Paulo Friere

AJ Jewitt

February 23, 2006

ENC 1101.013

ajewitt@fau.edu

Freire Assignment

The Oppression Factor

In the excerpt from Paulo Freire’s book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, there is a great amount of writing that requires a lot of analytical reading to really understand. Aside from what is actually stated in his writing, the reader must also consider Paulo Freire’s own educational background. Freire, having received his education in Brazil, has a much different perspective on the educational system than if he had received his education in the United States.

In 1964, the Brazilian military forced President Joao Goulart out of office and allowed General Castel Branco to take over. This began the strict military rule that would continue over the next several years. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the Brazilian government suspended the rights of the citizens, banned political expression, and prohibited trade union activities. This type of widespread oppression has not been witnessed in the United States since before the writing of the Constitution, and that is why relating a personal situation to Paulo Freire’s concepts is so difficult to do. He does not speak from an American educational standpoint, instead he speaks from the standpoint of someone who lived and was educated during a rough period in time for Brazil. I believe that Paulo Freire was accurate with his concepts of “banking” in education, but they do not relate as strongly to an American student as they would to a Brazilian student.

From the earliest days of my educational career to even the most recent, there have been several different occasions during which you could say a teacher was “banking” information into the students, but I don’t believe that this was because they were trying to oppress the students. This entire concept of oppression is what makes Freire’s concepts irrelevant to an American culture. I believe that teachers in modern day classrooms do as much as they can to facilitate free-thinking and to provoke discussion while trying to educate students. But there are certainly reasons as to why teachers might have to resort to a more “banking”-type way of educating. In some cases, teachers must present the students with information that cannot be anything but memorized for proficiency. In the past, I have been in English classes where we would have to memorize vocabulary words and their definitions in order to pass tests on them. The way in which these words are learned could be classified as “banking” because the teacher is presenting the students with information which is then memorized and recited when the test comes. In this situation the “banking” techniques were effective in teaching the students the meanings of the words and helping them to be able to actually utilize them since they are known. As a six year old in kindergarten there is not much thought process involved in education. This is more of a situation where the teachers tell the young children what is right and the students retain or “bank” these teachings. They are taught that if you have two cookies and someone gives you two more cookies, that you will have four cookies and not five. Freire would more than likely label this as “banking”, but he is wrong. This type of education sets up standards and concepts for young children to expand and grow into. Without the foundation set up with “banking”-type education, the students would more than likely be lost and unable to think for themselves due to the fact that they have no solidified ground to start their thinking processes on. The teacher is the one who creates this solidified ground in order for the students to be able to eventually