Tag: Blog Post 3: Pedagogy and Power

Blog post 3: Pedagogy and power

Paulo Frier was a Brazilian educator who brought this concept to many people of Critical pedagogy. He introduced the system in which teachers spoke and deposited information into the students which should then be spit right back out making them into basically robots. This proposal was brought in during a failing education system in the region. The system he introduced and popularized was giving the teachers all the power to push whatever information they wanted to in their students brains and forced them to memorize and repeat whatever they were teaching, not giving the students the time to process the information and say how they think or give their own opinions and questions on it. The process would not let the students thrive in their own ways and would put them all apart of a system that doesn’t let the students have their own way of thinking.

My experience of this system from teachers i’ve had been at a minimal. In a way teachers i have had pushed information at times throughout my years of schooling but we were encouraged to have open discussions about our thoughts on many topics so we were able to process all the information and give our take on it. This system has overall been away from how teachers have taught me over the years. Learning the way i have helped me become independent in my thoughts and ways of processing information and being able to question the information i had curiosity about.

 

Pedagogy and Power

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.

Paolo Freire insists on a “Banking Model of education” as a way to criticize the education system. Teachers are those who oppress students and exploit their power. Students are seen as empty vessels, containers even, through the “art of depositing,” we are filled with information. Teachers inherently have this robotic system of depositing and repeating. This cycle, Paolo Friere says, is not how it should be. Ideally, there would be more cognition and dialogue exchanged and even a mutual, fair relationship. Cognitive objects should not be held hostage in the oppressors possession.

The Banking model disempowers students and their potentials to reach certain heights that would otherwise not be known and empowers teachers at the students expense. It seems that the public school education system follows the banking model described by Friere and this is the experience I have had growing up. Teachers have the general idea of inputting information into students and have them regurgitate it with no creative room to spare. It seems as if it is a very black and white, right or wrong, yes or no type of teaching and there isn’t a lot of gray area allowed. Not all teachers teach this way and for that I am grateful. In theory, it sounds good to process information in this deposited form but in practice, there should be many other factors considered. All students learn differently, there shouldn’t be a uniform learning style; one size does not fit all.

Blog post #3: Pedagogy and Power

The banking model that Paolo Friere is refers to the knowledge that students receive are only for filing and storing deposits, meaning that students are expected to sit up straight and act a certain way to accept the knowledge that the teacher is giving them, essentially the teacher has the choice and power to put anything in the minds of students, with the students having no control on what they are learning. Just like banks whose job is only to take what is being deposited to them.

This model is mostly disempowering students at an early age and getting them used to not standing up to authority figures. Friere highlights that fact that since students are thought to sit down and just take what they are giving, that they will become people that won’t stand up to Authority, even if they aren’t treated with respect, they would always have to respect the Authority who acts over them. This type of actions empower the people already in charge as people won’t rebel against them, people like Government officials, Employers and teachers.

Like most students I’ve had most of my life spent within this banking model, where you have a set of rules and the lessons were just copy and paste of one another. This negative experience about the model was the fact that it was boring and basically set everyone up for almost the same or similar boring life, However it’s also positive because it creates order and organization of the population, plus it makes sure the population is quite equal.

A Student’s View On Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy Of The Oppressed

Have you ever sat in a classroom lecture and were so confused by the material being presented to you, that you questioned why you had to be learning it in the first place?  

Personally, I can say that I’ve been there. There’s nothing worse than feeling like the slowest person in the room and feeling like it’s your fault for not comprehending what’s being taught. It’s become an expectation that as students we need to memorize and simply accept everything being taught to us from the moment we step into a classroom. Our current methods of education don’t include a negotiation between an educator and a student as to what they will be learning or how they will be learning it. It’s naturally just assumed that the educator has created a well thought out lesson plan that will accommodate every student. As a result, our education system has slowly morphed into what is known as the “Banking model of education.” 

This concept was established by Paulo Freire an educator and philosopher who believed teachers act as narrators and deposit information into students, while the students act as depositories, memorizing the information that is being given to them. He accuses this model to be creatively constricting to students by increasing their lack of critical thinking and therefore, never allowing the effect of the material to reach its full potential. As a student, I can say that I’ve been on the receiving end of the banking model. Throughout my life, I’ve had teachers teach not for the sake of having us learn, but for our performance on standardized tests. The curriculum was heavily shaped to make students appear as if they understood the material by teaching in a way that satisfied the exams. Ultimately, I performed well on most of my exams but unfortunately much of the material I “learned” was quickly forgotten.

tHe BAnKing MOdel and the Education System

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire describes and evaluates the educational system and explores the teacher, student relationship, and societal relationship. Through his “Banking Model Proposal,” he criticizes the education system by explaining that students are essentially sponges who “deposit” information into their minds through rote memorization and through other impractical ways. Freire explains how knowledge is a “gift” that is bestowed upon students and that students should be taught effective ways on how to analyze and comprehend information rather than memorizing random strings of information. Also, Freire explains how destructive it is for students to passively rely on their teachers to feed them information as it will destroy their sense of reality as they become adults.

