"The Banking Concept of Education": An Essay on Submissive Learning by Paulo Freire

In his essay The Banking Concept of Education, author Paulo Freire asserts that modern education is widely recognized as a chance for instructors (or “oppressors,” as he calls them) to fill students with information as they submissively accept it; in his vision of education, there is no reciprocal learning or sharing between teacher and student. In my years as a recipient of these clinical doses of knowledge, I have experienced many teachers who fit Freire’s pessimistic description. However, I have also experienced a professor who ran her classroom very differently from those Freire scorns, and she created a wonderful environment for learning because of those differences. Her methods prove that it is possible to create a classroom in which education does not “suffer from narration sickness.” 

The class that changed my opinion of education was a very small, intimate poetry workshop class of 12 people. The professor, who was as highly educated as the rest of the senate faculty generally found at highly-regarded universities, held fast to the idea that she could learn as much from her students as they from her. In his essay, Freire lists a number of qualities of the “Banking Concept of Education,” and asserts that the qualities are found in every classroom, and are mirrored by “oppressive society as a whole.” Since these are the qualities on which he bases his argument, it is important to be exposed to ways in which these qualities can be replaced by healthier ideas.