English Paper

Final Essay

Paulo Freire, the author of The “Banking” Concept of Education grew up in Northeastern Brazil; he has always been a talented writer, which he proved by becoming a grammar teacher during high school. Freire’s interest in dialogic education has led to him producing educational related writing pieces. The “Banking” Concept of Education consists of two educational notions: the banking concept and Problem Posing. The Banking Concept follows the classic educational system, which is students memorizing and not understanding the material that is being taught. Problem Posing consists of the students questioning what is being taught and truly understanding the material. Both of these concepts will be compared and contrasted to the “Community Arts Initiative Fresh Eyes”, which was an art exhibit created by the artist Hannah Burr.

Furthermore, the first educational system in the reading is the Banking Concept, which is a style of learning, where students memorize the material that is taught. According to Paulo Freire this “turns students into ‘containers’, ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are”(318). Memorizing the material that is taught by the teachers might lead to students doing well on tests and quizzes, however they will be unsuccessful in comprehending concepts and permanently having them accessible to their brain. There are various reasons why this style of learning will lead to failure. First of all, students will get to a point where there is too much information, which cannot entirely be memorized, which the author Paulo Freire labels as “oppression”. The second reason is that when working or having to use the material for hands on activities, the students will not succeed since they did not understand the material and just memorized it.

In addition, an example that is given by...