An incredibly frustrated and brief response to              P. Freire's Ch.2: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

To be completely honest… I only made it to page five before i threw this reading across my room with impressive force given its incredible un-aerodynamic form. The way Freire talks about education and how “awful” it is, well is just ridiculous. He labels educators right off the get go as either teaching children in a “bank-concept” manner or in a humanistic revolution manner. He then goes on to say that the majority of educators treat their students as containers or deposit boxes for us to “fill” with our meaningless information that isn’t applied to reality. 

When this was written in 1993, I assume education was very different although I was only six months of age I cannot confirm nor deny that teachers could have been treating their students as uneducated being whom were being gifted or “bestowed” with the teachers “great and glorious”  knowledge. My mother has taught for nearly 30 years and my grandfather before here close to 60. I can guarantee neither of them, neither generation of educators saw their hundreds of students as knowledge-less containers waiting to be filled by their wealth of flawless knowledge. 

Freire also talks of communication as being the soul device to a student retaining information; but what form of communication? Communication comes in so many forms and can be used in a multitude of ways. Communication seemingly, according to Freire, is best when it is happening in teacher student contradiction. What about simple discussion, response based questioning, cooperative learning, writing, application to critical thinking skills and a variety of other methods of thinking and communication that go hand in hand with learning or retaining information?

Without banking connecting as a means of sharing facts and information with our students, we have no knowledge base to communicate or relate to reality with. I am not sure if some of the language Freire uses is appropriate with regards to teaching methodologies, pedagogies, or anything else pertaining to the education and thinking means of teachers. YES— there are “bad” teachers whom do not put effort into their lessons, projects, or strategies but I feel like even “poor” teaching can be altered with effort and guidance. I hope to never meet the ignorant educator that is talked of in the majority of this reading. I hope to never for one single second see my students as uneducated containers. I also home to utilize communication, creativity, fact-based-learning, discussion, and relationships to reality in my teaching to provide a successful education to those who come through my classroom doorway.