Summary of Freires Banking Concept
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In the essay The "Banking" Concept of Education, Paulo Freire makes an attack on the conventional way of teaching. He facetiously gives the style of teaching the title the "banking concept." This common method of teaching is, in Freire's words, " ..in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the student is neither given the chance nor allowed to think for his or her self; the student merely assimilates the data given to them by the teacher." The students are taught to memorize what they are told and not to question why they are learning that two plus two is four or why they need to learn the states. They are simply expected to memorize. The students are just empty vessels waiting to be filled with facts and truths, without the knowledge to apply the concepts they have learned to other situations. Under the banking concept, there is no inquiry, therefore, according to Freire, education is impossible since is something that "emerges only through the invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other."
Next Freire turns the "banking scenario" to a much larger scale..