Paulo Freire came up with the concept known as The Banking Model in his book known as “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” The “Banking Model” touches upon the relationship of students and teachers, specifically how students learn and teachers teach in a classroom. The job of students in a classroom is to remember the information the instructor provides. The students don’t participate in another way, they just simply take in the information that’s given to them and memorize it for the test. The “Banking Model” within educational systems is common and it prevents students from developing certain skills that make them critical thinkers. It doesn’t give students a chance to voice their opinion or to bring out their creatibity, but to just absorb the information the teacher brings forth in a classroom. This leads to the disempowerment of students and empowerment of teachers, of course, at the expense of the students.

Personally, I experienced this “Banking Model” concept in high school. In my junior year of high school, my Psychology teacher had prepared slides and copy and pasted the information provided in the textbook onto these slides. She would just read through the slides each class and not explain it. The only positive thing my fellow classmates and I got out of this was that we were able to challenge ourselves by teaching everything on our own. The reason why it’s easier for the teacher to explain it because in certain classes particularly psychology, it’s easier to understand the concept using real-life examples to help us relate. Since much explanations for concepts in my Psychology class wasn’t provided it was hard to understand. Another negative was that it took a lot of extra effort and time. In the classroom, I was daydreaming and didn’t participate so much because I didn’t think there was a point to. If my teacher explained it as she went rather than just reading the slides, it would have saved time so that I can focus more on my other classes. I was always googling examples of the concepts that I learned to fully understand it instead of just memorizing it. It’s easier to memorize when you actually understand.