encountered classes that I have
enjoyed and others I have not. Typically I have always judged my liking or
dismay of a class based upon the teacher. However, up until this point I
assumed they were a good teacher based upon if students typically received high
grades in the class. After reading Paulo Freire’s article “The Banking Concept
of Education” my eyes have been opened to a new way of depicting if a teacher
is successful. Freire explains that there are two different general ways of a
teacher approaching a class. These two ways include the “banking” method and
the “problem-posing” method. The only problem with Freire’s take on these two
methods is that he alludes to them as being black and white methods. With that,
Freire seems as if a teacher can only teach one way or the other and that there
is no middle ground for teaching. After examining classes that have been my
favorite and that have been my least favorite, there is a middle ground for
teaching. In fact, the complete middle of the spectrum is where the more
efficient classes are located.
The banking method that is proposed
by Freire is one that compares a certain teaching style to how a bank is
operated. What is being referred by this method is the circumstance in general
when a teacher lectures the whole class period and is expecting the students to
essentially inhale the knowledge. He states that, “Education thus becomes an
act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher
is the depositor (318).” This method is negatively perceived in this article as
being on the low end of the spectrum when it comes to teaching. Main negative
points to this approach include students not being able to fully sink in what
they’re learning and there isn’t as strong of a student-teacher relationship,
as “The banking concept does not admit to such partnership… (321).”
The method that lies on the opposite
end of the spectrum is what Freire calls the problem-posing method. As
expected, this method is completely the opposite of the first method. The only
thing that is truly an overlapping trait of the two is that they are both
avenues of trying to educate students. So this problem-posing approach that
Freire offers is an out of the box approach on learning that “is revolutionary
futurity (327).” With this approach, the students are engaged in the learning
and even sometimes control the learning. Unlike the banking approach, this
style has a range in how this learning occurs. Teaching styles can include
discussion groups, interactive learning with technology and even field trips
(first-hand experience learning). Main positive points that are associated with
this approach includes the students becoming engaged and more involved in their
learning, working out struggles within their thinking (and resolving them), and
the teacher learning with the students at points, “The teacher is no longer
merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the
students…(324).”
So with these two approaches on
teaching being more discussed, are there really teachers
that completely choose to stick completely to one
method? Or does every teacher in some form or another lie in between on the
spectrum? I tried examining these questions brought upon myself by first
examining my own personal examples in my academic history.
My first look at how this spectrum
varied was by reflecting on my class that I found to be
my favorite class of my schooling. My favorite class
was my AP Calculus BC class in high school that I took my junior year. I
happened to be very close to my teacher Mrs. Traina, as a student, which I believe
helped. But based on Freire’s ideals of how material is presented to a student,
Mrs. Traina’s teaching style fell in the middle ground of his spectrum. She
first laid down the basis of the material she needed to present to us in power
point form. This is where the banking side came into her approach. But within
the power point, she interacted with us and even worked out some practice
problems together as a class. Additionally she also had us work out problems
together in groups, making us struggle to get through the work. This showed the
problem-posing side of things within this class, allowing for this class to be
approximately equally balanced and to fall in the middle of the spectrum. In
the end, this type of approach allowed for knowledge to stick with the majority
of us to the point of most of us passing the AP Exam.
This next paragraph has been omitted on this blog due to confidential circumstances.
Through my experiences in my
academic history, there is no class that is flat out ran on
the concept of banking and there is no class that is
flat out ran on the concept of problem-posing. If there were a class truly ran
on banking, the teacher would have no educational interaction with his students.
In contrast, if a class were truly ran on problem-posing, where would the class
even start discussion from? Although Freire didn’t seem to agree with this
point, it seems as if truly the best classes lied directly in the middle of the
spectrum. This would be the case so there is a foundation built for the class
and there is a starting point for the students to start working out their
problems from. From my history as aforementioned, all of my classes were within
the middle ground on Freire’s scale. The true difference was the better the
class, the closer it was to being equally balanced, the better the class was.
If it had too much lecturing, or not enough, the class seemed not to be as efficient.
As Paulo Freire believed, the best teachers don’t always teach the students.
Work Cited
Freire, Paulo. “The “Banking”
Concept of Education.” Ways of Reading.
9th Edition. David Bartholomae & Anthony Petrosky. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 318-332. Print.
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