...step across the stage and go onto your first day of college or your first interview, are you really ready? Is anything you just learned going to be any value, or is it all just a blur of “memorized, narrated content?” In his essay “The Banking Concept of Education,” educator Paulo Freire passionately argues that students who are product of the “banking” system never truly learn the material, but are simply taught to memorize data verbatim without the intent on retaining the information. Freire goes on encouraging that the educators should be challenging the students to think more critically through the use of: applying, engaging and exercising thoughts. Intriguing his audience by capturing them with a clever analogy using the “banking” system. Freire suggests that “education has become an act of depositing, in which the students are depositories and the teacher is the depositor,” (5) emphasizing that the students are never really being engaged to think beyond what they are being taught by their teacher and denying them the right to be an individual. This kind of learning approach he claims does not allow for “partnership” and causes “teacher-student contradiction,” (12) when there is no open communication, they cannot learn from one another. Freire argues that our broken school system is causing teachers to become “narrated subjects,” and...
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...1. Name your primary text. (Berger, Anzaldua, Porchia, Carson, Freire, Butler) Freire, “The Banking Concept of Education” 2. Free write about the following: Why have you chosen this essay to focus on? What list of issues are key to the essay you've chosen? Which issues seem most important to you? I want to explore the concepts of praxis and poesies in education. Freire claims that the Banking Concept of the education represses students from praxis. I want to explore in what sense because education even in the Banking method requires practice, at least even in becoming a better memorizer. If the students are engaging in praxis then is there any poesies happening? Are the teachers or the students really creating anything? Or, are they both just acting like inorganic entities following a series of protocols and memorizing algorithms? My next goal is to point to the Math Department at Brooklyn College and do an investigation on the curriculums of the different math courses. I’m currently in a Pre-Calculus class and “doing well” requires that the student memorizes hundreds of properties in a short period of time and apply them on examples. The problem with the examples is that they are alienated from reality. For example, if I propose to you that 1+ 1 = 2 without illustrating to you why this relationship is true and just ask you to memorize a table of different results such as 1+ 1 = 2, 2+ 2 = 4 and etc… are you really learning anything? My goal after that will...
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...There is no single explanation or all-encompassing theory that explains how adults learn. The adult learning process is complex, context bound, and highly personal. As a result, there is no single theory of learning that can be applied to all adults. Instead, the literature of the past century has yielded a variety of models, sets of assumptions and principles, theories, and explanations that make up the adult learning knowledge base. The more adult educators are familiar with this knowledge base, the more effective their practice can be, and the more responsive it can be to the needs of adult learners. This fact sheet reviews three major theories and discusses their implications for practice. What is Andragogy? In attempting to document differences between the ways adults and children learn, Malcolm Knowles (1980) popularized the concept of andragogy (“the art and science of helping adults learn”), contrasting it with pedagogy (“the art and science of teaching children”). He posited a set of assumptions about adult learners, namely, that the adult learner • Moves from dependency to increasing self-directedness as he/she matures and can direct his/her own learning; • Draws on his/her accumulated reservoir of life experiences to aid learning; • Is ready to learn when he/she assumes new social or life roles; • Is problem-centered and wants to apply new learning immediately; and • Is motivated to learn from internal, rather than external, factors. Inherent in these assumptions are...
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...Paulo Freire writes “The “Banking” Concept of Education” to inform readers about the education system and to persuade readers with his opinions and statements that the “banking” concept of education should not be adopted in the education of students rather it should be the “problem-posing” method. In his writing he explains the education system as “A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students)… Education is suffering from narration sickness.” Freire believes that education is suffering from a relationship of a teacher that speaks and a student that just listens to what the teacher will narrate. For example, “the outstanding characteristic of this narrative education… is the sonority...
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...Mindless or Productive? We all enjoyed watching high school sports back in our day. We saw our school beat other schools from around the region, we watched our friends play their hearts out doing the sport they loved, and we even showed off our school spirit by wearing our school’s colors. We thrived off seeing our friends perform and entertaining the crowd with their skills in different sports. However, there seems to be a common trend about what students and everyone else think about when considering the high school athletes: Are they dumb, mindless, and a waste of time and money? Well I believe that high school athletes are not mindless and dumb, but rather very productive, both athletically and academically. The first reason is that the sports they play in keeps them healthy and active. There are numerous reports that show how being active in sports actually benefits you not only academically, but also in a healthy way too. By being active, you can lose weight, feel happier, and live longer. Most importantly, it can make you smarter and help you concentrate (http://www.activecoquitlam.ca). When you play in a sport, your brain is firing neuro-receptors into both the left and the right hemispheres each time you run, catch, or throw a ball. Thus, coordination and communication is improved between the two hemispheres and more receptors grow each time, which is key to learning information through experiences (Oden). By being active in sports, not only are you gaining experience...
