2 Concepts of Education

During class time, what are you like?!

📚 Note down every word OR Critical thinking 🤔

Today NEXKY will briefly introduce you to the 2️⃣ concepts of education: Banking and Problem-Posing Concepts

Coined by Paulo Freire in ‘The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, these concepts are completely different and can produce different types of students.

📚 Let’s start with the ‘Banking Concept’.

This concept depicts a clear boundary between the duty of the student and teacher. The teacher is expected to teach, teach, and teach. Simultaneously, the student is expected to be an empty container whose duty is to listen, memorize, and blindly follow orders.

While teachers know everything, students know nothing.

While teachers choose the content, students adapt to it.

Banking concept focuses on memorization. Things learnt and words are considered as empty and lack critical thinking.

‘Knowledge’ is seen as ready-made, fixed, and unchanging ❌.

The effects on students are the decrease in creativity 🤕, lack of self-reflection and standpoint. Students will become someone who blindly accepts things as unchallengeable. 

But wait! What about the Problem-Posing Concept?

Let’s take a look at what it is❗️

🤔 In the classroom where ‘Problem-Posing concept’ takes place, both students and teachers have the duty to learn and actively produce knowledge between each other.

For Paulo Freire, knowledge and education are negotiable. ‘Dialogue’ is essential. 

🙋 Students are critical thinkers whose opinions are valuable. Everyone will have more creativity and know their standpoint and interests 🙋‍♀️.

Nevertheless, in this case, students would need to ensure that they have prepared themselves well for class discussions as well!

Hmm…

So can we say that the Problem-Posing concept is better than the Banking concept ⁉️

Actually, it would depend on the situation.

⏱ Sometimes, the Problem-Posing concept is more suitable.

⏱ Sometimes, the Banking concept is more suitable.

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For instance, ‘language learning’.

We could say that the Banking concept might be more suitable as we don’t know anything about that language. When starting, we would need a teacher to give us information and lessons for us to memorize. This would enable us to be able to understand how that language works. If the teacher gives us a hard critical question, how could we answer if we know nothing about that language! 

From this case, we could see that the Banking concept might be more suitable than the Problem-Posing concept! 

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What do you think? Different concepts suit different situations. 

This story is only a generalized summary. If you want to dig deeper, take a look at the link below!

Reference: https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf