Critical Pedagogy and Literacy: Debunking Banking Education

While Freire was a reading scholar, he also emphasized educational reform. He understood that much of the illiteracy which he saw was a product of inequitable and systematic ways of think about education. Freire posed that the problem was banking education and the solution, problem-posing education.

The banking education metaphor rests in a political narrative about the authority of the teacher. This narrative sees the teacher as the “narrator” of the story while the student is simply the passive listener. It is predicated on the idea that teachers simply dump knowledge into the heads of their students. In this way, “words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity” (Freire, 1970/1990, p. 57). Essentially teachers are robbing students of the meaning of words and giving them simple outlines or empty constructions of what the words can really do.

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire, 1970/1990, p. 58). Freire goes on to describe that this idea of banking is predicated upon the idea that the teacher is superior while students are inferior in the process of gaining knowledge. To continue, Freire gives a litany of prescribed roles for teachers and student under the banking philosophy that deteriorate the education process:

(a) The teacher teaches and the students are taught;

(b) the teacher know everything and the students know nothing;

(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

(d) the teacher talks and the students listen—meekly;

(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;

(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;

(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;

(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;

(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. (Freire, 1970/1990, p. 59)

These prescribed roles are dangerous and can kill the authenticity and creativity of true education. It should be noted that not one of these roles begins with the student; rather, they being with the teacher who is supposed to have more power.

“Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality” (Freire, 1970/1990, p. 68). Freire’s reform, problem-posing education, is simply described by Freire as acting on the essence of consciousness, intentionality, and communication (Freire, 1970/1990, p. 66). This reform inspires students to engage in the learning process with teachers. Seeing learning as a cooperative investigation allows students and teachers to dialogue about concrete realities within the lives of the community in which they exist. By engaging in this discussion, inevitable questions and problems will arise—understanding how to respond to those problems is the heart of the educational process.

If Freire had an educational manifesto, I would argue that it would never begin with “the teacher”; rather, I believe Freire understands that the process of learning begins with “the student”.

#Sightseeing