"The Banking Concept of Education": An Essay on Submissive Learning by Paulo Freire

In his essay The Banking Concept of Education, author Paulo Freire asserts that modern education is widely recognized as a chance for instructors (or "oppressors," as he calls them) to fill students with information as they submissively accept it; in his vision of education, there is no reciprocal learning or sharing between teacher and student. In my years as a recipient of these clinical doses of knowledge, I have experienced many teachers who fit Freire's pessimistic description. However, I have also experienced a professor who ran her classroom very differently from those Freire scorns, and she created a wonderful environment for learning because of those differences. Her methods prove that it is possible to create a classroom in which education does not "suffer from narration sickness."

The class that changed my opinion of education was a very small, intimate poetry workshop class of 12 people. The professor, who was as highly educated as the rest of the senate faculty generally found at highly-regarded universities, held fast to the idea that she could learn as much from her students as they from her. In his essay, Freire lists a number of qualities of the "Banking Concept of Education," and asserts that the qualities are found in every classroom, and are mirrored by "oppressive society as a whole." Since these are the qualities on which he bases his argument, it is important to be exposed to ways in which these qualities can be replaced by healthier ideas.

Freire's first listed quality is that," the teacher teaches and the students are taught." In our classroom, the teacher had very little to do with the learning process. Each of the students submitted original poetry once a week, and their peers in the classroom provided them with feedback on their work. The professor interrupted only to ask leading questions to prompt discussion, and occasionally offer suggestions as to how to make certain portions of our work more effective. In many cases, students' poetry dealt with issues or subjects that the professor knew nothing about. By reading the work and then having it explained to her, she learned many new things from the writing of her pupils. That being the case, it seems that the students were doing the teaching, and the teacher was being taught. This logic relates to Freire's second listed quality, which is that, "the teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing." Again, since the feedback on our work came predominantly from other students, it was usually the opinion of peers that was valued most highly in the classroom.

Freire's third quality is that, "the teacher thinks and the students are thought about." Had it been that only our own poems were submitted for the professor's scrutiny, this would be a more valid statement. However, the professor's work was laid out for examination as well, so the students were given a chance to think about her poetry, how it likened and differed from their own, and what might be useful to remember about it. The only demonstration of the professor doing more thinking than the students was the syllabus, which is necessary to establish the direction of a course. Even then, she often gave us the freedom to deviate from the syllabus if we weren't stimulated by the options she presented us. The fourth quality, which states that, "the teacher talks and the students listen-meekly," is absolute fiction. As aforementioned, the teacher did very little talking- it was up to the students to provide honest feedback about the work of their peers, as well as the professor, and the instructor never, ever contradicted the opinion of a student or asserted her opinion as the only correct one.

The fifth quality, "the teacher disciplines and the student is disciplined," seems more an allegation that would be valid if Freire was referring to an elementary education; however, he is not age-specific in his essay. If by "discipline" Freire means enforce regulations, lead the direction of the class, remove people from the classroom who are disruptive, and protect those who might be terrorized by others, then our professor did not discipline her students. There was only one rule in class, and that was that the author of the poem being work shopped may not speak until the class was finished dissecting it. She did not ever reprimand someone for choosing a particularly disturbing poem topic (which MANY did, including suicide, murder, human feces, and bodily functions), she did not enforce attendance or timeliness, did not require deadlines for our work, and generally did not discipline us in any way.

Freire's sixth quality, "the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply," is slightly truer than the rest. The professor did choose the types of poetry we had to write, but she asked us only to try and experiment- we were not held strictly to any parameters, and had complete creative freedom. We did not have tests or quizzes, midterms or finals, speeches or presentations. The only guidelines with which we had to comply were turning in a total of eight pieces of work. The seventh quality, "the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher," may actually apply to our classroom, depending on what Freire means by that. The professor did set the standard, length, and quality of commentary by demonstrating how she might respond to a given piece of work, and we emulated her method of response. We also wrote commentary on each piece of work after watching her do so, so in that way, I suppose we were acting through her example. However, we were still exercising almost complete freedom by having the ability to express exactly our own opinions of work and have unique responses to it, and to share those responses. Similarly, for Freire's eighth listed quality, which is that," the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it," we were given the choice as to whether or not we followed the professor's suggested syllabus. While there were suggested assignments, we did not have to follow them or complete them in the demonstrated manner if we chose not to. It is true that we were not consulted about the syllabus, but the fact that we weren't forced to follow it devalues Freire's theory about the students' lack of decision-making power.

In his ninth assertion, Freire says, "the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students." In many classrooms, I think this is true; many teachers confuse their actual command of their subject with the power given them over the students' command of the subject. Since my particular experience was in a workshop class in which the work examined was brand new to everybody, this couldn't possibly apply. The teacher could not possibly have command over work she had never seen before, and neither could the students. Therefore, we were all placed on the same level of authority from the very beginning. Granted, the instructor was a famous author who had been published several times and owns her own printing press, so it would be logical for her to think that her authority on poetry far exceeded ours. However, she never demonstrated that attitude, and was always very humble in offering suggestions or advice. Freire's last listed quality is that, "the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects." Again, considering the way my particular learning environment was set up, that was not even a possibility. Without the work submitted by the students, there would not even have been a class. Nothing the professor ever said could have been generated without first reading the work of the students. We, the students, were the subjects of the class, and the professor's opinion, which was secondary to ours, was the object.

I have certainly experienced a number of instructors who fit Freire's undesirable model perfectly, but luckily, I also had a wonderful experience that reassured me that it is possible to create a learning environment in which students and teachers are equals. While the "banking concept of education" is a valid complaint about many educating methods used today, there are others that truly do exist for the benefit of students. I'm glad I was fortunate enough to experience one of those classrooms, and hope that my professor's type of integrated learning and equality becomes more widespread in the future.