Ok so now that I have managed to climb my way out of Freire’s “the Banking Concept of Teaching”, I will attempt to wrap my mind around his thoughts and tell you how he would feel about standardized testing. He would feel very bad about it. The end, thank you so very much….. Just kidding. Really though, he would most likely be enraged by the idea of standardized testing. It is just another example of how the oppressors are further controlling their profitable society. I see it as a tool that is used to prevent the students from questioning the role of education. Freire explains the current form of education as serving "the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed." It does this by clumping all the students into one collective group. This also makes them think that they are dependent upon the knowledge imparted by the teachers, thus furthering the memorization and regurgitation that Freire speaks of. This is where the banking concept comes in. As Freire says "It turns them into "containers", into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher." That is the deposit part of the equation. The withdrawal part, as I see it, would be the standardized testing. Also it implies that since it is on the test that everyone has to take then it must be true simply because it is on the test. That fact is indicated by Freire’s statement of “the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing.” Seeing as standardized testing seems to be the tip of the iceberg that is the banking method of teaching, I can say with confidence that Freire would not approve of this method.
Interesting how you bring economy into the ways our schools conduct education with your statement about how government(?) or the oppressors are trying to control it. Are you trying to get at that schools are set up the way they are to make good money making men and woman? I also like how you get inside the mind of a student. Why does education matter? :p
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree... but, I also think that he may have fun with standardized teaching in order to prove to teachers that they sometimes don't do as well as they think.
ReplyDeletepatrick- i think that the few aka the aristocracy use the education system as the starting point for molding society in a way that benefits them the most so that they can remain in control.
ReplyDelete