The Harm of the Banking Concept - Essay Example

Insert His/her Insert Insert Grade Insert Here (Day, Month, Year) The Harm of the Banking Concept There is an old saying in China: “travelling thousands of miles is better than reading ten thousand books,” which has the same conclusion from a different angle with an American saying: “practices are more important than theories.” According to both of the phrases, one may learn knowledge better from practicing and experiencing it rather than just learning and reading it in books etc. I don’t think knowledge is something people can learn directly from books or teachers’ lessons because it cannot be learnt without understanding. But I do believe that people may gain knowledge from their daily life experiences and practices. Being a student in China for the last ten years, I discovered that the way Chinese teachers overload their students with the burden of memorizing so many textbooks leads to three bad results, which both Paulo Freire and Mike Rose have also discussed in their essays “the Banking Concept of Education” and “ I Just Wanna Be Average” respectively, which are: i) The knowledge which students gain through memorizing the textbooks is only restricted till exams, after which a student forgets what he had studied. ii) The confidence level in students deteriorates due to lack of exposure and the tension and nervousness of remembering all the stuff written in textbooks during exams. iii) Intense pressure of memorizing and learning the textbooks without understanding it properly may divert the interest of students away from studies. Among all the bad results, these three are the worst because the students are said to be educated when they understand what is being taught instead of merely memorizing their syllabus. But, education has now become a concept of “remembering” more than “understanding”, educators have lost the meaning for teaching students. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator who has left a significant mark on thinking about progressive practice wrote in “The ‘Banking Concept’ of Education” his idea of two different education methods which are the “banking” concept and the “problem posing” concept. In banking education, teachers usually assume that the students know nothing at all and then take full advantage of this assumption. They just simply feed the students with information and students are forced to swallow it all up. On the other hand, problem posing education encourages the students to develop the habit of gaining knowledge by doing practical experiments and research works rather than just noting down the lecture of the teacher without pondering on the topic. This process involves an interaction between the teacher and the students, which eventually leads to a stronger teacher-student relationship. This helps a student to be more frank with a teacher to clarify all the confusions that usually evolve in a student’s brain. It also helps a student to develop keen interest in any topic that is being taught. Freire thinks problem posing is better than the banking concept, and I am also in favor of problem posing method. Problem posing enables the students to talk, think and hold discussions among each other within the class as well as even after the class timings, which no doubt can be listed among the healthy activities. On the contrary, banking concept develops the habit of “instant memorizing” just before the exams. The knowledge students gained through the method of banking concept is usually temporary in their memory and does not benefit the student in the future. This is because the teachers don’t care whether the students really understand the text or not, even if they care, they pay no attention to communicate with the students to make themselves clear. Students force themselves to accept the information and memorize it only for the sake of getting good grades instead of having a passion to learn. The students can easily forget all the memorized information immediately after the exams if they don’t understand what the information is actually about. In the banking concept, teachers make the students repeat the information again and again in order to get it memorized but they are least concerned if the students are satisfied with their lecture and books or not. Freire illustrates in his essay, "the more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world" (Freire 245). In my understandings, Freire talks about the relationship between the banking concept and student’s ability to communication with the world. Due to the reason that the banking concept is focused on making the students “accept” knowledge, which provides students with the idea of “accepting the world as it is without trying to change it”. The more teachers try to stuff their students with memorized information, the less they communicate with their students, the less the students communicate with the world and understand it. Therefore, the more teachers try to stuff their students, the fewer students actually gain from their teachers. In the banking education the information from the texts are directly taught by the teachers and received by the students as a “fill in” process. Students usually received the information without dnesely understanding and thinking. This kind of education forces the students to memorize a huge amount of information in a very short period of time, while reducing the rest and relaxation time, which makes the memory very unstable. I am an example of the bad result of the banking concept. When I was in China, my high school was practicing the banking concept and was trying to fill us in with huge amount of information every single school day. Due to this problem of the huge amount of population and less amount of universities, there are only limited numbers of students who can get into the higher education. The only way for students to get into good colleges is to study by memorizing all the example questions from past papers in all the subjects: writing, literature, mathematics, physics, history, chemistry, English and all other subjects. My classmates and I (or let’s say all the Chinese high school students) were forced to remember all that information, not in the intention of gaining knowledge but, only for passing the examination with good grades and getting admitted in a good university. We made notes of every detail the teachers said, did questions of all kinds and studied all that, but, without really understanding. I didn’t take the exams because I migrated to America in the second year of my high school, and then I actually realized I’ve learned nothing in my past. All I could do is to follow the steps my Chinese teachers which were taught to me while I would try to solve a question. I still remember Mr. Hunt, a strict old man who taught us pre-calculus. He asked us always to give out the detail of how we solve the problems or we would fail the homework. I failed most of the times because all I could do is give him the final answer without the proper explanations because I actually didn’t understand the steps. The knowledge I leant was fake and useless because the teacher provided to me failed to guide me properly. Freire has written correct in his book when he mentions that the students, when learn without understanding, the more they memorize, the less they actually gain. There are a lot of people who express their idea of education as Freire; another famous one is Mike Rose, an American writer who is famous for his education studies who illustrates Freire’s idea of the banking concept situation when he was in school