Banking Concept Of Education

Have you ever sat row upon row, staring at the backs of other students, and being bored out of your mind? Have you ever stood up in front of a classroom of silent students and talked about a particular topic for an agonizing few hours? All you do is listen to the teacher without voicing your outlook. If you have, then you are aware with what Paulo Freire defines as the “banking concept of education” from his paper “The Banking Concept of Education”. He defines this concept harmful to the educational system, due to no interactions between the student and teacher. The students will not be able to grasp the information in the same way that they could with debates and expression. How are the students going to be able to ask questions, contradict,

The banking concept educates students in a way that students do not have the opportunity to communicate with the teacher. In my science class, I was not able to communicate with the teacher. Instead of interacting, I, along with other students, had to master the science of listening and memorizing. The teacher would constantly give us information for us to write down. We had to memorize vocabulary words, notes that were given by the teacher, and harvested concepts. According to the teacher, we were required to know and accept all of the information given by them to succeed in the classroom. However my teacher did not know that this system of education was ineffective and harmful. My English class was very comparable to my science class. In my English class, the students had to read certain books and analyze it. For example, one of the books we had to read was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The students and I would try to explain the meaning of the title and other annotations, however the teacher would constantly shut us down. The teacher continuously told his students that only his annotations of the book were correct. Throughout the year, we would only listen to the teacher and what he had to say about the books we’ve read. At the end, I was not able to retain any of the information on the books. My teachers’ teaching strategy negated the individuality of the students, such as their style of learning, and the opportunity to give our opinion and have it heard. Any attempts by the student to creatively use the information being ‘deposited’ by their teacher is prematurely squashed as seen done by my English