Freire says, "There is no such thing as neutral education . Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom" (p. 34).
Freire (2003) begins by describing the contradiction between the oppressors and the oppressed and how the "banking system" evident throughout the public education system in America is an instrument of oppression. The solution is implementing a "problem-posing" educational model that can only occur through a revolutionary and mutual process.
Public schools throughout America traditionally utilize a narrative model, as described in chapter 2. Freire (2003) describes scenarios in which the educator is presenting disconnected content in a "motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable" manner detached from the real world the children are living in. "Words are emptied of their concreteness and become hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity" (p. 71). The students become a "receptacle" waiting to be "filled by the teacher" and the teacher's success is completely dependent upon her ability to fill the containers more completely. Of course, student success is determined entirely by his ability to allow himself to be filled with and then regurgitate the information. This is the definition of the "banking model" of education, an "act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor" (p. 72).
In the banking model, there is little room for transformation, relationship building, problem solving, inquiry, or creativity for the student or the teacher. An opposing relationship is established. The teacher believes herself to be the projector of knowledge, gifting this information to the ignorant, empty student vessel, which is the foundational basis for an oppressor/oppressed relationship. Freire (2003) says that the only way to begin the educational revolution is to first tackle this "teacher-student contradiction" by creating a dynamic where both the teacher and the student are both "simultaneously teachers and students," thereby dismantling the oppressor/oppressed relationship (p. 72).
Some areas within the public school setting that need to be addressed lie heavily with the teacher and student relationship. In a banking model, much responsibility falls squarely on the teacher. She is tasked with deciding what is taught, what questions will be asked, what discourse the students will participate in, disciplinary actions, and she controls the content to be delivered to the students. Students are expected to adapt, comply, conform, participate willingly, listen meekly, and focus their thoughts exclusively on the teacher and the words coming from her mouth. The teacher is the authority in all ways, and the student is expected to be adaptable and manageable. "The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them" (Freire, 2003, p. 73).
The banking model removes any humanity from education and creates a reality where the person exists "in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator" (Freire, 2003, p. 75). The educator alone holds the key to the student's pathway to finding and determining their cosmic task by thinking for her students and imposing her thoughts and realities on him (p. 77).
Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression. This accusation is not made in the naïve hope that the dominant elites will thereby simply abandon the practice. Its objective is to call the attention of the true humanists to the fact that they cannot use banking educational methods in the pursuit of liberation, for they would only negate that very pursuit. (Freire, 2003, p. 78)
Freire (2003) contends that the only way to liberate humans from this banking model is through a "process of humanization" that transforms and recognizes that all humans have a consciousness of their relationship with the world. Instead of a banking model, Freire proposes a "problem-posing" model of education, which "breaks with the vertical patterns characteristic of banking education" (p. 79-80). Through dialogue, shared responsibilities, freedom, people teaching each other, and reflection, the classroom becomes a place where the teacher and the student become "co-investigators" (p. 81).
The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator is to create; together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of doxa is superseded by true knowledge at the level of the logos. (Freire, 2003, p. 81)
The problem-posing model creates situations where the student is problem-solving, thinking critically, responding to challenges, and finding new understandings of the world around them. Ultimately, this leads the student to find their place in the world and discover their cosmic task. They develop their ability to think critically and reflect about "the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves" not within a static reality created by someone else (the oppressor) but one that they discover through the process of transformation (Freire, 2003, p. 83).
"Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity" (Freire, 2003, p. 84). The revolution cannot happen in isolation or in individual situations but must be an act of "fellowship and solidarity" where teachers and students can overcome authoritarianism and a "false perception of reality" (p. 85-86).
The following two chapters of Pedagogy of the Oppressed outline ways in which the revolutionary educational process happens and what the revolutionary leaders must do to "shake your windows" and "rattle your walls" (Dylan, 1964).
To read more about the revolutionary process and how leaders can make educational system changes, click the link to take you back to the Table of Contents.
Dylan, B. (1964). The times they are a-changin' [Song]. On The Times They Are A-Changin'. Columbia Recording.
Freire, P. (2003). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc.
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