Freires Banking Concept of Education Through the Lens of Foucaults Panopticism - Assignment Example

Freire’s ‘Banking Concept of Education’ Through the Lens of Foucault’s ‘Panopticism’ This paper undertakes an analysis of Paulo Freire’s ‘The BankingConcept of Education’ through the lens of Foucaults ‘Panopticism’. In particular, the paper undertakes a reading of Freire through the perspective of the panopticon, taking off from the two insightful questions at the end of Foucault’s piece relating to the way prisons, for instance, have come to have strong resemblances to institutions such as hospitals and schools, which in turn have come to have a strong resemblance to prisons. In prisons, of course, Foucault contextualizes his discussions on the concept of the panopticon and panopticism (Foucault). In Freire on the other hand, the banking concept as it applies to education relates to a fundamental flaw in the way young people are educated, that considers them as automatons and as passive receivers of information and knowledge that prepares them to a certain kind of life, in the process thwarting and subverting a more natural free process of learning and acquiring life skills, and acquiring the freedom to think for themselves and to creatively navigate their way through life (Freire). This essay attempts at an integration of the individual takes of Freire and Foucault on education and schooling, based on those twin concepts of the panopticon on the one hand and the banking model or concept on the other hand. This essay attempts to understand whether or not Foucault is making the same set of assertions as Freire. The paper also attempts to determine whether or not there are overlaps between the elements that go into the creation of a panopticon on the one hand and the dynamics of the educational banking concept. Intuitively, one can see that both impose systems that control behavior and that have for their end-goals the generation of certain group outcomes. In the case of the panopticon, it is group control through the internalization of the psychological panopticon, while in the educational banking concept of Freire, it is the herding of young minds towards thinking and viewing the world in ways that benefit a certain societal power structure and a certain way of operating in the world. Undertaking a closer reading and analysis of the two texts and interpreting both from the context of the other, the paper hopes to gain insights into the educational banking concept and its relationship with Foucault’s thoughts on the panopticon (Freire; Foucault). In Freire’s ‘banking concept’ as it relates to education, the idea of the banking concept hews closely to the notion of passive teaching, with the teacher instilling static knowledge to students, who know nothing and are expected to blindly imbibe the transmitted knowledge. As receptacles who are empty, students need to be completely open and passive, and the better they are at sitting still, taking notes, memorizing, internalizing, and showing mastery of what has been given them in examinations, the better they are as students. It is a one-way kind of teaching that works in systems where a dominant way of organization and a certain order is maintained. This works to preserve that order, by crafting the lessons in such a way as to make the students conform to a certain way of being and a certain way of living within that established order. In Freire this banking concept is contrasted with educational modes where the underlying dynamic is characterized by problem-solving, inquiring, active engagement by the students, a joint exploration by students and teachers, honest dialogue, mutual respect, and approaching the world from the point of view of the students having the capacity to think and to learn, and to approach the world with the confidence to navigate through its myriad concerns. In this alternative model of education, Freire posits an inversion of the power structure, where the student, possessing the basic ability to perceive truth and to solve problems, is the basis for the creation of a social order. Stated another way, this process is anathema to a system that wants to keep its members in a state of subjugation. Another way to think of this alternative education model is that it is a truth-seeking form of education, where the teacher is not superior to the students and is in sole possession of all knowledge, but is rather more of a patient and loving guide who engages students in active conversation and joint inquiry into the true nature of things (Freire). The contrast between the two models of education are the contrasts that Freire sees between a way of viewing people as passive and incapable, and unenlightened individuals who need to be indoctrinated and processed to fit into an existing system that oppresses and that preserves a certain power structure on the one hand, and a system of education that threatens that status quo precisely by the inversion of the passive banking concept with an alternative that respects the innate capacity of students to be creative, to find things their own way, to grasp and to discover the truth, and to arrive at knowledge on the strength of their own capacities to do so. In this alternative model, the status quo does not have a monopoly on knowledge, and that the teacher is not so much the gatekeeper of the status quo’s store of knowledge so much as a guide and a co-explorer so to speak, and the teacher and the student explores the nature of the subject matter being studied. As a process of discovery, the student is not shackled to think a certain way, and the faith is not in what is arrived at itself, but the faith is