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...Cultural Action for Freedom Paulo Freire Introduction I think it is important—for my own sake as well as the reader’s—that we try, at the very outset, to clarify some points fundamental to the general understanding of my ideas on education as cultural action for freedom. This is all the more important since one of the basic aims of this work, where the process of adult literacy is discussed, is to show that if our option is for man, education is cultural action for freedom and therefore an act of knowing and not of memorization. This act can never be accounted for in its complex totality by a mechanistic theory, for such a theory does not perceive education in general and adult literacy in particular as an act of knowing. Instead, it reduces the practice of education to a complex of techniques, naively considered to be neutral, by means of which the educational process is standardized in a sterile and bureaucratic operation. This is not a gratuitous assertion. We will later clarify the radical distinction between knowing and memorizing and the reasons why we attach such importance to the adult literacy process. But first, some words about the socio-historical conditioning of the thinking presented here, as well as an explanation of the necessity for critical reflection on such conditioning. From a non-dualistic viewpoint, thought and language, constituting a whole, always refer to the reality of the thinking subject. Authentic thought-language is generated...
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...It's all about communication… «Only through communication the human life can hold meaning», mentions Paulo Freire, Brazilian psychologist and educator and I totally agree with him because nowadays communication is a very important factor that can help you to be more successful and reputable person in the world and especially at work. Let's see three most important aspects of effective communication. Listening: I think that the most important thin in communication is to listen to your interlocutor in order to understand what he is trying to express, answer or make feedback or reply and then continue the conversation. It is important because if you will not listen you won't be able to grasp the idea of the talk and no reply will be made from your side. If that happens, your companion will bethink that he/she is not interesting to you, the topic is too boring and soon the conversation will stop. So, to be successful communicator you must hear and follow your partner and off course demonstrate interest from your part if you want the dialogue to bear fruit. For example if during a business meeting the communicator will be telling the issue in a company and asking for a list of proposals or solutions and you are not listening to what he is saying you will never be able to provide with possible decisions and you will be useful for the company and maybe have even worse...
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...A Comparison of William Brickman and Paulo Freire (1921-1997) Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was an advocate for the liberation of the oppressed through the process of critical thought. He learned at an early age that conventional education is a vehicle for oppression and to escape that oppression, one must develop critical consciousness. Freire believed that students should be “given encouragement and opportunity to engage in critical thinking in the quest for the humanization of both learner and teacher” (Flanagan, 2005, p. 189). This quest for humanization and the transcendence from oppression is attained when both teacher and student is neither subject nor object but equal in the process of exchanging learning. Freire’s methodology endures today in quality education at all levels as student creativity is both encouraged and enhanced through dialogue and lived experiences. William Brickman is known as the founder of the Comparative Education Society. His greatest contribution to the field of education was his extensive research in diversified education. Through his participation in various cultures and exchanges with foreign scholars, William Brickman led the charge for comparative education. He promoted his belief of academic freedom and championed the idea that “there was no one correct way of doing comparative education” (Brehm, W.C., and Silova, I., Summer 2010, p. 23). As with any pioneer, both Freire and Brickman struggled with resistance to their methodologies...
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...In what ways do Freire and Pratt agree? Education must complete a full circle. Directional conversations should contain balance and patience. Doing this aids in the effort of growth. Freire explains in The “Banking” Concept of Education, if men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage them in the struggle for liberation. In this Freire elaborates there must be a true relationship between student and teacher. Any task without a purpose lacks reason. It is in our being to crave understanding. It is in our DNA to evolve. Our eyes have been set centered and forward. To move forward is in all that we are. Do not follow an ontological path, create one! When engaged upon conversations seek all of its contents. Pratt states in Art of the Contact Zone, “Descriptions of interactions between people in conversations, classrooms, medical and bureaucratic settings, readily take it for granted that the situation is governed by a single set of rules or norms shared by all participants.” Every turn you make a game waits. How you play the game is entirely up to you. Be mindful of all view points and ask yourself, “What is their angle?” Pratt later explains, “A classroom is analyzed as a social world unified and homogenized with respect to the teacher, whatever students do other than what the teacher specifies is invisible or anomalous to...
