It is, perhaps, a commonplace to assert the importance of teaching to society but what is perhaps not so common is a consideration of how teaching can be used either to reinforce or to subvert patterns of domination in society at large. In this wiki post I will engage with Paulo Freire’s essay ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ to outline a properly dialectical view of the teacher-student relationship with real transformative potential.
The interest in Freire’s theory is the way in which the teacher student relationship is seen as a microcosm of other relationships of dominance in society. He outlines the main assumptions of what he describes as banking education:
(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher thinks and the students listen—meekly;
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.(Freire, 2000)
The results of the banking system of education are manifold. Students, who are presumed to be mere receptacles of knowledge, have ignorance projected onto them, such that they ‘accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence.’ Worse, the students are not engaged with changing the world, but are, in fact, taught to change their consciousness such that they adapt to their social situation rather than resist it. Teaching then becomes reactionary and oppressive.
Freire argues, convincingly, that any truly humanistic teacher or libertarian educator can have nothing to do with the banking system of education. ‘Education’, he avers, ‘must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.’(Freire, 2000) He envisages an ideal educational world of teacher-students and student-teachers in which both teach and both learn in a mutually respectful environment, only then can students realize their full potential as humans in the world.
References:
Paulo Freire (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
The interest in Freire’s theory is the way in which the teacher student relationship is seen as a microcosm of other relationships of dominance in society. He outlines the main assumptions of what he describes as banking education:
(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher thinks and the students listen—meekly;
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.(Freire, 2000)
The results of the banking system of education are manifold. Students, who are presumed to be mere receptacles of knowledge, have ignorance projected onto them, such that they ‘accept their ignorance as justifying the teacher’s existence.’ Worse, the students are not engaged with changing the world, but are, in fact, taught to change their consciousness such that they adapt to their social situation rather than resist it. Teaching then becomes reactionary and oppressive.
Freire argues, convincingly, that any truly humanistic teacher or libertarian educator can have nothing to do with the banking system of education. ‘Education’, he avers, ‘must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.’(Freire, 2000) He envisages an ideal educational world of teacher-students and student-teachers in which both teach and both learn in a mutually respectful environment, only then can students realize their full potential as humans in the world.
References:
Paulo Freire (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.