Michael DeGennaro- Post#3 / Art 1010
Pedagogy and Power: What is the banking model to Friere? Who does it empower or disempower, and at whose expense? Do you have any experience with this model? If so, describe an encounter that you have had with the banking model and reflect on it, both positives and negatives.
The banking model is Friers’s concept of education. It is a concept in which the teacher is the active being and the students are passive “objects” in the classroom. The students are essentially sitting down and listening to a teacher making “deposits” of education, which they memorize information, and repeat this process daily. Frier explains that this type of education allows for no intellectual growth in students, as they are simply intaking information that means nothing to them.
I have actually had an experience with this model of education. In sophomore year of high school, my geometry teacher perfectly emblemized this model. I remember the daily routine of the class. I’d enter, as he was sitting by his desk, and he would request silence, and move to the center of the class room, and take “control”. He began to lecture about factoring polynomials and finding what the circumference of “x” was. No speaking, no questions, nothing. We as the students sat down for an entire hour, listened to him talk, pack up, leave, and repeat this for an entire school year. As I reflect on this now, Friers’s conclusion that education of this manner allows for no intellectual growth can be applied to my situation. When someone is simply talking for an entire hour and doesn’t have dedicated times set aside for questions and comments, there is no brain stimulation. The process is in a way robotic, and we the students are not interested, because there isn’t time to think. We are overwhelmingly being fed geometric concepts. We don’t make connections with the material being “collected.” The only positives I can think of from this model include being fed lots of information, and covering many concepts in school.
