Critical Issues in Education: Week 2 Reflection Assignment

Discussion is at the bottom of the post.

1. what is the role of the teacher when a banking model is at  work in education

-teachers use dialogue to inform their students and encourage the transaction

-the teacher is like a boat of gravy, the gravy being the knowledge as it pours or narrates onto the malleable minds of the mashed potatoes which are the students  

The Recipe of knowledge:

Gravy Boat (teacher)àpouring gravy (dialogue)àonto mashed potatoes (malleable students)

-the teacher teaches and the students are taught

-the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing

-the teacher thinks and the students are thought about

-the teacher talks and the students listen- meekly

-the teacher talks disciplines and the students are disciplined

-the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply

-the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher

-the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it

-the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she or he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students

-the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects

2. who does a banking model of teaching benefit most

-With no interaction and collaboration, the banking model is teacher centered. The teacher becomes the oppressor to the passive and empty minded students. Empty minded being that they do not understand and engage the material fully; therefore they are merely memorizing facts without critically analyzing and reflecting on the material. However, with no expectations for students the students have become small sponges to see the perspective of the teacher.

 

 

3. how does a banking model compare with an active model of learning

Crusius Quotes

-“writing was assigned and graded not taught where interaction with students was confined for the most part to formal prescription and the elimination of error.” (pg.77)

Paulo Freire Qoutes

-”Narration (with the teacher as the narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers.” Into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is.” (pg.106-107)

-“education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing and storing the deposits.” (pg.107)

ANSWER

3. how does a banking model compare with an active model of learning

The banking model compares to the active learning model on a literal and almost tangible level. Usually the differences in the banking model and the active learning model are very easy to distinguish between. The banking model is characterized by Paulo Freire’s “The Banking Model of Education” (1970). Freire is describing the classroom as a place of transmitting information. The transmission of information begins with a teacher who is passing their information (which they may or may not be comfortably knowledgeable in) to their students without any return to the teacher. Frerie is describing the situation in the classroom as and act of depositing,

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing and storing the deposits.” (pg.107)

Frerie is basically describing the education system as one way, uninspiring and very one sided with the mere mentality of getting more and more students through the system. This is a very similar statement to that of Timothy W. Crusius oh which he is writing in his work “A Teacher’s Introduction to Philisophical Hermeneutics” about the education system as a mass assembly line. The assembly line model is stating that the education system is merely manufacturing individual pieces of hardware (students) with empty information (materials to which the students are unable to connect to). Crusius is exploring this empty knowledge through the perspective of a composition writer. An example Crusius is giving of how information is empty on an assembly line and how the students are moving through an assembly line is when he is describing the old method of teaching composition, “writing was assigned and graded not taught where interaction with students was confined for the most part to formal prescription and the elimination of error.” (pg.77)

The problem Crusius and Freire are presenting is that the students are not receiving the teaching they deserve or need. Students need to become critically aware of their work as well as their surroundings in a working environment. The students are developing on their own in the current education system with little to no assistance from the institutions that they are fortunate to have (friends, family, teachers, library, themselves). Freire is describing his belief how teachers and students need a dialogue; they need to be recognizing each other as equals on different sides of a continuum. Both students and teachers are understandably learners in the words of his work, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both simultaneously teachers and students.” (pg. 107) Crusius is agreeing that in teaching the material in a classroom is merely teaching it as a stand alone, stagnate, and forever lasting unit. It is not engaging students, not requiring them to discover their resources and abilities. They are taught to proofread their “free written work” (single draft work) while not recognizing the benefits of a second draft or second opinion. Students are not asking questions to improve their work in itself, but how to improve their work by the standards and requirements of the curriculum. Crusis describes that,

“The first step is to ask for their interpretations and thereby perhaps to gain an active partner, without which no dialogue is possible. And with activity comes the potential for repossessing the world that being processed has taken away, almost beyond the thought of questioning.” (pg.81)

From this, the ability to process and be in a process are distinguishable; just like the banking model and the active learning model. Crusius and Frerie have a similar understanding of how one is able to incorporate a student into the work just as they are going to incorporate the work into the life of a student. Engagement of tasks, as well as equal and mutual dialogue between the students and teachers.

 

References:

Freire, Paulo. 1970 “The Banking Model of Education.” Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chap. 2. New York: Continuum

Crusius W. Timothy. 1950 “A Teacher’s Introduction to Philisophical Hermeneutics.” Assimilating Philosophical Hermeneutics: Pedagogy. Chap. 7. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English