Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Banking education:
• The teacher as the narrator and the students as the listening objects in which the
narrator “deposits” information.
• The educational content has no true value as it is either irrelevant to the lives of the
students or factual based without the need for conscious thought.
• Teachers provide information to be memorized rather than applied and understood for
transformation and growth of the mind.
• Oppression occurs when a teacher, who views themselves as knowledgable, projects
their own ideologies and thoughts onto the student, who the teacher views as
unknowledgeable.
• The educational system is teacher-centered instead of student-centered, which can
be correlated back to the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) where development is
gained through both teaching and learning roles.
• The students are compared to slaves and the teachers slavers.
• The banking education kills creativity and critical consciousness in order to dominate
and control people of lesser value and intelligence.

System of oppression:
• People who adapt to oppression are considered “good, organized and just”, while
people who do not adapt are “incompetent and lazy.”
• People who are adapted to the oppression are manipulated into thinking they need to
“integrate” these lazy people into their “healthier” society.
• The solution would be to transform the system rather than the “lazy” people, but to do
so would undermine the oppressors.
• The oppressors thrive on control in a “necrophilic” way of nourishment by death of
thought and consciousness.
• Education is used as a means of dominating students and indoctrinating them into the
world of oppression.
• To prevent people from making their own decisions is to make them into objects.

Problem-posing education:
• Teachers have a partnership with their students, posing questions and problems,
rather than a depositing relationship.
• The teacher/oppressor becomes a student amongst students.
• Dialogue can help dissolve the gap in power between student and teacher, allowing
for students to also and teach and teachers to also learn. This can be correlated to
bridging the power line in Collaboration across the Power-line.
• By transforming narration into cognition, the teacher can allow students to become
critical thinkers with dialogue and creativity.
• The teacher allows for engagement of critical thinking and creative powers. In my peer
mentor class, I can implement engagement of critical thinking by posing reflective
questions on what they’ve learned and why. We want to hold a review session for the
final and I want to ask the students soms take-away question that they can leave the
review with and hopefully use to study for the exam. “For each of the processes we’ve
 learned about, what are the main points to take away? How does this information help
us and how can it be applied to the world? How can this information be helpful in
solving problems?” Maybe some of these questions will trigger creative answers and
critical thinking that will allow for conscious thought rather than just memorization.
Another way to stimulate creativity is the project that the class has been given instead
of a final exam: they have the creative choice to write a paper or make an infographic
on anything they want in relation to mycology. Students have the freedom to choose
what they find interesting, research it, apply it to a story and then teach it to the public
and the teacher. In this way I think this project is a good example of problem-posing
education.

Liberation:
• The revolutionaries cannot use the banking method to pursue their liberation; this
would be hypocritical in nature as the revolutionaries become oppressors themselves.
• Banking education moulds people to become “reactionary” whereas problem posing
education allows for people to become “revolutionary.”
• People must reflect on this world and society in order to transform it rather than
dominate with the intent of liberation.
• People teach each other rather than receiving a one sided deposit of information.
• Authentic reflection considers how people are a part of the world, not separate from it.