The Banking Concept of Education

The Banking Concept of Education, by Paulo Freire, takes a realistic viewpoint of what is really the purpose of education. The banking concept is how students store away information inside their virtual bank accounts in hopes that they will receive rewards for it someday. They do not really learn it; they just recite it.

The educator takes on the role of the grand guru, and is the unquestionable master in his certain field. He tells his students something and they memorize it. There is no free thought involved on their part. They accept that they are ignorant vessels in need of what the teacher is giving. If they do not accept it they are looked at under a microscope and are put in ‘special’ classes for children that do not learn or behave well. There they are educated for the menial jobs they will someday have.

School is an ingenious separating machine that organizes society. It sifts through all of the children and young adults and places them in their proper bins. The nametags on these bins vary--Upper class, Middle class, Lower class. Usually the bins they are placed in will reflect where they will be in a decade or two.

If one does not memorize well then they will not likely succeed. Emphasis is placed more on memorizing as much as possible in a short period of time, rather than taking time actually learning the material. The ones that play the game well will start putting away cash in their proverbial banks to use as collateral for future jobs and power. One does not ever have to learn anything but the rules of the game.

The ‘game’ is one of strategy. The player makes certain moves in accordance to how he will be rewarded. He can receive extra points by reciting information back to the educator perfectly. Move ahead two spaces. By looking ahead at the finish line (an ivy league school and a job in bio-chemistry) the pawn is able to gauge at what exactly he’ll need in order to obtain his goal. Very few actually make it to the finish line, but many find comfortable places a few spaces from the line and are able to roost quite nicely.

What receptacle do I see myself in someday? I’ve been a good student. I’ve passed all of my classes--some easily, and others not so easily. While I can’t see outside of my box to the label on it, I’d guess that it would be straight in the center of middle class. I’ll go on to get an okay education and a degree in teaching or nursing, and I’ll have an average life. While I am glad that I wasn’t sorted in some other lower place, I am slightly indignant that I wasn’t placed at the top rung of the ladder. Realistically though, I understand that everyone can not be there. The ladder would crack and fall with the poorly distributed weight.

Whether one likes it or not, our education system works well at distributing people evenly. It molds people into useable future society members. Good citizens are those that are passive and listen to authority figures unquestioningly. It is not nice to think about (or not think about, as is taught) being an empty-headed worker, but the world would erupt in chaos if everyone thought, questioned, and fought the way the world works. Educators work hard at closing minds and turning of certain switches in their student's brains. Unfortunately, this is how our society functions.

Being educated is a necessary evil if one wants to succeed in life. Society would not function if everyone was all radical thinkers like Freire. I’ve been gazing through rose-tinted glasses for my entire life. Soon I will place them back on the bridge of my nose and continue life as usual. I, for one, will be perfectly content with my own ignorant self to sit in my own little section at the center of the ladder. I’ve realized that there is nothing I can do to change it, and, like most people, I really don’t care to.