Humanism Of Banking

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is men themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, men cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through

invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. - Paulo Freire” This whole statement is true. I have stated before that teachers do not teach to benefit the students they just teach straight out of the book. For a teacher to be upset because a student asked a question over a subject that they are being taught and what the teacher is giving them is unacceptable because this is what the student was told and the teacher probably doesn’t even understand what they are teaching to the students.

“Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation. – Paulo Freire” If Paulo sees that the banking concept of education is dehumanizing the students because of what the teachers are “depositing” into us then maybe we need to look at out schools again. I just read that the school districts are wanting to bring back paddling to “misbehaving/disobedient” students. So not only are they going to try to beat the students but if the are teaching with the banking concept of education mindset they will take their anger out on the kids for the simple fact that they do not understand what it being taught to them.

“The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality.

It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the rabbit. The "humanism" of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons -- the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human. – Paulo Freire” This is just as if students were being taught 2+2=4 in class but when it came to the pop quiz or the test the questions would say something like “If john had 2 cars and bought 7 goats how many bananas does he have?” and then everyone in the class is looking at the paper very confused because this is not what was taught in class. The teacher is sticking to a script strictly out of the book that they were given. So when 90% of the class fails and the teacher is very upset because they got in trouble because their fail numbers are so high they take it out on the students. But the teacher is only going out of the book and the students are only receiving what is being taught to

them.

This type of teaching is absurd, and I believe that teachers should actually take the time out and teach the students instead of telling them what is in the book. I do notice that in my sisters’ schools they do offer after school tutoring and if you need help they will let you call them on their cell. That is because these teachers care not all of them but some of them. I hope that maybe the newer teachers that are coming in will not use this type of concept and help their students.