Is Paulo Freire Correct About the Banking Concept And The Problem-posing Method?

Essay by eisha8College, UndergraduateA, November 2003

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Is Paulo Freire Correct About the Banking Concept

And The Problem-posing Method?

Paulo Freire, a well-renowned leader in literacy studies as well as an advocate of progressive teaching, is against the education system he classifies as the "banking concept of education". Instead, he supports the idea that education should be a collaborative process in which teachers and students work together and think critically. From the excerpt "The Banking Concept of Education" taken from his most popular book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he classifies the Banking Concept as an environment where teachers are the narrators and the students are the recorders (238). Freire has also proposed a new solution in his article called the problem-posing education where the teacher and student become one to say, each teaches the other and both have the chance to think critically as well as give one's interpretation of the subject (242). However, both systems are not entirely perfect and therefore both have advantages and disadvantages in the education system.

The banking concept of education has received many criticisms especially from Freire himself. Freire describes the method of teaching where the teachers directly fill the minds of their students with information and the student themselves accept it without any questioning as oppressive (239). To put it differently, the teacher informs, and the student listens in return. The students are not allowed to challenge the authority and the credibility of the teacher. So students have no freedom or active participation in education and the exchange of information is one-way. As I see it, this is generally what people call spoon-feeding. In addition, Freire explains, "Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world" (241). This...