Paulo Freire: Capter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed

In Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it is quite clear that Freire in critical of the banking concept that is often used in education.  In other words teachers have become merely narrators to their students and believe that they are bestowing them an invaluable gift by sharing their knowledge with their students who know nothing. (In my opinion, if you are an educator that evaluates their students as people who are inferior then you really shouldn’t be teaching.)  According to these teachers, students are to be “containers” that are empty and need to be “filled with knowledge.  I can only imagine a classroom where a teacher takes this approach, and I imagine a very boring classroom composing of a teacher with a monotone voice giving a lecture.

I agree with Freire when he states that the banking concept of teaching is a sickness within education, and that some teachers have become oppressors to their students learning.  In all reality great teachers do not feel the need to oppress their students, but encourage them to be creative in their thought process, which in turn allows the teachers to also become students and learn from their students as well.  However, those who have been teaching as oppressors might find it harder to transform their ways in which they give up some of their power and think of their students as conscious beings and not objects.

I found it hard to narrow down what Freire was suggesting as a solution.  From what I gathered he wants students and teachers need to work together in the classroom in order to create a positive learning environment where students feel valued and actually what to learn.  I think that Freire would very much like Judith Langer’s Response- Based Approach to Reading Literature, where the teacher acts as a facilitator guiding their students to independent and creative conclusions without telling their students what to think.  

Overall, I found this article very intriguing even if it was a highly dense read.  Freire makes a very well calculated argument against the banking system and does very little to hide his true feelings on the failures of the banking system.  I did find the article was very heavy on criticizing the banking system and could have used more discussion and exploration on the solution that he proposed.