"The Banking Concept of Education"-Paolo Freire

Paolo Freire talks about a complicated subject of the forms of education in his essay, "The Banking Concept of Education". This was a particularly difficult read for me, as I struggled with most of the sentence structure and vocabulary, so I will apologize if I have a total misconception of some of his ideas!


Although I struggled, one area that stood out to me was Freire's idea of narration:
      "Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher."...."Education thus becomes an act of depositing." (Freire 74)


I found it particularly interesting that Freire was accurate that sometimes students are "deposited" with information. When I think of a deposit, I just think of money sitting in the bank. This idea of students just being given information is quite common for some. I know I have had information just dumped on me in several classes. Freire is emphasizing the importance of teachers to not just give information but to make it important so that it has meaning and isn't just "sitting" in their banks. While some things require memorization, most should not, and students shouldn't have to memorize monotonous information, as Freire implies. Its important for the information to hold meaning, and for students to not become just dumpsters full of teachers' knowledge. 


Another realization I have, is that Freire talks about teachers being better than students, and with this act of "filling the container", teachers are therefore placed higher or better than students. The best kind of education is when a student asks questions that further what a teacher has already talked about. If a teacher is just giving all that he or she knows, that doesn't necessarily make them any better than the student who now knows the same information. The best education is the kind where students enlighten teachers to know more and for students to learn more on their own. This would prevent the deposit of teachers and would reduce the banking of knowledge of students.