Richard Rodriguez's Theory Of Education Analysis

Unlike Freire’s conclusion of education as liberation and exploring one’s historical background, Rodriguez’s conclusion involves removing oneself from ones historical background. Rodriguez believes in complete alienation from home, childhood, and family in order to develop new ways of thinking. He believes this process to be a loss, but a necessary sacrifice to achieve academic success. He states that the student “must move between environments, his home and the classroom, which are at cultural extremes, opposed” (Rodriguez 547). He believes that the two environments cannot coincide until the student has gone through many years of education to finally “achieve desire” and look back on his or her life to reconnect with the person they were before

Rodriguez spent many years of education fulfilling the “banking” concept, and although he later recognizes the loss it entailed, he primarily believes that imitation plays an important role in the process of education for one must do this to succeed. Here, Freire would argue that the educational system is currently oppressive towards the students, and that there is a sense of necrophily behind it all, that being the love of death. This love of death, he explains, is the technique of teaching based on memory. Rodriguez would contradict this explanation of education, relaying that “banking” plays a large role in the success of the student. He explains rightfully that, “They must develop the skill of memory long before they become critical thinkers” (Rodriguez 560). Rodriguez may agree with Freire that the point of education is to become a critical thinker who questions, learns, and advances, but unlike Freire’s idea of this taking place during education, Rodriguez believes it cannot be reached until education has come to a conclusion, what Rodriguez refers to as

Freire takes the stance that education too often alienates students from their historical situation, whereas Rodriguez finds it necessary for the student to alienate oneself from one’s original situation in order to achieve individual thinking. This necrophilic technique of education dominates students and is only alienating them from Freire’s proposed version of education “Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it” (Freire 249). What Freire means by this is that students cannot have a liberated view of themselves and their relations with the world if they are taught with the banking concept of education. They are alienated from what is the most important historical aspect of their lives, their relationship with the world, and therefore Freire’s conclusion opposes