The first assignment in my English Class was to read “The Banking Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire and then to write about it. While the essay seems to be very insightful and considers many factors before stating a conclusion about its effects on society, I don't see these effects holding true for today’s society, especially in the United States. Freire’s ideas seem to characterize the worst possible outcome that could come from a banking system of education based on several assumptions and dichotomies. An unfair assumption that Freire makes is that humans must be taught to think critically and his most troubling dichotomy is that between a banking classroom and a problem posing classroom. This essay was written in a time and political climate much different to what we know know in the US. While many of his ideas have merit and some of his conclusions are logical, in the US today, the conclusion Freire comes to in this essay wouldn’t happen. The unacknowledged ability of critical thought, the classroom dichotomy and the political and social differences make Freire’s ideas seem outdated and to some degree extremist.
Freire’s idea that the banking system doesn’t allow for critical thinking to occur still holds true today, but this doesn’t mean that students can’t think critically. Classrooms and teachers who utilize the banking system don’t want students to ask questions or think at all, but rather to memorize and regurgitate facts. In this system the problem isn’t that critical thinking isn’t possible, but that it is completely useless. If the system only requires pure memorization of facts and no analysis of the information, then the ability to think critically would be of no use. Freire, in his essay, tries to convince readers that through banking education the students will never learn to think critically. This is the critical error I see in his entire scenario.
If the rest of the essay is read using Freire’s assumption that critical thinking must be taught and then utilized in the educational setting for humans to break free from the “oppressors”, then the rest of his conclusions seem to follow logically, but critical thinking isn’t taught to students like addition and spelling. Rather, it is an implicit skill found in humans. We always have the ability to do it. Whether or not the classroom fosters our critical thinking or not is the question. "The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world" (319). In the banking classroom, students may never develop critical thinking skills, but what about outside the classroom. I feel that Freire fails to acknowledge the power of the interactions that take place out of class. In a banking system students can never use critical thinking and Freire seems to misinterpret this as the students’ inability to think critically. There are plenty of opportunities outside of the classroom setting to think critically: reading, writing, working, etc. In fact, if banking education, which Freire implies is the most common method of teaching, is as poisonous as he preaches, how did humanity advance to the point which we find ourselves at today? Perhaps the individuals who were able to overcome the oppression that is banking education were able to bring forth great advances in society, but I'm skeptical that the abilities of a few select people could bring us to where we are today. Banking classrooms can’t stop a student from thinking critically. While they don’t encourage or necessitate the ability, that doesn't mean that it can never be used.
However, to play devil's advocate, even if students can think critically, what’s the point if they can’t do anything with the ideas they create? When Freire wrote his essay there were extremely oppressive regimes in control in South America and voicing opinions or even just letting people know that you are thinking on your own was dangerous. Being different was dangerous. Today this isn’t the case in much of South America and United States. Today even in a completely banking classroom, students still get to leave and can discuss with friends, family, clubs and more their unique thoughts and ideas. With the internet you can anonymously post your opinions and receive critiques and have a discussion without any human contact. I find that Freire fails to realize the power of the learning environment outside the classroom, although, based on the political climate of the time he is not entirely at fault for this. Were I in a situation where discontent could be seen as treason, I don't know that I would have the strength to speak up. The fact remains, however, that critical thinking is fostered and advanced outside of the classroom, regardless if it is applied or not. But in today’s society, it is almost impossible not only to avoid critical thinking, but to avoid voicing your thoughts. Even in Freire’s unique situation it seems unlikely to have not a single trusted person with who you could share your thoughts and ideas. Freire’s conclusions rest mainly on the idea that critical thinking must be taught and practiced in the classroom even though it can be just as, if not more, powerful completely outside of the classroom setting.
Classrooms today also must be much different than when Freire wrote his essay. He seemed to believe that a classroom’s style was dichotomized; either all banking or all problem posing. This can’t be true. Eventually with banking you run into something that can’t be learned only through memorization, such as grammatical structure. A student couldn’t write a grammatically perfect essay without knowing how and why certain things are used. The same is true with problem posing, students need to start with some base information before they can solve problems. A student couldn’t spell their name without first knowing the alphabet. Also following with this, not all things can be posed as a problem nor does everything necessitate a problem. For example, it's difficult to frame geography as a problem (by geography I mean labeling a map). That ability is just memorization of names and locations. There also isn't really a reason for that to be a problem, as the ability to label the map is learned just as effectively through memorization. Freire seems to dichotomize classrooms as either banking or problem posing, never a combination of the two, which in my experience is what all classrooms are.
