my observations, I can definitely see instances where teachers relayed information to students only for it to go in the bank. Students gained little knowledge from this way teaching and it created more separation from the end goal of being able to apply information to abstract concepts. Students are just putting throwing this information into the back filing cabinet of their minds. Just like in prior articles that we’ve read for class, students aren’t gaining any valuable learning skills if they are just depositing random nuggets of information.

            Another section that I found interesting was when Freire spoke about the passive characteristic that all students have. At a young age, students are taught to be passive in order for teachers to get information across as fast and painless as possible. Freire stated, “The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.”  Students lie down to authority, which poses a lot of problems. It may make a teachers classroom management much easier to handle, but it has the potential of taking away from discussion, less engagement, and possible failure. If you teach and treat students like they are babies, they will learn like babies. You cannot spoon feed students facts and information and expect them to grow. You have to teach them how to eat for themselves and then learn on their own through outside sources. Overall, I found this article to be beneficial for all teachers.