What is the Banking Model?

The Banking model is a term Paulo Freire uses, to explain how the education system works. In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed Freire describes the Banking Model as students being like “empty containers” that they are “filled” by teachers and our sole purpose is to “receive, memorize, and repeat.” or “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.” like banking. In other words the teachers know everything and the students know nothing. This empowers teachers for we as students are taught to accept the information given without questioning it, taking away the chance for us to think critically.

The closest I have come to encountering this model was with a teacher who gave great amounts of information with out clarifying it. She would expect us to know everything and wouldn’t really tell us why it was important often just leaving us memorize. It sometimes made it harder to understand but it also made you put in more effort into the class.