Reading Journal #2: "The Banking Concept of Education"

1. Select 3 "flashpoints" from the essay.
           Flashpoint #1- "For apart form inquiry, apart from praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world"
          This stood out because it defines how to learn and become knowledgable. People learn by asking questions of the world around them. People can only learn if they want to learn, not because they are being forced to learn something by a teacher or school.
          Flashpoint #2- "The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students' creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the opressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it transformed."
          This flashpoint reminded me of the TED talk that we watched earlier in the quarter. It's basically saying that the way schools are being taught stifles children's creativity, making them less independent and therefore more submissive to those in power (teachers).
          Flashpoint #3- "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."
          I chose this as a flashpoint because it explains that education is a tool which people should use to explain the world around them as the world is changing. The author is saying that education shouldn't be a stagnant thing, but something that should adapt to the student and the world around them.

2. Identify the ideas/issues Freire is responding to.
          Freire is responding to the obvious lack of proper education that people are getting. She also eludes that people aren't learning what is neccessary for them to function in the world. Students are being forced to learn things because other people think that they need to. There needs to be a collabiration in education where both student and teacher learn and teach each other, instead of them being 2 seperate entities.

3. Write and explain 3 questions in response to the essay.
          Why haven't more people noticed the falling standards in education and why haven't more people done something to change it?
          The way to fix a problem is to figure out why it's happening. Only then can the problem truly be solved. So many people are concerned about their children's education, yet none of them have done anything to actually see that edfforts are being made to make things better.
          Why aren't students striving to get a better education naturally?
          People have a naturally curiousity, so one would think that they would naturally ask questions of the teacher and of the world around them. Though maybe it's not that the students aren't asking questions, maybe it's the teachers who aren't answering the questions to the neccessary extent.
          What can we do to help create a better education system in America and to ensure that students get the help they need?
          I don't think that there will ever be a clear answer for this. Even if there is there would be no way to ensure that every single person gets the right kind of education for them. There are just too many people in the world and too many indiviualized needs for everyone's needs to be met.


Here's a good video about schools killing creativity, it's by the same guy from the TED talk (Sir Ken Robinson)