Banking Concept

At first I was struggling with this piece and I needed to read it twice to really get it. It makes sense. I see this banking concept in a lot of pieces that we have covered this quarter. In the movie Waiting for Superman there was a little animated bit that showed a teacher opening the tops of kids heads and pouring "information" into them, that image kept coming to mind as I read this. Students in Ms. Watson's class were quite used to the "Banking Concept" they were told what something was, memorized and were able to spit the information back out. Ms. Watson asked them to think for themselves and explore their own reactions and listen to the explorations of their classmates and in this way that were learning. Yet those explorations moved them away from the expectations of the institution where it was more valued for "the educated man to the the adapted man, because he is a better fit..." This type of teaching minimizes a students creativity or as Sir Ken Robinson says, "we are educating people out of their creativity". Freire recommends instead a problem posing method which has the teachers and student learning from each other in ways that relate themselves to world and are then inspired and act in accordance to that inspiration. Which is probably why the program in Tucson was so successful, the students could relate to the material, they were inspired and wanted more.