Philosophy of Education

“In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive 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.”

I do not have a lot of experience in the class room as a teacher, but I do as a student. The banking system introduced in this reading reminded me a lot of my education. I would memorize to the point of a test and then toss it all aside in order to memorize the next bit of information. I never truly learned anything. Sure I learned some things due to the repetition of the subject but I felt that most of the knowledge I was learning was only short term, something only to remember for the next test and the next subject. But there was nothing I would necessarily use for the rest of my life. This repetition of memorizing and forgetting stems from the personal belief that High School was just preparing me for these tests and that’s it. Yet everything changed when I got to College. I found myself interested in what I was studying and found that what I was learning was actually applicable to life. I think college is more applicable due to it being more career focused and also because people are studying what they actually want to study, pursuing what they are interested in. But that isn’t always the case in High School. When thinking about the purpose of High School most schools will say that “We have a strong program that prepares our students to be college ready.” But not everyone goes to college. There are other ways to continue your education without going to a 2 year or 4 year university. You don’t have to go to college to be successful but at the same time, there are certain careers that require it. Yet we push college on to all students even if it may not be the right choice for them, and to me that feels like we’re setting up students for failure.

I know I haven’t said much about the reading up to this point, but that will change here. Basically the first part of the reading referred to what I discussed prior, a banking notion that prescribed a teaching method focused on filling students with facts and information so they could vomit it all up at the end of the term/school year. Yet Friere reminded us that good communication along with respect for the students own thoughts and feelings would encourage not just academic growth but complete personal growth. We aren’t just developing minds, but people, living, breathing, thinking, feeling people. And if they are treated like computers, where you input and output codes in order to receive the results you want, they won’t grow.

“Education as the practice of freedom -- as opposed to education as the practice of domination -- denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world. In these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the world nor follows it.”