in the process itself and in the innate capacity of the student to discover the truth (Freire). Foucault’s panopticism is an exposition of the panopticon as a mode of social control, wherein the panopticon is foisted on the masses and made internalized as a means of making sure that the society conforms to a set of rules, with the knowledge that the authorities are ever present and all-seeing, while the citizens themselves are not aware of where exactly the authorities are observing them. This mode of social control is one where the mechanisms of power are enforced with the utmost efficiency, because then there is no need for actual constant policing, which can be too much logistically, and too much too from the point of view of not being tenable as the population increases .The way to effect order in this arrangement is for the authorities to instill in the population the awareness of the panopticon and its operation in their lives. The process is one where the individual is made to imbibe and incorporate into his consciousness, so that the panopticon functions to tame the individual by that internalization of its mechanism and its structure. It is a way to make sure that the society is structured and that individuals follow the rules of engagement with the society. It is a way to make sure that in the minds of the members, the authorities are ever present and that the authorities see everything. Foucault notes that prisons are effectively controlled in this way, and when he asks the rhetorical questions mentioning schools and prisons in one breath what he is really implying is that this constant process of indoctrination into the mechanism and operation of the panopticon, through the constant state of examination in which the individuals in both are subjected to, is the essence of the structure of organization and subjugation of the individual in both. What Foucault is implying too, is that the school is an instrument of indoctrination into the workings of the panopticon, while the panopticon itself is the representation of the organizing principle or the taming principle in societies (Foucault). There are obvious overlaps between Freire and Foucault in the way both discuss modes of social control through mechanisms found in the systems of education, the schools, and in the way processes of control, such as the panopticon, are internal rather than external realities. The battle for both, in short, is something that happens within the individual consciousnesses of the members. Education being the primary mode of indoctrination for Freire, it is natural to find that if Foucault’s panopticon is universal, that it should also be found in operation in the school. Foucault makes this observation as a rhetorical query at the end. Of course it is to be found in the school, where the indoctrination into the rules and the status quo begins, and reinforced all throughout the life of the individual. It is interesting in Foucault that he follows the line of thinking with regard to how the panopticon and the mechanisms of control associated with the panopticon can be construed as the flip side of a system that outwardly cherishes notions of individual freedoms and liberties, human rights, and respect for privacy rights - the pillars of democratic and free societies. In a way, Foucault says that you cannot have one without the other, or that the panopticon and individual liberties and privacy rights are really two sides of the same coin. The two sets of realities go hand in hand in Foucault. Freire on the other hand takes off precisely at that point where Foucault leaves off, projecting the panopticon into the very heart of the school system and the educational processes. Freire brilliantly captures in turn, the panopticon as operating through his own banking concept. The banking concept in the educational system that Freire brilliantly formulated can be construed in one way as the operation of the panopticon in the language of Foucault (Foucault; Freire). The panopticon works where the school mimics successfully its mechanisms and makes sure that it is able to indoctrinate its students into the relationship between the authorities and the rules of society on the one hand and the necessity of compliance and obedience to the rules. In both Foucault and in Freire education is a process of indoctrination, and in both the external order is imposed through processes of psychological and intellectual indoctrination and internalization. No wonder then, that Freire finds the banking concept as one where the assumption is that the individual is a passive receiver of knowledge imposed from without, and that he sees in this process a reinforcement or a perpetuation of an existing power structure. Freire reinforces too in his own formulation, through his own conceptualization, the notion of education as a process of subjugation, and in that very process too the subversion of a more natural bottoms up inquiry and knowledge formation is undertaken. In other words, the direction of authority and force is from without going into the individual, and the very structure of the school makes sure that it is a preparation the student, graduated into an adult, operating and living within a prevalent and permanent social structure. Freire’s alternative to the banking concept is also a subversion of the entire mechanism of control that the panopticon represents, viewed in this sense (Freire; Foucault). Works Cited Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism”. Discipline and Punish. 1975. Web. 8 December 2014. Freire, Paulo. “Paulo Freire: Chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 1993. Web. 8 December 2014. Read More