To me the most important topics we learned about in unit 1 are the banking model and formal analysis. 

The banking model is a way Paulo Freire described and critiqued the education system. This model shows a student as an empty container being filled with knowledge by their educator. Freire argued  that teachers don’t communicate with the students, they make “deposits” and the students are expected to receive, memorize, and repeat the information. This empowers the teachers because they have the power to instill anything they’d like into the students, but this is at the students expense because they don’t develop a creative process. I learned from this that I am very lucky that in Brooklyn College teachers don’t teach that way and they care about my opinion. 

Formal analysis is a way of looking at the painting and all of its details and fully understanding it. Formal Analysis is the idea of analyzing a single work of art, especially a painting, in terms of specific visual components. The components of a formal analysis are composition, color, line, shape, contrast, texture, and technique. All of these elements help us understand what the artist is trying to convey in his or her work. Formal Analysis is using your senses, like sight and touch, its all about what you see in the details of the painting.  The goal of a formal analysis is to use all of the formal elements of a painting or sculpture to fully grasp the meaning of the work. Whenever I went to a museum and looked at a painting or sculpture, I never really put that much thought into it. Because of this class, I now know how to look at art and use all of the elements of formal analysis to interpret the underlying meaning of the artwork.