Pedagogy of the Oppressed Chapter 2 - Response

Chapter 2 from Pedagogy of the Oppressed takes the ideas established in Chapter 1 and applies it to the educational system.  I think this chapter makes many excellent points, and it proposes a model of teaching that all educators must strive for.

I think it is very important that educators separate themselves from the "banking" concept of education.  We need to see students as something more than "containers" or "receptacles" that must be filled.  An essential flaw with this notion of education is that it unjustly assumes that students know nothing, making it the job of the teacher to "narrate" their knowledge to students who must accept their teachers' statements at face value.  This concept of education is misguided, as the chapter explains, because true knowledge is attained through creativity, transformation, and a continual invention and re-invention of understanding.  The "banking" concept of education forces teachers to assume an oppressive role, as they control the thoughts and actions of their students and inhibit their creative potential.  To me, it seems clear that this "banking" concept of education is dehumanizing.  In order to be effective, learning must go beyond rote memorization and routine.  Students need opportunities for discovery, creation, and inquiry.  I think an essential point this chapter made is that many teachers may not even realize that they are operating within this "banking" concept of education, and are thus oppressing and dehumanizing their students.  Self-awareness is an essential aspect of being an educator, and it is important that teachers examine their own methods and determine what the true effect of their pedagogy is.

I believe that this chapter encapsulates the essence of a desirable and effective pedagogy when it states that "Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information."  Cognition, "the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses" (Google definition), is the heart of an effective education. Thought, experiences, and senses cannot be readily transferred from individual to individual.  In order to learn something, students must go through the mental processes that lead to understanding for themselves.  Rather than dictate knowledge to the student, it is then the job of the teacher to create opportunities for students to create their own knowledge through questioning, discussion, creation, and practice.

There is one last point that I would like to reiterate from this chapter.  The chapter states that this liberating form of education, or "problem-posing education," "affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming ... as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality ... In this incompletion and this awareness lie the very roots of education as a human manifestation."  I think it is important that we realize that we are always a work-in-progress.  Education brings us nearer to completion, but I do not think that we can ever reach a state of total self-actualization.  And I do not think this is a bad thing.  There will always be more knowledge to be gained, more creations to be made, and more experiences to be had in life, and this is what makes education such an exciting and rewarding venture.  Many of the joys in life are found in the pursuit and realization of goals or desires, but once these aspirations are attained, new ones emerge, the cycle repeats, and we move closer to completion, becoming increasingly humanized in the process.