Cha-Ching! Oh wait. Wrong bank.

Blog Question #3. Push back on Freire's concept of education. Pick a passage and disagree with it.

So I'm good at arguing. It's energizing, in a way. In my life, there have been a few times that I have even been so good at arguing that I've convinced myself that I was wrong. You see, I tend to talk through my thoughts, so there are times when I don't even know what I'm thinking until I hear myself say it. With that being said, I am going to "push back" on some things that I read and thought, "Hey! That's not right!", but by the end of my post, I just might be saying "Oh wait. Yeah, I agree with that".

Freire's Quote: "In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as a process of inquiry."

Okay, I have never had a teacher who thought I knew nothing. They knew that I had not learned some things. That is the reason for schooling: to learn new things! Just because I learned long division in second grade doesn't mean that my second grade teacher thought that I was dumb; she realized that I was ignorant of how to divide "long" numbers. I don't agree that a teacher who is focused on filling his/her students' heads with new knowledge is participating in an evil system. My favorite classes were the ones where I learned something new every day, and we didn't necessarily have discussion every day. It is true that making learning all about new facts will make it boring. However, making it all about discussion, inquiry, and a personal quest is not the answer, either. Students need to be guided. They need a responsible adult, someone with their best interest at heart, to steer them toward the right paths. As Proverbs 22:6 says, "Start children off on the way they should go,
and even when they are old they will not turn from it." I am very thankful for the people who let me grow on my own, but I am also very thankful for the times that they helped me back on course.