Written in 1970, Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed expresses his adamant disapproval of 1960’s South American educational systems. Freire’s second chapter examines the flaws of a method of teaching that aims only to “deposit” information into submissive students that are conditioned to simply acquire and store vast amounts of information that is then left unutilized. This method Freire calls “banking” capitalizes on its ability to transform students into ignorant objects that are stripped of the ability to see the world beyond what information is bestowed upon them. Students partake in lessons where a teacher conveys information they are expected to memorize and accept a “motionless, static, compartmentalized and predictable” version …show more content…
Contrary to what the “banking” method depicts, Freire asserts that reality is ever changing and transforming, a process that isn’t simply encountered and consciously considered, but interacted with and renovated. He emphasizes man’s power of transformation and the “liberation” that results when reality is questioned, analyzed, and re-invented and reformed because Freire’s most vehement claim is that “liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information” that hinder and prevent learners from truly integrating into the complexity that is our world, and instead only going as far as adapting the world offered through the banking …show more content…
Freire’s proposed teaching method allows students to take the wheel in their educational endeavors and choose not to adapt to our world and its problems, and instead strive to be advocates for change. The problem, however, is that a complete transformation to problem-posing would inadvertently hinder student’s ability to solve the challenging problems we face today. Though Freire makes a concerted effort to emphasize the harm of the “banking method,” he doesn’t acknowledge the gray area that is present when a problem’s solution involves knowing information that can only truly be absorbed through the banking method. To make wise decisions regarding current struggles our society is facing, it is important to have memorized a healthy amount of our country’s and world’s history, to know the consequences of a population’s behavior and the effects of decisions made even with the best intentions. No matter how monotonous learning about history may be, it is vital to have something to work with in one’s