After reading this, I can only think that Paulo Freire would want us to blast his theory out of the water so we can therefore transform into yet another type of learning.
The thesis is that the Banking Concept of teaching is oppressing the students and from their own humanity in conjunction with the actual teacher being the most oppressed of them all. Therefore, choosing the route of Critical Pedagogy will not only connect students with their own humanity, but promote creativity and innovation – therefore transforming the world.
I see a common thread with my other readings and interests as well concerning connections and valuing life. Friere stresses that biophily is much better than necrophily. And in some sense, I can relate on how this could be true. If we only value things that are not living (such as materialistic gain), then we really aren’t achieving are upmost potentiality in the world – and universe.
Below are my notes which are a compilation of quotes, definitions, etc. :
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“Consciousness if thus by definition a method, in the most general sense of the word.”
“Education is suffering from narration sickness.” pg. 30
“Words are emptied of their concreteness and become hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.” pg. 30
“The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop a critical consciousness which would result from their intervention of the world and transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend to simply adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.”
“…reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation.”
“Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.”
“Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men upon their world in order to transform it,” pg. 34
“The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic relations between oppressors and oppressed.” pg. 38
TERMS: co-intentional education, pseudo-participation, narrative, subject (the teacher), objects (the students), paternalistic social action apparatus, student conscientizacao, corpo consciente, authentic thinking: thinking that is concerned about reality, biophily, necrophily, explicit awareness
Banking Concept definitions:
1. receive, memorize, and repeat
2. “knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider to know nothing.”
3. “”maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole
A) the teacher teaches and the students are taught
B) the teacher knows 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/her own professional authority, which he/she 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
4. “men as adaptable and manageable things”
5. “minimize or annul students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed,”
5. “interests of the oppressors lie in ‘changing the consciousness of the oppressed’ not the situation which oppresses them”
6. “education to avoid the threat of student conscientizacao”
7. “the effort to turn men into automatons – the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human,”
8. “assumption of a dichotomy between man and the world: man is merely in the world, not with the world or with others,”
9. “the educator’s role is to regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the students”
10. “anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality,”
11. “attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way men exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself thee task demythologizing”
12. “resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality”
13. “inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world….problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, therefore responding to the vocation…”
14. “fail to acknowledge men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take man’s historicity as their starting point,”
Teacher vs. Student
Narrator Listener
Narrator Container
Necessary Opposite Receptacle
Depositor Depository
Presciber Collectors
Demonsticator Cataloguers
Educator
Student/Teacher Teacher/Student
oppressor
welfare recipient
Marginals
Beings for others
Beings for themselves
Bank Clerk
