Banking Concept Of Education

I’m Special Sitting in Mrs. Arnett’s second grade classroom, my next door neighbor Charles is behind me, pulling my hair. I turn around to yell at him. I am so sick of Charles bothering me – he loves to pull my hair and jab sharp pencils in my back. After threatening to tell on him, he finally let go of my hair. As I turned back to my desk, Mrs. Arnett called my name. “Daniela, it is your turn for show and tell; what do you have for us today?” I remember thinking, “Oh my god, it’s my turn, YES! I can’t wait to tell everybody just how special I really am!” I rush up to the front of the classroom as fast as I can. I can’t help to think how jealous everyone will be, and how they will want their families to think they are as special as I
There is no communication in this style of teaching. “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” (244). Because of my “special” moment, a moment of humility that has haunted me through my educational career, school became an institution where I would go to memorize information but never really understood what I was being “taught”. I became a receptacle, a depository, and my teachers became the depositors. Education became a process of teachers making deposits which I would receive, memorize and regurgitate (Freire 244). Looking back, the trouble with the situation was that I was sacrificing the most important part of education: learning how to
Problem posing education is based on creativity, it encourages students to see themselves as part of the world, promotes education through teacher-student communication, and it forces students to think critically and take power over their own lives (Freire 252). The classroom should be a place where students feel comfortable communicating with each other as well as with the teacher, a place where they can ask questions if they do not understand and won’t be judged. If only I could have realized sooner that my ability to learn was in my own hands. I was the one creating a banking concept environment, not my teachers. While everyone else was asking why X+Z divided by 4 equals 2, I was staring blankly at my paper praying I would not be called on. I could always be found at a desk in the very last row of the classroom, usually behind someone larger than I, that way I could “hide” and slim the chances of being asked to answer a question. In high school I failed almost every project that involved speaking in front of the class; in college I dropped any course that involved public speaking. I only felt comfortable learning in lecture style courses, that was because I only knew how to learn by listening memorizing