Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed
It is my aim through this assignment to study the ideas and principles of Paulo Freire. I will examine the relevance of these principles to the principles and practice of informal education, drawing on my practice and how my practice relates to both the ideas of Paulo Freire and the principles and practice of informal education in general.
The educational thinker that I have selected is Paulo Freire. I have selected Freire as he speaks of the ‘banking concept’ and having travelled through the education system, I believe this is something I have experienced. In order to succeed and pass the exams that I believed I needed to be successful I conformed and simply banked the knowledge that my secondary school teachers passed onto me. I was not encouraged to challenge or question until I left school and began to take my place in society. I left school with the qualifications I required but found I had acquired a lot of knowledge that was not truly relevant in the wider world. As an informal educator I see it as my duty to assist in empowering young people to challenge and question in order to truly learn and therefore make the lives for themselves that they desire.
In the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ Freire speaks of the ‘banking concept’ of education. He writes of how this concept dehumanizes and oppresses the learner, by simply having information stacked upon them, with no right to challenge or self interpret, the learner is simply forced to ‘bank’ the knowledge. In doing so, the learner is oppressed by the teacher. The teacher remains in power by forcing their beliefs and their knowledge on the learner. I would question, if we are memorising another’s beliefs, are we really learning? It is my opinion that, truly learning and becoming educated is a wonderful journey that should take the learner through a transformation. A person who has truly learnt should be a different person at the end of the journey than when they began. I would suggest that the banking concept of
The educational thinker that I have selected is Paulo Freire. I have selected Freire as he speaks of the ‘banking concept’ and having travelled through the education system, I believe this is something I have experienced. In order to succeed and pass the exams that I believed I needed to be successful I conformed and simply banked the knowledge that my secondary school teachers passed onto me. I was not encouraged to challenge or question until I left school and began to take my place in society. I left school with the qualifications I required but found I had acquired a lot of knowledge that was not truly relevant in the wider world. As an informal educator I see it as my duty to assist in empowering young people to challenge and question in order to truly learn and therefore make the lives for themselves that they desire.
In the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ Freire speaks of the ‘banking concept’ of education. He writes of how this concept dehumanizes and oppresses the learner, by simply having information stacked upon them, with no right to challenge or self interpret, the learner is simply forced to ‘bank’ the knowledge. In doing so, the learner is oppressed by the teacher. The teacher remains in power by forcing their beliefs and their knowledge on the learner. I would question, if we are memorising another’s beliefs, are we really learning? It is my opinion that, truly learning and becoming educated is a wonderful journey that should take the learner through a transformation. A person who has truly learnt should be a different person at the end of the journey than when they began. I would suggest that the banking concept of
References: Freire, P. ‘Educational thinkers’ in INFED 1 Unit 1: Understanding Informal Education, London: YMCA George Williams College.