Paulo Freire The Banking Concept Of Education Analysis

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My all-time favorite teacher was my eleventh grade World Literature teacher, Mrs. Godshall. She would often pose open ended problems to the class to try and challenge us. She had a fresh teaching style and was quick to incorporate social media and current events into her lessons to get us involved, but she still used the traditional banking method Paulo Freire describes in his essay entitled The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education. Freire describes the banking concept as the act of teachers ‘depositing’ information into their students, similar to a vessel being filled. Mrs. Godshall used this method. She did not get to choose the material she was teaching during some aspects of the course and had to occasionally teach in the lecture …show more content…

Godshall taught us to follow a standardized essay format. She reinforced the five paragraph essay format that we had learned in middle school because it was a clear and concise layout that was easy to grade. She also knew that the five-paragraph format was used on the Keystone exams, the PSSAs, and in twelfth grade English class. It would be hard to break away from the five-paragraph essay format completely because we had used it for all of high school and most of middle school before that course. Freire might argue against these teachings because when a student is forced to use only one format for essays. They lack the freedom to figure out different ways of writing and what layouts work best with different types of essays. Then, when the have to write a paper later in life they may struggle to break out of the set essay mold they have been taught, thus inhibiting their writing abilities for further development. In Freire’s essay The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education, he emphasizes the need for consciousness in the class room to prevent the students from becoming comatose information “receptors” (Freire 2). I liked how the five- paragraph essay setup was clear for students because it taught them how to write to satisfy all their teachers in high school, even though it would be considered banking. This essay format has not hindered me as a writer but instead helped me develop my composition skills. Not worrying about the format of the essay has freed me to concentrate more on

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