The “Banking Style” of Education
Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed has stuck with me ever since I read it. I’m constantly analyzing how I am being taught and how I act as a student. I evaluate whether I am an active participant in what I’m learning or just a passive pupil being “filled… like a receptacle”. I used this descripting of the “banking style of education” in a few of my writing projects because I feel it is a very legitimate and thoughtful way to look at how modern education (at least within the United States) is doing a disservice to our younger generations and generally leaving us woefully unprepared.
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
I am always struck by this excerpt every time I read it. It tells me exactly what I need to be doing to enhance my knowledge and how I can help, as team with my peers and my instructor, expand the knowledge of not only myself but those around me as well.
I’m going to be honest, I didn’t quite understand most of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Some of the concepts discussed, particularly in Chapter one (like “Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system”), I just can’t quite understand what point is being made there. I recognize the words but I can’t get a grasp of what is being said. “Subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system” what system, the technological society? How does technology “pacify” us and transform us into obeying its rules? It’s such a big concept in my mind that I can’t quite understand what’s being said here.
The banking system of education, however, just makes sense to me. I lived it. I experience it. I understand what is being said there. Maybe I’m just so conditioned by “our advanced technological society” that I don’t even realize I’m a pawn in the system. Is that what this excerpt is saying, that we are slowly being made pawns of the system? I can’t tell at this point. I’ve been reading it over and over and trying to put it into different words to understand it better but I just can’t. A lot of this book is like that for me and it makes me realize there is just so much I don’t understand. I enjoyed reading it and I am going to continue rereading until I can start to grasp the entirety of it.