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...Paul Freire is a well-known scholar for his famous work in his early days in Brazil working with the poor and uneducated in poor communities bringing hope to those that were excluded by society. As a priest, Freire understood not just the educational systems but also the political part that education plays in greater role in creating consciousness in an individual’s life. Freire was heavily influence by Marxism theories and he rejected the practice of educational models that are applied in educating the poor and marginalized. Freire also understood that the key to liberate the poor and marginalized individuals must be through education due to the benefits of rehabilitation that education can provided to marginalized people. He criticized...
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...Reading this chapter by Paulo Freire, and discussing the “Banking Concept of Education,” brought up many thoughts on what really is the meaning behind the concept. From reading this packet, Freire is criticizing the way education is given out to students. You may say, the students are vessels, and the teacher is supposed to fill them with knowledge. The part that was strong on this meaning was on page 73, the list from chapter two. “The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.” “The teacher teaches and the student are taught.” These two readings are straightforward but, hold a deeper meaning. Normal education is pictured as, the student comes to class and the teacher is obliged to teach them. By this I mean the teacher...
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...ENGL 1213 20 January 2012 Paulo Freire takes us back to his house in Recife, Brazil where he was born and describes to us the birds, trees, and structure of his home. It is here that Paulo begins to learn to read and have his first experiences with letters, texts and words. Every one of our students’ first experiences with the written word is never going to be the exact duplicate of another. “The texts, the words, the letters of that context were incarnated in a series of things, objects, signs…in perceiving these, I experienced myself, and the more I experience myself, the more my perceptual capacity increased” (Freire 282). The texts, letters and words would take on images of items of Freire’s world and the more he read the more images and signs would emerge. Reading was something Freire did by using words from his world, which was further continued in his education. In his mention of a private school lessons in regards to reading was its’ congruent relationship with reading word-world. In our school systems today it is very important to realize this word-world relationship is different for every student. The images and signs being brought out by texts, letters, and words can be very different from their classmate. In trying to incorporate culturally relevant pedagogical lessons as teachers we can include a variety of different texts and literature in our classroom and expect that each of our students will have different views and understanding of the text. In Freire’s...
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...“The Banking Concept of Education” “The Banking Concept of Education,” from Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. New York: Continuum, 1993. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos [This is the citation information you will need to construct a Works Cited entry; for in-text citation, use Paulo Freire’s last name and the paragraph number (since this is a reprint and not the original, book-length source). Consult your Easy Writer for information about citing a book with a translator]. A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating Subject (the teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from narration sickness. The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to "fill" the students with the contents of his narration—contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity. The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the...
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...Paul Freire (1921-1997) left a remarkable mark on the perception of the ways in which education can change the oppressed. He championed for the progressive practice and active learner’s participation in formulating how education should be developed and implemented. According to him, education is never neutral; it is manipulated by those in power to oppress their subjects. The humanization process of education is a state where no one is subject or object over the other. Through education, the oppressed should be empowered to see the conditions that keep them in their current state (Flanagan, 2005). By understanding that their predicament is not natural the oppressed should then discover alternatives to what had been perceived as natural “Education empowers the oppressed to discover alternatives to situations which have been taken as natural, necessary and unchangeable” (Flanagan, 2005 p. 186). Paul Freire’s contribution to overcoming this problem was through reversing the depository position of students, encouraging the creativity of the student to be in accordance with their lived experiences, promoting freedom, the praxis of thought and action and dialogue that incorporates charity, faith and hope (Gadotti, 1994). William Brickman greatly contributed the field of comparative and international education. He is also the founder of Comparative Education Society. Through wide research, travels and participation in other cultures William Brickman encouraged the joint cooperation...
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...Postmodernism Meaningful Paragraph (MP) CUR 701 Use information from the text to write a meaningful paragraph that addresses the basic principles of postmodernism as a philosophy of education. For the word set below, discard two of the choices. Then, include the five remaining terms and/or philosophers in the meaningful paragraph. Underline the terms/philosophers within the paragraph. The paragraph must contain at least three sentences. The paragraph must have a clear topic sentence and other sentences providing details that support the topic. The paragraph must show that you understand the terms/philosophers and can write about them in a meaningful way by showing the relationships between them. The terms/philosophers are listed in alphabetical order. You may use them in any order to write the paragraph. Also, the form of a word may be changed. For example, you may use the term curricular rather than curriculum. critical pedagogy curriculum empowerment Henry Giroux metanarrative Peter McLaren transformative intellectuals Scoring Guide You will be awarded the grades that most closely describe your responses to the assignments. A+, A, A- (19 – 20) Accurate, clearly explained, insightful, well developed Professional writing style with well-constructed sentences and well-organized paragraphs Correct length Almost no grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors B+, B, B- (17 – 18): Most is accurate, clearly explained, insightful, well developed Professional writing...
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