The major dichotomy that appears in the essay is that classrooms are either banking or problem posing, which is certainly untrue. As seen earlier, there are situations which one method may be more conducive to learning than the other, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only method used. It’s hard growing up in America in this time period to imagine the conditions which Freire wrote about, but certainly it is not possible that he ever had a completely banking method in any class. Because humans can think critically, it is impossible to have a completely banking classroom. In this situation where facts are just remembered and recited at some point a student will speak up and ask “Why?” Not in the sense even of why does this happen or why is it this way not that way, but more simply, why they are learning this is no comprehension is required. In Freire’s example of knowing capitals and addition with out knowing the relationships or reasons why these things are the way they are, a student would have to recognize that learning is useless with out comprehension. 2+2=4 is true, but with out understanding the reasoning behind it, why know it at all. When is it ever necessary to know that’s true if you can’t generalize it to know something more about addition and numbers. Even if a classroom that relies only on the banking method could exist, there would be at least one student to question the reason behind learning with out comprehension. Just as impossible is a classroom which is only problem posing. When trying to learn something completely foreign and new, how can you learn anything through problems with no base knowledge. You can’t learn chemistry without knowing the elements first and you can’t learn the elements without understanding the reason why they exist and what their purpose is in a larger sense. A good teacher doesn’t adapt students to the world (321) and doesn’t adapt the world to the students either, but rather has the two reach a mutual understanding of each other and their purposes with respect to larger picture. I like to view education as a bridge. The student has the tools and the idea of what they want the bridge to look like and how it should work (walking, trains or what have you). The teacher has the knowledge on how to build a generic bridge. The teacher's job is to get the student to understand the principles of bridges and then the student must take what they learn and shape and manipulate it to their idea of the bridge. Freire makes a dichotomy between the two methods of education but in reality, that dichotomy doesn’t and can’t exist. A classroom isn’t banking or problem posing but a combination of the two in a way that will provide the student with the ability to make connections with the world and understand the reason behind and for the things they are learning.
With banking education, Freire also describes a dichotomy that happens with the world ass well. “A person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator” (321). This dichotomy makes it so that we, as humans, are simply going through the world without changing or affecting it. The unique thing about humans is that we have the ability to do both. We can identify and analyze the situation and figure out what we need to do, be merely in or with the world. Since all humans are capable of critical thinking it follows to reason that we should all know that we do interact with the world, not in it. At some point, even if accidentally, a person must think critically, even if to themselves. Regardless how oppressive a government controls people will always be able to create for themselves. There must be some sort of creation, even an idea, for a human to be a human. Even in a pure banking system this dichotomy must eventually break down. Assume for a moment that in this banking society that you get a flat tire. Freire would say that unless you have been fed the facts on what to do in this situation that you cannot know what to do and must therefore abandon the car or wait until someone who has been taught the solution to come along. But this seems ridiculous. If your tire were flat you would have a general understanding of the problem and solution even if the path there was a bit fuzzy. Given enough time you would even get out and try problem solving yourself because you can think critically. You would come up with an answer, whether right or wrong it matters not, and that answer would disprove the dichotomy. From nothing you would’ve been able to create something: true knowledge. This ability to create goes against Freire’s dichotomy and means that you understand that you can affect your situation and therefore are with the world.
Humans are born with the innate ability to think critically and Freire’s failure to acknowledge this renders the rest of his arguments and conclusions invalid. If his essay is read assuming all his assumptions to be true, his essay seems very logical. If, as humans, we are born empty minded into this world and must be taught everything, then his conclusions can be accepted as fact but the false assumptions make the following conclusions false. We aren't born empty, we couldn't be, otherwise humans would've gone extinct at the very moment they appeared. The dichotomies in the essay represent vast over generalizations which not only cannot exist in anything but theory but they make the conclusions hard to render as true. The differences between South America then and the United States now is so great that it is hard to take Freire’s ideas and see them as whole truths today. Freire’s essay provides good theories and shows the dangers of banking and the merits of problem posing but he fails to acknowledge the the opposite. He makes the world seem black and white and his assumptions and dichotomies are the shortcomings of his essay.
Freire, Paulo. "The Banking Concept of Education." Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 9th ed. Ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 318-328. Print.
