The Banking System Of Education Research Paper

The word, learn, means “to gain knowledge or skill by studying, practicing, being taught, or experiencing something.” Throughout their years of school, students feel they have absorbed a great deal of information. However, when they are asked to examine what they really learned, they usually come to a blank or recite something like, “In Fourteen Hundred Ninety-Two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” The students are given no explanation of what that means. Paulo Friere believes that the problem with the education system is that teachers merely tell students to memorize the material, and all the students do is spit the information right back out. They don’t know why it’s important, so they aren’t gaining any true knowledge. While I will agree …show more content…
Paulo Friere is no different from this thought. In his article, “The Banking System of Education,” Friere argues that “the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Friere). In other words, the teacher is simply “depositing” information into the students who will later “withdraw” it back out with no context of why it matters. Under the current education system, students aren’t actually learning anything. They are simply being told to remember facts from the textbook. Friere claims that because of this, “men cannot be truly human” (Friere). This means that he thinks the education system is making us less human. The students must sit in their chairs like mindless robots and listen to their teacher talk. Although these ideas may seem a little extreme, they unfortunately they do occur. In my twelve years of school, there were some classes that were just as Friere described. The teachers of these classes talked throughout the entire class period. After a while, they started to sound like the adults in Charlie Brown, monotone and almost incomprehensible. Also, their lectures were not engaging. Most of the time they just repeated to us what was written on the board, and we were just told to be quiet and take notes. Just like Friere’s depiction of school, there was no significance to what was being taught other than we need to know it for the test. When we …show more content…
I have only had a few experiences with bad teachers. Throughout my school years, I have been fortunate enough to have had many great teachers. There were only a couple that I disliked. Most of my teachers are the complete opposite of what Friere set up in his article. While they still lectured, it wasn’t boring at all. They found a way to make it resonate with us. Some teachers joked around with the students throughout the lecture and others related the material to songs or movies. If the lectures were getting too long, the teacher would stop what they were doing and tell us to take ten minutes to stretch or walk around the building. This allowed us to refresh our brains and be ready to learn again. Instead of telling us to memorize facts for the test, these teachers often played academic games so that it was easier to learn and remember what was taught. Whenever you needed help, they would put a smile on their face and gladly explain everything to you and most importantly explain why it mattered. These are the classes that I looked forward to attending because I know I would walk out of them feeling like I actually learned