Paulo Freire: Chapter 2 of Pedagogy

This was one of the more interesting articles that we have read. In Paulo Freire’s Chapter Two, he explains the difference between educators who use banking educational methods and educators who are humanist revolutionary educators. “Education is suffering from narration sickness”, he writes. What he is referring to is the way many teachers just talk and talk at students and expect them to absorb all the narration that they’re lecturing at them. He continues further down saying, “His task [the teacher’s] is to fill the student with contents of his narration”. Take note on that…”to fill the student with contents of his narration”. Not to help the students to grow in their learning and develop within the content, but to lead them in a direction of memorization. He makes a reference that compares this sort of educating to depositing money in a bank or trash in the trash can. The students become the trash can or the bank account that the teacher deposits his trash and money into. However, when it comes to learning, gaining knowledge and an education only comes from invention and re-invention. In order for that to happen, there must be a back and forth dialect of contradictions and ideas between the teacher and student and between peers to create the invention of ideas and the re-invention of those ideas into something even better. If this back and forth sort of learning isn’t encouraged, then students will slip into a more passive role in their learning. This is why the humanist educators are getting so excited about pulling students out of that role and pushing them into the next step of their education. These sort of teachers have to be “partners of the students” the article says. If students and teachers partner together, then that back and forth, active learning can take place…which is where it’s at.