Pedagogy of the Oppressed

            Chapter 2 of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed presents the idea that teachers who use the “banking method” e.g. see their students merely as receptacles for depositing knowledge (Freire Ch. 2) are oppressing them by refusing to see them as individual human beings that are capable of intelligent discussion and thoughts and putting themselves at the center of attention as the only one who can distribute knowledge. First off, I agree with his line of thinking wholeheartedly as I had experiences like this with several teachers in high school, particularly within science and math. Now that I look back on it, this may have been a large part of the reason I never excelled in either of these subjects.

            However, as a solution to this problem that can benefit both students and teachers, Freire proposes a method known as “Problem posing education.” (Freire Chapter 2) Using this method involves topics and problems being discussed by a teacher and their students in such a way that it allows both groups to simultaneously learn from one another by a free exchange of ideas. Despite my earlier statement that many of my teachers chose to employ the banking method to teach their students, I also had several teachers who used methods very similar to problem posing. This was true in classes that focused around subjects such as English and History where we discussed the actions of characters or historical figures and tried to outline either the good things or the bad things about what they did, and tried to guess what the effect of their actions could be on other characters, people, or events. I learned very effectively from this method because it allowed all of us to think and be creative with how we performed tasks or solved problems.

            Because of reading this chapter and thinking about my own experiences with both methods, I began to wonder, why haven’t teachers tried to implement this method in more classes outside of humanities courses? I can see it being particularly effective in science because of the subject’s focus on curiosity and trying to figure out why things happen the way they do in the world so why hasn’t it ever been used? Could it be because the teacher sees themselves as a necessary opposite to their students to justify his own existence? (Freire Chapter 2) Whatever the case may be, I still think it would be a productive experiment to at least try this kind of a method with different types of classes, because if it benefits the students, then it is definitely something a teacher should be doing.