Banking Education: Paolo Freire

Freire (2002)describes "Banking Education" as one "in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits....Instead of communicating, the teachers issue communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat" (72).

Against such scheme, Freire maintains that "education 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, 2002, 72). He believes banking education never offers such a solution. Instead, it encourages or stimulates the contradiction through such the practices and attitudes that mirror the whole oppressive society as the following:

- the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
- the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
- the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
- the teacher talks and the students listen--- meekly;
- the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
- the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
- the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher;
- the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it;
- 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;
- the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects (73).

Source: Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.