Philosophy of Education: Pedagogy of the Opressed

About a week before this blog post was due my professor mentioned that the reading that was coming up was "philosophical" and that he specifically chose this chapter of the book because it was the easiest to understand. Therefore, I went into this reading a little bit skeptical on whether or not I would even understand the content. So when I read this statement within the first couple of paragraphs I knew I was going to enjoy the reading, "worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teachers." The author goes on to make a connection between this metaphor by explaining that "the more completely (a teacher) fills the receptacles, the better a teachers she is" and continues on by saying that "the more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are." Universally, this is the way we look at education, it is a way for the "knowledgeable" to impose their knowledge on to those who know nothing. But that isn't actually true because our students know so much. Especially in a subject like English students must express their knowledge continuously in a classroom because that helps their classmates and even their teachers expand their understanding.
The banking-concept is reliant on the idea "that a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator, not re-creator." If you were to equate the world to your classroom I do not know a single one of fellow future-teacher peers who would be ok with their students merely being in the classroom as a spectator. Students need to be involved in practice, decisions, and their own learning. If there is one thing that I believe about education it is that the student is an active participant in their education. A students' learning is not just about teaching them to be an open basket that a teacher can put knowledge into it is about taking that knowledge and shaping it so it best makes sense to you.
After reading about the banking concept of education the chapter then moved on to the problem-posing method which is obviously a concept that I can get behind. With the problem-posing education method, "the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students" and the students are "no longer docile listeners" but are now "critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher." As I mentioned up above students need to be present in their education and active in it and teachers need to provide them with those opportunities by reflecting on how classroom activities have impacted the students' learning. Overall, "problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings the process of becoming -- as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality." I really liked a lot of the quotes from this chapter and that is why I included many of them in this post because I felt like there were some really powerful words in the chapter.