In all honestly, I have not experienced this lack of ownership in the educational setting. My high school teachers focused heavily on the concept of analysis. My English teachers would assign a novel every month and the homework assignments were analytical papers that focused on specific themes. Although I am a really bad writer and I dislike essays, I am grateful for my teachers’ efforts. If there is one class that heavily relied on memorization, it would be my high school Immunology class. Every lesson required rote memorization and the success of memorization reflected upon the tests and quizzes. I remember for one test, I had to memorize more than 30 different types of immune cells and their special properties and functions! The worst part was that their names were devastatingly long. Aside from my personal anecdote, I agree with Freire and his critiques on the education system. Hopefully, more teachers will understand the value and efficacy of analytical-styled teaching.

 

Pedagogy and Power

The banking model, described by Friere, is a system of which the teacher “deposits” information into their predecessors. This system isn’t perfect but is implemented into everyday life in other places other than a classroom setting.

The system empowers the voice of the “teacher” position. The one who leads or provides the guidance and successfully imprints their information into those students is in the place of power because they have the ability and unchallenged credibility to make statements whether they are one hundred percent factual or not. This disempowers the students because they go on to repeat what they have gained from that person and could be told misleading information they are told to believe in.

This model is very common in my education route. Almost every teacher follow the guidelines in which society dictates they are the one who can’t be disputed through pure authority. Certainly, this method has worked when my teachers took on a creative approach to ease the loads of information conveyed through the daily work. There are clear disadvantages to this method as well. Some of which I have encountered was that the teacher wasn’t clear with the information they tried to teach and also they didn’t seem very well educated in the subject themselves. They sometimes would side track and end up costing the whole class valuable notes that were very significant on a final exam. Other times included the teacher with a lack of interest and engagement to connect with the class and thus left the class uninterested in focusing on the class; many put their focus elsewhere like playing on their phones and angering the teacher even more.

Pedagogy & Power

In The Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire the explains the banking model as the current system of education and the specifize the relationship between the teachers and the students. According to Freire the teacher fills the head of their students with ideas detaching from development of themselves, the problem the students have is never reach full understanding the knowledge because of the lack of context or they don’t have any reason to apply it to anything to appreciate its full value. Freire believes this turns students into better explain as “storage units” while the teachers are the depositing knowledge into, explaining the banking model title. Freire states this is a misguided system of education, where teachers are the oppressors and the students are the oppressed. This model of education greatly empowers the teacher and disempowers the student. Paulo Freire want to change how student can be taught by coming to their own conclusion when presented a problem. He wants management of both.

In my daily education I can see the effect of how a teacher can become unintentional a oppressor. It is an odd feeling when the knowledge given isn’t as rewarding when you find it on your own. Granted that there are some of the students and I have seen quite a lot of never approach the issue critically and never get pass. We can be given the tools to work on problems but if the teacher doesn’t exercise the students capacity to develop it becomes a problem. In math and science we can rationalize this knowledge to everyday life but it’s never useful if your profession doesn’t require it. There were cases when the students and the teachers are so disconnected that the majority of the class failed to grasp it because he wasn’t push for it, the lack of interest from students was also a problem. From the ages of 10 to 18 how the hell are people supposed to care, When the internet is a thing. Overall I think that as chaotic as people in american society they can figure out on their own.

Q: don’t teachers have to go to teaching school? ….. Oh no!

Students, Teachers, and The Banking Model

 

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire was a book that criticizes the conventional education system. The banking model Freire proposed is that students only receive, file, and deposit what the teacher provides. The only thing students are learning to do is memorizing information that the teacher “deposits” in the students’ brains. The job of teachers is not so the students can memorize as much information as possible but to teach and get the students to think and analyze the work that is given. Therefore, instead of strengthening the students’ knowledge they are only strengthening the oppression the teachers have on them. This causes the students to be disempowered while the teachers are highly empowered, at the students’ expense.

My encounter that was similar to the banking model happened in high school. In tenth grade, one of my teachers wanted us to read a book. To make sure we were reading it, she would give us quizzes. However, these were not ordinary quizzes. She would not ask what was the setting or main theme of the book. She would write a quote from the book and we would have to fill in missing words from the quote. This requires students to memorize the whole book, in case she would ask for a word from a specific page. Quizzes were a decent amount of our grade, so I started memorizing the book. The positive side of this was that I learned how to memorize a lot of pages in a short amount of time. The negative side of it was, I was not actually learning. I was memorizing because I wanted to do well in the class. We were not actually analyzing the book and learning the deeper meaning of it, so I gained nothing. The overall reason I was doing it was because she was my teacher and I had to do it. This is what the school system has turned to, students memorizing texts because the teacher asked them to.

