Banking Concept of Education - Essay Example

Banking Concept of Education Introduction The philosophy of banking in education by Freire is an important aspect of teaching and learning in a classroom situation. However, I find the philosophy of “problem-posing” to be more significant when attracting the attention of students and maintaining their concentration ability in class. When Freire compares the two philosophies, it takes me back to my final year in high school, where my teacher liked to engage the students in her teaching. Problem-posing is critical because it encourages critical thinking, while the conversations between the teacher and the students establish the share of knowledge and power. When there is no conversation in a class, negative contestation and arguments may arise. Thus the conversation is a mind opener. Instead of permitting a traditional classroom with the lecture method of teaching, teachers should try out the problem posing technique to enhance learning. Problem posing starts where a teacher listens to students’ issues, then based on what she heard, she can select and put forward a well-known situation back to the students in codified forms such as written dialogues, drawings, stories, or even photographs. Each situation has social and personal conflicts that are emotionally charged for the learners. A teacher can present a sequence of inductive questions so that she can move the discussion of that specific situation from the real to a more analytic level (Freire 30). The teacher can use this method by directing learners to outline the problem, understand how the issue applies to them or affect their lives, determine the root of the issue, generalize to the other students, and ultimately give opinions on how to solve the problem. An example to show the discussion above can be drawn from my own educational experience in high school. I can recall how my life during this time was like. My mother owned one of the biggest and popular beauty salon in my community. Every Sunday of the week was a day for my English teacher to come and style her hair in my mother’s salon. Just like any adolescent can do, I used to have conversations with my mother about careers and teaching was one of the careers we discussed most. I remember having told her on several occasions that I could not think of being a teacher at any point in life. My conscience was never wrong when I thought my English teacher and my mom used to discuss much about my progress. It was during these conversations that mom told Mrs Midiwo that I really hate the teaching profession. What I dint know was that Mrs Midiwo was building knowledge about me and that one day she would raise a discussion about the topic. It was that chilly Monday morning and my mother had told me the last night that they talked about my lack of interest in the teaching profession. I learned that my mother really wanted me to pursue the course in future and she had convinced Mrs. Midiwo to address the issue in the best way possible so that I could develop a bit of interest in the profession. There comes Mrs Midiwo and she introduces a topic about the rate of unemployment in the country. This was a situation that was familiar to most of my colleagues. After asking as to name some of the professions we knew, she asked as to meditate on the number of jobless people we had seen around. The teacher then asked, “Why do you think people get hardships in finding jobs?” After we stated our opinions, she directed the question to me by asking, “what kind of job do you hate most, and why?” I was already confused on what to say because I remembered that she knew my thoughts about the topic through my mother, and I had to be honest enough to shout; “teaching.” I have never felt so guilty but I was glad that she was so friendly and dint mean to imply anything. Even though my friends laughed, she seemed happy to have gotten a honest answer from me and this is what led way for the discussion. She encouraged us by mentioning some of the advantages of the teaching profession and discouraged us from being too pessimistic about it. After internalizing and critically reflecting on the topic, she asked, “how can you as students learn to appreciate the teaching profession? What collective actions can you employ to ensure that other students build a positive attitude? What is your understanding of affirmative action?” I realized that the problem of having a negative attitude towards the teaching profession had not affected me alone but most of the students in my class too. In fact Mrs Midiwo mentioned that most of the students in the general frame of American educational institutions hated teaching because of the less dignity associated with it in the society. This includes the lower payment as compared to other professions like medicine and law. This event in my educational experience would have been interpreted by Freire in a significant way. He could see Mrs Midiwo’s strategy as an inductive questioning technique of problem-posing that involved students to think in a bit by bit procedure that requires students to learn by knowing. He could have suggested that indeed, teachers should not just transmit information or simply assume the role of questioning students or expecting questions from learners for further understanding. In the context of the above experience, it is important for a teacher to first of all make her students develop thinking skills by starting at a straightforward descriptive stage, asking learners to describe situations, people, events, or places. At this stage, students learn language structures as well as new words and develop a dipper interest in the topic of discussion. From the descriptive level, the teacher moves to the analytic or projective stage, where she asks students to give their own opinions, to evaluate, to generalize, or give inferences. Even though the above interpretation gives a clear way on how the teacher in my class used the problem-posing technique, there are other inclusions that Freire thinks must be added to improve the technique further. First, the teacher should aim at teaching thinking skills by developing her own questioning and asking skills. She must also know the manner in which to focus and lead discussions to higher students’ level of thought. For instance, my teacher could have used the word “why” instead of “what” when asking, “What collective actions can you employ to ensure that other students build a positive attitude?” If she could have framed the question as, “why is it important for you to ensure that your fellow students have a positive attitude towards the teaching profession?” “Why” is a more critical form of teaching thinking skills because such a question allows students to project out their individual experiences into a wider debate or understanding of opinions. Freire puts forward the idea of using codes after the teacher has listened to the issues and selected some problems or themes. Freire uses the term problem-posing coding to mean real physical expressions that bring together all the theme elements into a single representation. They include forms such as drawings, photographs, movies, written dialogues, and stories. In my context of experience, Mrs Midiwo could have used a story of an individual to be emulated by the class, which shows the positive side of the teaching profession. This could have initiated critical thinking and also shaped the minds of the young minds, since a real life story could leave them with a moral lesson to hold on to. Another reason for doing this according to Freire is that, coding is a projective tool that is identifiable and emotionally laden to learners (Freire 45) Decoding could have been another suitable way to allow the students think critically about the teaching profession. Apart from using the word “why”, my teacher could have also used, “why not” to solicit our opinions. This could have created an exciting class interaction. In addition, I stated that my teacher had been told by mom about my attitude towards teaching as a career. Freire says in his opinion that teachers should not know the answers from the students or it should not be an obvious question with an obvious answer (Freire 60).This is because the inductive questions are meant to cultivate new ideas for the students as well as for the teacher. Conclusion Having said much about the problem-posing technique as opposed to the banking technique does not mean the banking technique is not significant. The reality is that an interactive way of teaching and learning is the best way to go. What makes problem-posing technique to outshine is its three major components that include listening, action, and dialogue. Listening is vital both inside and outside the classroom environment. The dialogue technique uses the decoding question strategy to achieve the goal of action and critical thinking. Most importantly, action, which includes dialogue isn’t a neutral process. It tries to move the process of learning from the level of skills and information to that of actions and consequences out of the classroom setting, which will apply to their life all through. Work Cited Freire, Ana Maria Araujo, and Donaldo Macedo. The Paulo Freire Reader. Cassell and Continuum, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, 1998. Read More