Banking concept of Education summary
The justification for a pedagogy of the oppressed.
The dichotomy of oppressors and oppressed - and how to move beyond it.
The concrete reality of oppression and the oppressed.
Nobody liberates anybody else, and nobody liberates themselves all alone. People liberate themselves in fellowship with each other.
Freire puts forth a pedagogy in which the individual learns to cultivate his own growth through situations from his daily life that provide useful learning experiences. This is not a pedagogy for the oppressed; it is rather a pedagogy of the oppressed. The subject should build his reality from the circumstances that give rise to the daily events of his life. The texts that the individual creates permit him to reflect upon and analyse the world in which he lives - not in an effort to adapt himself to this world, but rather as part of an effort to reform it and to make it conform to his historical demands.
The method of learning of Paulo Freire requires that students do more than simply reproduce the words that already exist. It requires that they create their own words, words that allow them to become aware of reality in order to fight for their own emancipation. Without this, some people acquire a kind of naive consciousness in which they are aware of their situation but don't make any effort to change it; they take a conformist stance and consider their situation something normal, even to the point of supporting it themselves. Other individuals construct their own reality and liberate themselves from oppression, only to go to the opposite extreme and become the antithesis of what they were fighting against.
The person who thinks and reflects goes about creating himself from the inside out. He creates his consciousness of struggle by transforming reality and liberating himself from the oppression that has been inserted by traditional pedagogy. In the same way, when he acquires a new way of thinking, his understanding of the social status that he holds changes him. It's not necessarily a materialistic understanding, but a cognitive one, whose importance is revealed in the liberation from oppression which is found in the interior of the consciousness of the individual who possesses it. Freire endeavors that the individual, through systematic study, also learn to fight for the end of oppression and for constructive criticism of the status quo.
Freire's proposed method implies two distinct and sequential moments: the first involves becoming conscious of the reality that the individual lives as an oppressed being subject to the decisions that the oppressors impose; the second refers to the initiative of the oppressed to fight and emancipate themselves from the oppressors. Freire does not believe that the lived situation consists only of a simple awareness of reality. Instead, he believes that the individual has a historical need to fight against the status that dwells within him. The efforts of the oppressed become focused and concrete through the type of learning that school really should give them, instead of encouraging them to adapt to their reality, as the oppressors themselves do.
In the relationships they establish, the oppressed appear to be the instigators of violence, even when the conditions and events that they have experienced up to that point incite them to try to modify their status. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the oppressors, such fights are canonised as unnecessary violence or utopian dreams, and not as the ideas of a revolutionary who is known for the ideological commitment that he establishes with his peers, rather than for the battles he carries out. Although the reality of the oppressed is not the will of God, although He is not responsible for the oppressive situation, in a society without conscience such situations are presented as normal. These circumstances occasionally provoke a mistaken horizontal violence between the oppressed themselves in their efforts to achieve emancipation.
Furthermore, the oppressors accuse those who oppose them of being disobliging, irresponsible, depraved and responsible for their own situation, despite the fact that even if these adjectives do sometimes apply, they are really a response to being oppressed and are ultimately the result of the exploitation to which these people have been subjected. The situation gets even worse when the oppressed accept this reality and adapt to it without questioning or even attempting to change it. This generates in the oppressed an emotional dependence that seems irrevocable. It is necessary, therefore, that these individuals get to know themselves in order to begin the fight for their inexorable emancipation.
II.
The "bank" concept of education as an instrument of oppression. Its assumptions. Its critiques.
The problematising concept of education and freedom. Its assumptions.
The "bank" concept of education and the dichotomy of educator/educated.
The problematising concept and the overcoming of the educator/educated dichotomy. Nobody educates anybody else. Nobody educates himself. People educate each other through their interactions of the world.
Man as an incomplete being, conscious of his incompleteness, and his eternal quest to BE MORE.
Currently in education, there is excessive use of lecturing and memorisation, with little analysis of the importance of what is being memorised. For example, 1945 marks the end of the Second World War, but we do not know how that affected our lives or how it continues to affect the daily relationships we establish. We have simply memorised and retained the date. Freire describes this situation as one in which the students are seen as containers into which knowledge can be deposited. The teacher is the depositor and the knowledge is that which is deposited on a daily basis. This bank concept of education attempts to transform the minds of individuals so that they will adapt better to actual situations and be dominated by them with greater ease. The more passive people are, the more they will adapt, the more their creativity will diminish and their naiveté increase, which creates the conditions necessary for the oppressors to emerge as generous benefactors.