in “I Just Wanna Be Average”. According to Rose, he believes that the teachers who lack responsibility, and teach with Freire’s idea of banking concept might result in the students’ deterioration in the passion and confidence on themselves. One of his classmates, Ken Harvey once told Mike that he just wanted to be average because he believed he was below average. The reason why Mike was so frustrated of himself was because his teachers used the banking concept to teach and Mike lost his confidence on himself after receiving more and more bad grades due to the reason that he wouldn’t understand what would be taught in the class. Rose wrote in the essay, “but mostly the teachers had no idea of how to engage the imaginations of the kids who were scuttling along at the bottom of the pond” (Rose 95-96). Rose illustrates the situation of those students who lose confidence by the fact that they can’t follow the class and get good grades and think themselves to be inferior to the others. The teachers pay no attention on those “below-average” students and students’ situation becomes worse rather worst. The teacher provides their students with information constantly and paying no attention on making the students “fall in love” with their textbooks. Students face a lot of difficulty to memorize and understand the class work which turns out to be a bad outcome for the students, i.e., bad grades. I really feel extremely sorry for those students as Rose continues to describe their situation. Rose talks about those teachers who don’t look at themselves but expect more from their students who are bullied by other students who don’t get good grades. The result that students not having good grades and constantly being bullied by their teachers, affects students’ confidence and makes them believe that they are below average. On the other side, problem posing concept has a greater outcome that students will gain instead of losing their interest in studies. In America, students have a lot more chances such as they can take SAT exams as many times they wish to, there are much more numbers of universities they can go to, the American teachers reduce the pressure unlike the Chinese teachers, which gives them the chance to teach their students in problem solving concept because they have the time to do so. As Freire said, “Yet only through communication can human life hold meanings” (Freire 247). I agree with Freire that communication is the most important thing in human lives because with communication, people may understand each other’s needs and wants. Without communication, how can people know each other and get involved with others? When students have the chance to talk and communicate with other students and the teacher, they remember what they’ve learnt because they are actually involved into the class. As Freire said, “when teachers teach without communicate with their students, students may lose the ability and interest to communicate and argue with others: “in problem--posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation" (Freire 248). What Freire wants to show is a huge bias the banking concept may lead to – students get used of the method which is accepted by the teachers in the classes without communication or understanding, they develop the habit of “always accept the world as it is without think back or fight for themselves”. When study becomes a process, a formula of “accepting” or “receiving”, how can the students fall in love with the school, the subject, or the knowledge they suppose to learn? Freire believes that the two educational concepts make the differences of the point of views between students, as he said in the essay: “the truth is, however, that the oppressed are not ‘marginals,’ are not men living "outside" society. They have always been "inside"—inside the structure, which made them “beings for others," (Freire 248). The banking concept makes the teacher take all control of the class. The world is seen as static that students are more likely to “fit” them into the world and be who their environment asks them to be. They are being encouraged to accept the world no matter if they understand or not without asking any questions. The fact that the teacher is the absolute power of the class makes a huge distance between the teacher and the students, and contributes to oppression. On the other side, students may find the interest in learning in the problem posing concept because they can feel the existences of themselves in the class. The problem solving concept gives the students a whole world – they can communicate with each other and this fact encourages students to develop their human natures based on dialogues. They involve into the class and have their value in the class, which helps them to develop more and more skills to communicate with people and learn the knowledge with thinking and understanding. Different from the banking concept, students in the problem posing concept develop the habit of participation, they always try to join others in other events in their lives in the future because they possess the interest of participation from the problem posing concept. As a student, I truly agree with the problem posing concept due to the contribution that it recognizes the relationship between people. Nevertheless, there is one harm the problem posing method might bring which I think teachers need to pay attention to: Freire emphasizes the importance of making the students get involved into the class and lead the class by themselves, but how can students communicate with each other in the class when they lack the knowledge which they need to learn? A month ago, I was absent in one of the English classes because I needed to take a writing test for my driving license. I realized the harm of the problem posing on the following class I attended to. In that class, my English teacher, Laura asked us to split into groups and discuss the essays she handed to the class. Although I had the freedom and intention to talk and communicate with others in my group, but, due to the reason that I didn’t get the chance to read the essay and knew nothing about it, I kept silent for the whole time and didn’t learn anything from the class. From my own situation, I can summarize that problem posing will benefit the students only when the students have the knowledge of what they need to communicate about. Conclusion As a conclusion, although there is one bias for problem posing method, that the students need to know the knowledge before they start to communicate with each others, I think it is better than the banking concept. The banking concept focuses on the teachers leading the class and forcing the students to accept the class without understanding, this concept doesn’t give students the freedom to choose whom they want to be and this directly affects the time length the knowledge being remembered, the confidence of the students and make the students lose the interests in learning. Based on students, teachers may have the problem posing concept and the banking concept together for their class for a better outcome. The peak a best teacher wants to reach, is trying to keep students’ memory for the knowledge as long as possible, help the students to build their confidence in themselves and keep the class interesting. References Freire, Paolo. "The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education." Ways of Reading. Boston: Bedford/Sr. Martin's, 2008. 243-255. Mike, Rose. "I Just Wanna Be Average." 75 Thematic Readings . new York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2003. 87- 98. Read More