Blog Post 3: Pedagogy and Power

As described by Paolo Freire in “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” the “banking model” reflects the current system of education and the specific relationship that exists between the teachers, (subjects) and the students (listening objects in the education system. According to Freire the teacher fills the head of the student with ideas “detached” from reality, meaning ideas that are almost entirely foreign to the student, and in turn the student is then forced into memorizing the ideas mechanically without ever truly understanding why. Freire believes this turns students into receptacles or depositories while the teaches are the depositors, thus “the banking model” title. Freire states this is a misguided system of education, in which teachers become oppressors and the students become the oppressed. He also states that the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed,” not [changing] the situation which oppresses them.” This model of education greatly empowers the teacher and disempowers the student. The solution to this misguided model of education does not lie in integrating the students onto the system, according to Freire, it lies in transforming the structure of education so that students can become “beings for themselves.”

I, and I feel like most students in our current system of education, have a greta deal of experience with this “banking model.” All throughout middle school, high school, and even college, most of the information is presented in this way. The teacher or professor presents facts/ information, depositing it into the students heads, then the student is responsible to retain that information for a test/paper/midterm/final and when the test is over, the studied/learned information almost seems to vanish. Instead of studying or learning for the sake of learning and personal betterment it becomes a cold system of memorization for the sake of memorization without that intimate relationship of having learned something just for the sake of learning.

 

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Pedagogy and Power

Freire describes the concept of a teacher and student as the “banking concept of education as an instrument for oppression”. In the banking model, Freire describes this concept as the teacher being the oppressor whereas the students are empty brains retaining all the information that the teacher teaches. Freire obviously disagrees with the model and even poses solutions to the model such as the problem posing concept where there would be enhanced dialogue between the student and teacher. Students would work together with their teacher to come up with a solution which encourages students to think freely and independently.

The banking model clearly empowers the teachers and disempowers the students. According to the banking model, students are oppressed and stripped of their right to free thinking. This eliminates any creativity that students may have. Freire also describes the banking model as dehumanizing society. The education system is oppressing students and until things change, our education will continue the use of the banking model.

Like many people under our contemporary education system, I have been exposed and still continue to be exposed to Freire’s “banking model” of education. Students are taught at a young age to sit down in rows and pay attention to your teacher. Working as a teacher myself as well as being a student, I’ve experienced the oppressor and the oppressed. We are given curriculums and common cores by the department of education and are required to prepare students for upcoming standardized tests. As much negatives that Freire expresses about the banking model, I can reflect positively on behalf of my experience. Through daily tutoring, students progress in many different subjects such as math, reading and science. Throughout the year, the constant progression through these young children creates a sense of happiness and joy as you are endlessly thanked by students’ parents. Although many people may argue that this is a prime example of the banking model, these students were at the elementary level where some were still learning to communicate. I feel like students should be encouraged to start independently thinking at around the junior high school level and applying solutions that Freire discussed of dialogue and solving problems with teachers as a partner. That way students are encouraged to be creative and innovative. Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Blog Post 3: Pedagogy and Power

Paulo Freire was born September, 19, 1921. Freire was raised in Northeast Brazil and is best known for his work “Pedagogy and Oppressed.” Most of his work is stemmed from experiences of his childhood. Since Freire lived among the poor he understood how class consciousness and knowledge played a role simultaneously.  Freire became a grammar school teacher in high school and continued to get multiple degrees in his lifetime. In 1946 Paulo Freire became the Director of the Department of Education and Social Services.

In the text Paulo Freire introduces the topic Banking Model. Banking Model is the form of teaching where teachers have minimal communication with students when teaching a lesson.  Instead of communicating, teachers would often lecture and “deposit” information into the student’s head. This would happen through memorizing, repeating, and reciting.  Freire explained that this method of teaching is flawed because students are not taught how to process information which, leads them to not fully understand what they are learning. This empowers the teacher and disempowers the student.  Each student learns in a different and unique way which The Banking Model eradicates. Students who are not able to process what the teacher taught using The Banking Model were often lost and left behind in the education system because of the authority the teacher held over the student.

As a student who is  a visual learner being taught using The Banking Model would be a big NO NO!!!!!! There are often times where teachers and professors have this authority over us that we cannot really control the way that they are teaching. Professors and teachers who do not acknowledge that there are different types of way to teach rather then lecturing just make it super hard on students to engage in class. Being lectured at is not fun and usually puts me to sleep and I am pretty sure other college students would agree with me. Professors should think how can I teach in a way that students would learn and understand the information being taught. Anyone can sit there and lecture at students but how many professors/ teachers can actually say that they have made their classes engaging and actually HAVE TAUGHT?!?!