Freire discussion points

Freire discussion points Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of most of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system. To the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new “culture of silence.”

Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology)of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.

The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world re­ vealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their “humani- tarianism” to preserve a profitable situation. Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in education which stimulates the critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality but always seeks out the ties which link one point to another and one problem to another.

Implicit in the banking concept is Uie assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is spectator, not re-creator.

Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by edu­ cators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression. This accusation is not made in the naive hope that the dominant elites will thereby simply abandon the practice. Its objective is to call the attention of true humanists to the fact that they cannot use banking educational methods in the pursuit of liberation, for they would only negate that very pursuit.

Unfortunately, those who espouse the cause of liberation are themselves surrounded and influenced by the climate which gener­ ates the banking concept, and often do not perceive its true signifi­ cance or its dehumanizing power.

In problem-posing education, people develop their power to per­ ceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation.

Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which ex­ plain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing edu­ cation sets itself the task of demythologizing.

“The treatment of students as passive is sometimes present in Freire’s own writings as well, where descriptions of problem-posing education and a spirit of dialogue appear alongside seemingly-linear marches toward ‘critical consciousness.’” (141)

“Yet when alternative pedagogical forms are researched, there is often a focus on what is to be taught…rather than the parallel question of how we teach—the organization of learning, social relations and forms of mediation  that constitute the means through which we engage students…” (143)

QUESTIONS

To what extent was your education informed by the “banking concept of education”? What kind of future did it hold open for you Should education be political? What are your goals as an educator? What kinds of relationships does Freire describe between people and things (or the world)? How does he describe perception or mediation? How might technology design contribute to liberatory education?

Possible media:      Space: Katie Taylor’s bike shop fixing     Video games: Anna Anthropy     Narrative: Unfold Studio