To Be Educated

No one can know for sure what is the correct way to teach everybody; this being simple logic for the basic reason that everybody is an individual and obtains information differently from everybody else. However, in "The Banking Concept of Education", Freire poses an interesting point of view by generalizing two teaching methods, a banking method and a problem-posing method. The banking method is a method where the teacher narrates sickly to the students and the students are therefore expected to retain the spoken information. In contrast, the problem-posing method is where the teacher poses a question and the student then tries to find the answer on his or her own. Although, I believe that education has greatly evolved from the banking method of education to a more problem-posing method since Freire's writing of the book in 1968, there are still examples of the banking method in our current time; I believe I have lived versions of both methods.

I came from an indigent family with not a lot of assets. My parents had immigrated from Mexico, searching for a better tomorrow. Neither of them had gone past grade school, but they where both hardworking. In the United States they realized that education was important and although they were not able to help any of their four children, they encouraged us to continue and to not give up. Additionally, my parents thought that all schools were the same, meaning the school that was appointed to us by where we lived, was the school we attended. Since we were a low-income family we lived mediocre neighborhood and had to go to the schools that were closest to us.

I can clearly relate my middle school and high school life to both Freire's theories of education. I went to Dobbie Middle School, there I remember that it was cooler to be a trouble maker than to be smart. When I went to Dobbie, it was an already improving school, and by the time I left Dobbie was one of the only recognized schools of East Austin. However because of this new importance in education, everything became about test scores and improving the schools academic image. Teachers became necrophilics, and for the seven hours of education the lectures became the teacher orating information and the pupil writing down and trying to memorize the information. Narration sickness became customary and usual, "the teacher talked about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized , and predictable." (1) It was to the point were the student didn't even have to think, just memorize and remember the answers. This process that Freire states as being part of an oppressed society continued for the three years of my middle school life.

In middle school, I remember trying to sign up for regular classes even though I was clearly supposed to be in advanced classes. The counselor there didn't allow me, but looking back I can't believe that I actually wanted less of an education. That