Paulo Freire: Pedagogue

1317 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Poverty effects on education

Throughout history, many men and women have made important contributions to the world of education. Amongst these is the Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire, whose influences on the world have been both broad and deep. A true believer in Marxist theory, his central ideas regarding education revolve around the concept that the experience and learning process of education are more important than the "facts" or concepts that are being taught. Consequently, traditional teaching methods (known as "Banking") train students to be passive, unthinking, and subservient to their superiors; instead, teachers should "free" their students by employing "problem-posing" techniques, where teachers not only present concepts for students to analyse, but actually become "students" themselves ("Oppressed").

Paulo Freire's radical theories are best understood in the context of his upbringing amongst the Brazilian poor. Although his family was not a member of the absolute lowest classes, they were forced to live in a poor laborers' community due to the impact of the Great Depression. He realized that many "of his day-to-day companions…ate less [than him] and some…hardly ever ate", causing him to realize that "‘…a lot of things in the world were not going well'" (Lownd). These experiences would prove to be amongst the most influential of his life, as he obtained a unique familiarity with their lives and status, and how this status affected their education. As an adult, his work at SESI further demonstrated the gaps between the education that the schools offered and the real needs of the working-class people (Bentley). These experiences with the impoverished peoples of Brazil led him to the So...

... middle of paper ...

...sed. Continuum Publishing Company, 1970

28 Oct 2004 http://www.marxists.org/subject/education/freire/pedagogy/

Williams, Laurie Rage & Hope: Paulo Freire — Educational Banking. 26 Nov 1999

28 Oct 2004 http://www.edb.utexas.edu/faculty/scheurich/proj3/freire3.html

Gibson, Rich Paulo Freire and Pedagogy for Social Justice. Spring 1999.

28 Oct 2004 http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/freireTRSSE.htm

Bentley, Leslie Paulo Freire — A Brief Biography. Dec 1999. 28 Oct 2004

http://www.unomaha.edu/~pto/paulo.htm

Yoo, Sung-Sang Paulo Freire — Freirean Pedagogy 28 Oct 2004

http://paulofreireinstitute.org/Documents/PF-Freirean_Pedagogy.html

Lownd, Richard Freire's Life and Work. 28 Oct 2004

http://paulofreireinstitute.org/Documents/PF-life_and_work_by_Peter.html

Show More
Related

  • Comparing Fredrick Douglas And Freire's Views Of Social Justice

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is a banking system that Freire talks about that regards to men as adaptable and manageable beings. Freire even says “The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of the world.” His concept on education is that the teachers in the community needs to get the minds of students more active. Fredrick Douglas and Paulo Freire have very different views on the social justice behind learning to read, however, their arguments are very similar to each other as well.

    Read More

  • The Freethinking Student of Dialogic/Dialectic Learning

    1052 Words  | 3 Pages

    Paulo Freire questions the theory that education is just a basic process consisting of just teaching between a student and teacher in Pedagogy of Hope. The text elaborates on the multiple components of teaching. Freire makes a valid point that the teaching style is an imperative factor in whether the student is able to comprehend the material. He lists four types of teaching styles. The first, authoritarian, the teacher is dispassionate to any input from the student. The second, permissive, allows the student full control of their learning with little to no teacher input. The third, intellectualism, is where the teacher is enamored and overwhelmed by the content of the teaching. The most important of the styles to Freire is dialogic/dialectic, engaging both the student and teacher in the content taught. This style is imperative to the students of today’s society because of the need to be free thinkers able to analyze critically and dialogic/dialectic is the only style with the capabilities to influence the mind.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Child Of The Dark

    1884 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the favela of São Paulo, Brazil, 1958, Carolina Maria de Jesus rewrote the words of a famous poet, “In this era it is necessary to say: ‘Cry, child. Life is bitter,’” (de Jesus 27). Her sentiments reflected the cruel truth of the favelas, the location where the city’s impoverished inhabited small shacks. Because of housing developments, poor families were pushed to the outskirts of the city into shanty towns. Within the favelas, the infant mortality rate was high, there was no indoor plumbing or electricity, drug lords were governing forces, drug addiction was rampant, and people were starving to death. Child of the Dark, a diary written by Carolina Maria de Jesus from 1955 to 1960, provides a unique view from inside Brazil’s favelas, discussing the perceptions of good

    Read More

  • The Banking Concept of Education and The Achievement of Desire

    1470 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this method of education, according to Freire, students never think critically or develop ideas. The second type of education is labeled “problem-posing”. Freire makes it very clear that he is an advocate of the “problem-posing” method of education. He believes in encourages communication and better comprehension of what the students are learning. “Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning…the teacher cannot think for his students, nor can he impose his thought on them” (Freire 216). Freire argues that the only real form of educatio...

