Contemporary Philosophy
The Banking Model
The banking model is a concept Pablo Freire explains in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The model is simple and can also be worded as filling the vessel. The model is a way of educating people, and it’s a sender-receiver approach. To dumb it down the banking model is simply a teacher giving a lecture to students. It’s a one-way stream of information where there is not really room for a communal collaboration of learning and teaching. Maybe there will be a question or two about the idea the professor or teacher just expressed, but there are no contributing ideas from the students, no arguments against ideas presented by the teacher, or no analogies presented by the students. There is no room for creativity, innovation or imagination. The teacher is the source of knowledge and she knows everything. This model is used frequently all across the globe to convey information and educate millions of people about things they do not know, and it does works. The banking model is efficient and effective. It is a great way of learning and/or conveying information, but if this way of being educated is the only way students are taught, it is not good.
Listening to a professor give a lecture can be a beautiful thing. In fact, listening is how I became invested in philosophy. My intro teacher had his lectures perfectly planned to the minute. He spoke with passion, prosody, and he spoke loud. This man was literally yelling philosophy, preaching philosophy to us. Later I would find out that he was a protestant preacher and I had an AH HA moment. The point is that this man gave me knowledge that I never knew of and I didn’t have to speak. All I had to do was attend class and listen. Of course he would ask us to repeat the information that he yelled at us on the test, so we had to scribe copious notes as well as listen, but dam he was a good talker. I always wondered how he could convey a line of thought that well, with that much passion. It was beautiful, but it was also detrimental. Why? Well he was the only one ever to talk, and he did so in an aggressive and loud tone. I loved his class but I was afraid to say anything in it, and all the other people were too! It’s intimidating when a professor educates students this way. We had about 30 brains in the class and only one was talking, there has to be something wrong with that.
If students are lectured all there lives they are never going to be able to formulate comments, concepts, ideas, or adversary ideas to anything. There mentality when they go into class is like the mentality when going into a church: I’m just going to sit down and listen. This mentality needs to be changed. The new student’s mentality should focus on speech, dialogue and conversation. Instead of sitting down for an hour and a half or sometimes three hours, students should be eager to tell the class what they learned or what they think about a certain idea brought up. But were we ever taught or told that class was a conversation? No, we are told that class is where we learn information, not where we teach information. The players play and the coaches coach. Well the teachers teach and the students listen. It is terrible that we are conditioned to think of the classroom like this. We are also conditioned to perceive the teacher as a power figure, an authority, and a person who knows much more than us. But as we learned when studying standpoint theory this is not the case. The teacher actually has an epistemological disadvantage, and the oppressed have an advantage.
There are many alternative educational approaches that one can use instead of the banking model, but first we need comfortableness. For students to be creative and intuitive they need to be comfortable and relaxed. If the students are intimidated, fearful, or weirded out, they will not contribute or say anything. Next, the relationship between teacher and student needs to be changed. The student should not view the teacher as an authority or an intimidator, but as a friend instead. We need to erase societies barriers that have set up the teacher/student power structure where the teacher is the source of knowledge and power because that is oppressing. Next, we should teach students how to formulate effective arguments/comments/points orally. Classes of public speaking are essential at the lower levels. As of right now, a junior in college, it was never required for me to take an speech class; that is absurd. Also students should be taught how to articulate different arguments from different standpoints, so they understand where both parties are coming from. They should be taught to undermine/deconstruct an argument or idea. Questioning and skepticism are essential for a deeper understanding of the subject being taught. Teachers should stop lecturing so much and assign students a topic to give a presentation on, and if there is any conveyed information that is error the teacher respectfully comments on it. Over the course of the class the teacher should posit many questions to the class. This method will stimulate student’s brains more and spark creativity where interesting ideas can be further explored.
The banking model should not be the main approach to education, but it is in many classrooms across the world. Dialogue and conversation should be advocated more, but it is difficult to get students to follow the dialogical model if all their lives they were just preached to, and never taught how to have a conversation.
-JV
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