Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The education of students is very important. How they learn and what they learn is held up to the teachers and administrations. Paulo Freire makes a good point “the student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means. . . . to memorize mechanically. . . it turns them into containers and receptacles to be filled by the teachers.” (P. 1) the thought that students are being taught as containers is just scary. I do not understand how teachers can even have the power and effect they think this is an effective technique. The “banking concept of education in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.” I know for me that I never learned that way. I do not just absorb information or retain much of what a teacher teaches without having the practice and application. Teachers are not the only ones that can teach students nor are they non influential. Many teachers have the knowledge within their content area and “the teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them.”

I could not imagine teaching students with the mentality that I am the only influence students have. That is a very scary thought. Students are not meant to just absorb and sit there; they have to be able to apply what they are learning but they are not the only ones learning. Teachers learn just as much from their students as they can teach them.

“It enables teachers and students to become subjects of the educational process by overcoming authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism; it also enables people to overcome their false perception of reality.” Problem posing education does not do much of anything except give more of an impact to students than earlier learning and teaching techniques.