    Read More

  • Dissecting the Audiologist Path: A Percy-Inspired Analysis

    1480 Words  | 3 Pages

    Freier stated that the educator was taking away the power of the student to think on their own which turned them into “receptacles”. Freier wrote, “Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teachers. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are (Freier 216). It seems like these great authors such as Walker Percy and Paulo Freier criticize the role educators play in the education system and urge students to break free the conformity of the way subjects are taught in school and truly experience them through our own dialectical

    Read More

  • Paulo Freire's The Banking Concept Of Education

    1357 Words  | 3 Pages

    One teacher may adopt the banking concept while the other may utilize the problem-posing concept. However, while problem-posing education generates creativity by giving students the ability to communicate, banking education does not. Freire asserts that in the “banking” concept of education, “the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it” (217). Freire indicates that students, who are victims of banking education, have no control over how an instructor chooses to teach. Therefore, creativity is destroyed by the fact that it was not even permitted in the first place. Students are not able to express their opinions or solve problems using their own methods because in order to pass the class, students not only need to adapt to the teaching style of their professors but think like them too. Freire’s quote relates to experiences I have had with “banking” teachers throughout my twelve years of formal education. Those teachers only taught using textbooks, therefore, they insisted that the textbook was always right. If I were to solve a math problem using a technique different from the book, then I would not get points for the problem even though my answer was right. And if I were to interpret an open-ended essay different from how my teacher would then my interpretations would be wrong. By doing this, my teachers destroyed my creativity. I was prohibited from my own thoughts and penalized if I expressed them. The only alternative for me was to become a “robot” that followed the orders of authorities, but being a “robot” was not something I was ashamed of. In fact, my role as a “robot” led me to better understand the “drama of Education” in which teachers attempt to “regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the students”. I was able to figure out that my own teachers had tried to handle the way the world “entered into me” by

    Read More

  • Freire's The Banking Concept of Education

    460 Words  | 1 Pages

    Through Freire’s “ The Banking Concept of Education,'; we see the effects this concept has on it’s students and also we see the effects that the alternate concept, problem-posing has. The ‘banking’ concept allows the students to become vessels of knowledge, not being able to learn at a creative pace. By using communism, seeing through how education is taught in the classroom, it is parallel to Freire’s ‘banking’ concept. We can see that both ideas are similar and both were harmful to the human mind. While ‘banking’ poses the threat of creative growth and power, Marxism, which applies Marx’s ideas to learning in a communistic way, it creates the threat of never being able to learn.

    Read More

  • The Banking Concept Of Education In Paulo Friere's Dead Poet Society

    1390 Words  | 3 Pages

    Paulo Friere’s essay “The ‘Banking’ concept of education” is a short passage from his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" that explains the two primary types of education that exist according to Friere. Friere describes the two types of educating as the banking concept, which is briefly described as the transfer of the knowledgeable teacher, to the ignorant student "Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor." (Friere 1), and the problem-poser, which he describes as two way communication in which the students and teacher both teach and learn from one another "Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with

    Read More

  • Analysis of Flavios Home by Gordon Parks

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sent out to write an article about fathers and poverty, and the effect it had on the dreams and aspirations of the lives of the fathers, Parks runs into Flavio de Silva, a 12 year old boy who looked skinny and a bit malnourished. Although the main assignment he had been sent out to do was on fathers and poverty, Parks felt that Flavio said a tone more about poverty than a dozen fathers ever could. Falvios physical appearance alone said much more than words ever could. Parks tries to use contrast to try and emphasize just how different life was for the rich whose spacious houses were situated not so far where the drainage system barely worked and where people did not even have source for clean water. From the article, one can easily imagine the times before when racism was highly rampant as in a way the people during those harsh times were also disadvantaged and unable to fight back for their rights.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Banking Concept Of Education

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Paulo Freire’s essay “The Banking Concept of Education” he talks about how in education there is no conversation between the teachers/professors and their students. In this essay there are a few points I do disagree with, such as that there are some class in which there cannot really be any conversation or discussion, for example mathematics cannot be disproven because there are theorems and concrete facts, so teachers and professors have to teach for memorization. Another reason I disagree with Freire’s way teaching is because in the banking concept Freire is against when teachers are just telling students things and they are regurgitating them, but some students learn better using memorization for learning in the class room and also when studying. The next point I disagree with in Freire’s essay is he doesn’t really look at it from the teachers stand point, because in the United States at least the teachers are now forced to only teach certain points in their subject because of all the standardize testing that they now have in place, specifically grade school. The last thing in Freire’s essay that I disagree with is how he seems to kind of put down teachers.

    Read More

  • Pablo Freire's Philosophy on Education and Banking

    996 Words  | 2 Pages

    Education is at the core of humanity and its teaching has been mistreated. Based on Paulo Freire’s theory, education has been torn apart from its truthful purpose. It is now used to alienate human beings instead of promoting unity. Throughout this chapter, Chapter 2 in Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he concentrates on the teacher-student relationship in classrooms. He sees education as information that is being passed on or “banked” from teachers to students.

    Read More

  • The Banking Concept Of Education As An Instrument Of Oppression By Paulo Freire

    849 Words  | 2 Pages

    In today’s society, schools in wealthy communities are better than those in poor communities, higher income schools are simply better at preparing their students for their future. In the reading “The Banking Concept Of Education As An Instrument Of Oppression” by Paulo Freire, he believes that teachers are depositing information into their students. He states that there are two educational systems, the “banking concept” is when teachers are filling their students up with information but the students aren’t fully understanding the material. On the other hand, the “problem posing concept” is when the teacher lets the students communicate with each other. It opens the classroom to a learning environment. Especially when students are more comfortable enough to ask the teacher a question. Esentionally he prefers the problem posing concept. Futhermore, “Social Class and The Hidden Curriculum Of Work” by Jean Anyon an educator at Rutgers University, Newark. She researches how students of different economic backgrounds are interacting with school work and teacher interaction in their elementary schools. Also, she supports her research by looking at the various ways public schools provide particular types of knowledge and educational experiences of the different social classes.

    Read More

  • Pedagogy of the Oppressed Reflection by Paulo Freire

    975 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire discussed the problems that lay in education and proposed solutions to the problems. Freire faulted the capitalist of education and set a revolution in education. In his book Freire said that a problem-prosing education is what was needed to revolutionize education. The book Pedagogy of the Oppressed introduced Freire's concepts and theories surrounding education during the 20th century. Many of concepts discussed as the foundation of education include: the "banking theory," "conscientization," "dialogical method," and "transformative education." In his book, Freire shows that the practices in education that were being used were dehumanizing and producing unproductive students to the world. He proposed the idea that education should be a "dialogical process" in which students and teachers are learning from their experiences.

    Read More

  • Paulo Freire: The Banking Concept Of Education

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    Freire wrote of education from a more political point of view, with words like oppressed and freedom in titles of his books. In his home country of Brazil, the 1960’s were important years both educationally and politically, which probably inspired Freire’s writing. In 1964, a military dictatorship took control of Brazil (WEBSITE), and in the same year, Freire was imprisoned and then exiled from the country. This would definitely have inspired Freire to write about education with the thought of freedom snuck in between the lines. Freire’s audience of the time would not have been in Brazil until it was published there in 1974, however it was published in Portuguese, English and Spanish (Readings for Writers). Teachers and students alike were able to relate to relate to The “Banking” Concept of Education in the late 1960’s and they still can relate to it in modern times. Students relate to the feeling of being oppressed and disrespected. Teachers will connect with Freire’s purpose by realizing that they actually do need to teach using his proposed problem-posing method.

    Read More

  • Teaching Methods Reflection

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this course I experienced an important change in my beliefs about teaching; I came to understand that there are many different theories and methods that can be tailored to suit the teacher and the needs of the student. The readings, especially those from Lyons, G., Ford, M., & Arthur-Kelly, M. (2011), Groundwater-Smith, S., Ewing, R., & Le Cornu, R. (2007), and Whitton, D., Barker, K., Nosworthy, M., Sinclair, C., Nanlohy, P. (2010), have helped me to understand this in particular. In composing my essay about teaching methods and other themes, my learning was solidified, my knowledge deepened by my research and my writing skills honed.

    Read More

More about Paulo Freire: Pedagogue

Open Document