Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Pedagogy of the Oppressed mentions the issue of society believing that our students should should be taught in a depository manner where they do nothing but take in knowledge. This teaching philosophy, otherwise known as the banking method creates a society where humans cannot fully develop to their full capabilities. Knowledge emerges only through invention and constant rethinking of those concepts to avoid stagnation or even worse, regression. The world progresses best when people are constantly inquiring about new concepts that require a deeper level of understanding and analysis than receiving, filling and storing our knowledge banks with information that lacks purpose. Teachers cannot educated their students to where the teacher is the only one benefiting from the learning process and the students are just objects. The problems arise when students start to accept their passive roles when they are being bombarded by the same teaching tactics that fail to generate critical thinking abilities. Instead of learning to transform the world, students adapt to the fragmented reality taught to them failing to ever make a strong impact on the world itself. Education begins when groups of cognition are involved, not mere transfer of information. The teacher needs to become a learner with the students, not just a mountain of information to deposit in their students. Teachers and students should both be responsible for the growing of their own learning process by allowing the freedom to think rather than imposing their arguments on students. As students are continually given problems related to themselves in the world, they will not only challenge the beliefs others teach them but their own as well. Their response to this new way of thinking brings new understandings, creating a healthy atmosphere of learning. There must be a larger focus on education and cognition as a freedom instead of a practice to force values upon subjects. The banking method denies people of right to think freely and question ideas in the world and should be eradicated from education. Society must band together to implement more revolutionary tactics for educating people before the method can be effective.