The Banking Concept Analysis
Isabelle Gorman
Prof. Rose
ENG 1310
September 23, 2014
The Banking Concept Have you ever gone into a class, sat down, staring at the teacher, bored out of your mind? If this rings true for you, then you are familiar with Paulo Freire's "banking concept". The banking concept is an educational technique where teachers deposit information into students' minds. I believe that this system does not work because the students never really have to understand what they are learning. Students just have to sit through a class, remember what the teacher tells them for the test, and never have to remember that information ever again. My high school AP environmental science class used the banking system and failed because it was memorization based, …show more content…
Gilbert, my AP environmental science teacher, taught me. Every time we were about to take a test, she would offer a study session, in which she would literally give us the question and answer to everything on the test. All we had to do was memorize the question and the answer and we could easily ace the test. I never really learned anything in that class. She expected us to take in all the information, put it off to the side in our minds, and then remember it for the test a few weeks later. I never truly had to understand the material being taught to us. If Mrs. Gilbert had made sure we understood the material, as opposed to just memorizing everything, I would have actually wanted to learn the material she taught …show more content…
Any time that we wanted to ask questions about something she was talking about, she would tell us to wait until after class to ask her. We didn't have any open discussions or class debates about a topic. We never got to hear other people's opinions, which was troublesome because there are a lot of debatable topics in environmental science. When we got to the section about global warming, I got excited because I thought that she would finally have a class debate. I got disappointed when I walked in and saw a TV in the front of the room. We watched Bill Gates' movie about global warming, which was the only thing we did for the whole topic of global warming. Due to the lack of open discussion about topics, I felt that everything we learned was
Prof. Rose
ENG 1310
September 23, 2014
The Banking Concept Have you ever gone into a class, sat down, staring at the teacher, bored out of your mind? If this rings true for you, then you are familiar with Paulo Freire's "banking concept". The banking concept is an educational technique where teachers deposit information into students' minds. I believe that this system does not work because the students never really have to understand what they are learning. Students just have to sit through a class, remember what the teacher tells them for the test, and never have to remember that information ever again. My high school AP environmental science class used the banking system and failed because it was memorization based, …show more content…
Gilbert, my AP environmental science teacher, taught me. Every time we were about to take a test, she would offer a study session, in which she would literally give us the question and answer to everything on the test. All we had to do was memorize the question and the answer and we could easily ace the test. I never really learned anything in that class. She expected us to take in all the information, put it off to the side in our minds, and then remember it for the test a few weeks later. I never truly had to understand the material being taught to us. If Mrs. Gilbert had made sure we understood the material, as opposed to just memorizing everything, I would have actually wanted to learn the material she taught …show more content…
Any time that we wanted to ask questions about something she was talking about, she would tell us to wait until after class to ask her. We didn't have any open discussions or class debates about a topic. We never got to hear other people's opinions, which was troublesome because there are a lot of debatable topics in environmental science. When we got to the section about global warming, I got excited because I thought that she would finally have a class debate. I got disappointed when I walked in and saw a TV in the front of the room. We watched Bill Gates' movie about global warming, which was the only thing we did for the whole topic of global warming. Due to the lack of open discussion about topics, I felt that everything we learned was