Pedagogy of the Opressed

Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed offers us a unique view of how some methods of teaching are not effective. In chapter two of the book, he explains how the banking concept is often used as a teaching methodology. The banking method encompasses the idea that the teacher should act as a depositor of information to their students who know nothing. This type of relationship leads to a problem in which the only way for students to learn is by taking in the information given to them and simply memorizing it and regurgitating it when the time is right. With this method, no real learning is accomplished. Students may remember the concepts and ideas that are needed to pass the class but they often can’t recall this information after it is no longer needed for a grade. For true learning to occur, students must be able to be confused and find their own ways of understanding. They must be able to negotiate this confusion on their own in order to find the most meaning. This is not to say that’s teachers should help their students learn, but they should not merely be depositors of information.

Another problem with the banking concept is that whatever the teacher says is fact. This is a major problem, especially when it comes to literature. If a teacher tells his students that the meanings behind a text can only be the things that he/she believes to be true, then that teacher has repressed a number of alternately correct interpretations of the text. I can give a text to thirty students and I would guess I would have at least fifteen different ideas from them about the meaning behind the words. That is what makes literature so powerful. Students need to be able to look for meaning on their own while the teacher helps them negotiate their confusions. A teacher acting as a depositor of information isn’t actually teaching at all, they’re only talking at their students.