my experience of problem posing

My experience of Problem Posing Paulo Freire demonstrates two types of educational concepts in “The Banking Concept of Education”, which are banking concept and problem posing. My personal experience with education illustrates Freire’s “problem posing” concept mostly. The reason might be I went to high school in the U.S and most of the American teachers from high school are relaxed when they teach, because the education system is not that serious as in China. In my point of view, problem posing is a better way of education for students to understand the knowledge better, to question confidently, and to develop my ability of thinking individually. I remember my math teacher, Mrs. Amidon, in my high school who is always chatting with us during classes, she never takes classes strict. She always lets students to do the problem on the board. We have “international Friday” which is every Friday she will only choose international students to do the work on the board, because usually we are the shy ones. She will correct the problem and ask the student, who solved the problem, how he or she did it to make sure we truly understand the steps of solving a problem instead of just copying from the book. And sometimes there are some really complex questions that she couldn’t solve either, that’s when she ask some of the Chinese students who are extremely smart in the class to do the questions and she also learns from them. I really love the way she teaches us because everyone can be involved during the discussions. By reflecting to Paulo Freire’s text, “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” (224). In the way my math teacher teaches that everyone should ask questions during the class, I do find that I have the power and confidence to ask questions instead of just sit in the classroom and listen to the teacher to talk all the time. Also in this way, I will have more interests in learning math. Everyday when I walk into the classroom, I don’t feel too much pressure from her, because I don’t have to worry about not understanding the problems we do in the class, we always discuss them together or in groups. I would always grow my own thoughts for math. One day she told us to divide into groups to finish a quiz that has the review materials for our midterm, and we can discuss the questions we have for the quiz. I was in a group with my friend and other two American students who were not good at math. Although I’m not good at it either, I’ve learned pre-calculus in junior high before. The quiz only had three questions but they were not quite easy at all, so we did spend time working hard on it. My group was the first one finished so Mrs. Amidon let my group and another group to write our answers on the blackboard. We got two same answer but we all think our own group got the right answer for the third one because we solved the problem in different ways, so she asked the other groups to help us to find which part in the process we did wrong or different. After carefully step-by-step checked, a small mistake was found in the last three step of the other group’s process, only a different place of the put the decimal point can made the final answer much different. Mrs. Amidon told them how they got the decimal point in the wrong place and let us all did the problem in the way the other group did again to make sure we all know how to solve it in both ways. Our group didn’t do the other way at first because we were not really familiar with that way but after the second practice, we got to understand and know it better. I think problem-posing concept is better than banking concept to me, because it brings me more willing to learn things. There are some teachers from my high school in China who teach liberal arts in banking concept that I don’t like very much, the only thing they do in class everyday is talking and even never stop, everyone gets bored and sleepy listening to those teachers. Also, the homework they have for us will be reading the textbooks and reciting paragraphs from the books, in which I won’t actually understand the information from the book but just remember it temporarily. I have recited much poetry for literature class but I couldn’t remember any of them now, on the contrary, I still know how to solve the math problems because teachers who teaches science always let students practice the formulas a lot, and once I know the formulas well, I will be able to use them even many years after I first learned them.