Banking Concept Of Education

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, once said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” This is a particular way of learning in which I have come to realize that is extremely useful for myself and my learning experience. Through my educational career, I have either thrived or struggled in the subject of English. After reading and relating to the ideas from Robinson’s, “Changing the Education Paradigm” and Freire’s “Banking Concept of Education,” I have come to the conclusion that the education system that is criticized by these two authors is one that is heading in a downward spiral and should be altered to suit the needs of all students. Through the use of divergent thinking,

Growing up, the English language excited me. Whenever I had a writing assignment, I could not wait to start the writing process. My mother always proofread my papers and constantly told me I was a good writer. Her words of encouragement filled me with a passion for writing. However, as much as I wished that the writing process would come naturally to me, it didn’t. I was always told what to write about and how to write it, but that process always brought up the questions of “Am I meeting the prompt requirements?” or “Does this make any sense to my reader?” According to Robinson’s video on the education system, he brings up the idea of “divergent thinking.” This is the idea that students should have the ability to seek multiple ways to answer or interpret something. Sir Ken Robinson’s thoughts struck me, because if I would have thought this way throughout all my writing endeavors, I could have challenged myself and pushed the boundaries on all of my writing assignments. With the idea of divergent thinking, students are allowed the chance to have a sense of identity within their writing, and through the use of encouragement students will be inspired to be more imaginative throughout their learning process. This will transform the way students take the information they are learning to a new

From the words of Paulo Freire, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire, 216). I can relate to this idea because the only reason I thrived in my education was through the use of memorization. I began to retain the information that my teachers told me and never thought further than what I was told or questioned the concepts. The way I was learning and thinking should be considered as the epitome of the “banking concept.” Furthermore, as a student I was never fully engaged in what was being taught but more focused with what I was being told to know and as Freire would say, “store it for deposit.” If someone was to ask me today half the stuff I had learned in my previous years or even last year, I could not answer to my entire capability. Freire states, “They must abandon the educational goal of deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations with the world” (Freire, 221). Problem-posing is a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation. If I would have thought for myself throughout all my learning practices, I would have had the opportunity to expand my knowledge and evolve with