Banking Concept of Education

1.    Friere uses that concept of "narration sickness" to say that education is suffering.  He says that there is the subject, which is the teacher, and the listening objects, which would be the student.  Friere is basically saying that teachers get in front of their class and talk "at" the students giving them 'lifeless' facts and information which the student must retain and memorize the information.

2.  With the standardized testing in high schools today these tests are simply facts.  The questions are not relatable to life, and many times these tests quite frankly are just a test of students memorizing skills.  They may not get how the question connect to our daily lives, or how they can use the information on a daily basis after learning it.  To me if students don't know how they can use the information or if they can not relate it the their own lives then they will not be as interested in actually learning it, they will just memorize it to pass a test or quiz.

3.  I actually currently have a teacher at USF that, to me, uses the banking concept of education to teach.  When reading the list that Friere had there were many that came to mind when I thought about this teacher.  My teacher makes slides and just simply reads them to us, he does not elaborate or try and explain further.  When someone asks the teacher a question he isn't sure how to answer in a different way so he simply re-reads the slide.  Soon I think students caught on not to ask questions because he would read the slide again then move on.

                 He talks 'at' us not relating the subject matter to real life.  We only have test and quizzes so we must memorize the bland material then take a test or quiz to show how much we have memorized.  This information is rarely retained after the quiz or the test because I never  understand the way things work or why the work or how I will someday use the information.  To me this is a disadvantage to my education.  It is nothing personal at all, I just dislike this teaching method.

4.   In my college experience I had a Composition teacher who was an excellent teacher.  Yes, I believe that she did practice the concepts of problem posing education.  She had quite the opposite teaching method of that of the banking concept of education.  In the class we wrote a lot of papers as well as read many novels and other pieces of literature.  When she spoke about the literature you could tell she had study it, possibly even read it a million times.  She was interested, she asked us questions and made us think about the answers.  She didn't just talk at us and make us memorize information she had us read the material then we would talk to each other about it.   She wouldn't sit up at the front the whole class period and give us dead facts about the piece.

                We were not only graded by taking test but we were also graded for class projects and our writing pieces.  On our writing assignments she would give us feedback and give us comments to improve on our skills.  When we asked questions she found a way to answer until we understood.  Also she gave us many different resources to find things for our papers, like telling us about online resources etc and she taught us how to site these sources.  She also taught us how to create a resume, which would eventually come in handy for us all.  To me she was an excellent teacher that made me think, not just memorize.

5.  I think that the Athenians, from Neil Postman's "My Graduation Speech", would have embraced the concept of problem-posing education.  The Athenians were very community oriented so dialogue and communication were big parts of their community.  I would say all but one of my classes at USF this semester practice the problem-posing teaching style.  The only course that I have that is strictly banking concept theory would be my Micro Biology course.  I think I would benefit more if it was taught the same way.  It is a tough subject to begin with, then only to be taught to memorize information and everything is so lifeless, it is hard to learn and concentrate.