The “Banking” Concept of Education

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorUniversity, Master's February 2008

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"Education must begin with the solution of the student-teacher contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students" (260). In a school using the banking concept of teaching there is a teacher-student contradiction (260). The teachers are the teachers and the students are the students. Whatever the teachers say is supposed to be memorized and learned by the students. The students do not know why they are being taught this but only know that they have to memorize and store what is being taught (263). As the students just begin to store information, they lose their own sense of creativity, and critical thinking (260). After the students leave the classroom, the teacher can no longer think for them, which leaves the students with a problem. The students will have to learn to think on their own outside of the classroom. The revolutionary educators cannot wait for this to happen only for it to be their job to bring it into the classroom (265).

For students to be able to think on their own the teacher must be one of the students and the students must be their own teachers (265). With this, the students switch from being storing machines to being critical thinkers. The teacher's job would be to give the students the information and let them think for themselves, which sometimes causes the teachers to re-evaluate their own conclusions after hearing the student's thoughts for the information given out (265). On the other hand, "banking education" keeps the students and teachers from needing to be critical and creative by having the student only store information and not relate (260). Because of the critical thinking requirements of the teacher-student, student-teacher relationship, students benefit by being able to think for themselves in the everyday...