Example Of Two Students example essay topic

Paulo Freire's essay The 'Banking Concept' of Education, and Walker Percy's essay The Loss of the Creature ultimately share the same message: students are not able, without a struggle, to use their education to confront real-life situations. However, they go about convincing the reader of their views in very different ways, and Percy seems to be the more successful of the two, by making inclusion of the reader a priority in his writing. His rhetoric consists of real examples, colorful metaphors, and provocative allusions to make his ideas highly approachable and intelligible to his audience. Friere, on the other hand, simply states his case using diction, along with a little sarcasm, and a whole lot of repetition. His case exists completely in the abstract, in theory, and yet, appeals ironically to the emotions instead of to logic. Ultimately, the problem with Freire's rhetoric is that it is too abstract in nature.

In The 'Banking Concept' of Education, Freire discusses a problem with the educational system, which he believes to be that students (the "oppressed") are cheated out of true experience, true education, because they are not allowed to think. He says, The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of the world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them. (350) The teachers (the "oppressors") in the "banking concept" of education fill their students with information (deposits). The students store the information until they are asked to spew it out again (such as a test day).

In this "banking" system there is no room for thought, simply repetition. The student "accepts" whatever their teacher says as law, as truth, as reality, without ever considering it for himself, questioning it, or ever applying that information to his own life, his own reality. Freire said that the 'banking system' is one "in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communique " es and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat" (Freire 349).

Students have had their right of opinion, their right to think and truly experience reality, their humanity, stripped away by system. The fundamental problem, is that students cannot connect what they learn to the real world. In The Loss of the Creature, Walker Percy blames not only the system, but also the student for her "radical loss of sovereignty" over her own experience. Percy says that students studying a sonnet in an English class, or observing a dogfish in biology "may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the educational package in which it is presented" (573) The student sees the material presented in a classroom as a piece of a whole, a part of a series, an example of an ideal.

The instructor tells them what conclusions to draw from the sonnet, and what they will see in the dogfish. Thus, the object itself, (the sonnet or dog fish) is concealed by the theory surrounding it, the "symbolic package" (573) surrounding it. The student sees himself as "a consumer receiving an experience package" instead of "a person experiencing the sovereign right of a person in his lordship and mastery of creation". (573) Though the two authors share similar ideas, the way in which they go about convincing the reader is rhetorically very different. The care Friere takes in choosing his words to be as persuasive as possible (diction) permeates every aspect of his essay.

He carefully utilized his superior vocabulary to establish his intelligence, and to make the problem of the unimaginative student into the epic, emotional struggle for the liberation of the oppressed. For example, he claims, If man and woman are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation (351). Freire's hortatory words set the reader on a quest for humanity and the pursuit of freedom, but he still managed to keep his argument completely metaphysical. His use of sarcasm and allusion also paint the reader into a virtual corner, so that he is forced to agree with Freire's ideas.

For instance, when he describes what the oppressors in the banking system think of the oppressed, he says, "These [students (or oppressed) ] need to be 'integrated', 'incorporated' into the healthy society that they have 'forsaken'". (350) Here, he clearly projects his scorn for the people who agree with the above sentiment. By using the quotation marks around the words "integrated", "incorporated", and "forsaken", he makes them really stand out as ridiculous and moronic. The reader doesn't want to disagree with Freire because than she will be considered the object of his scorn.

Freire's essay is also laced with repetition, with which he made his point by constantly pounding it into the reader throughout the piece. He constantly used the words "oppressor / oppressed ", "liberation", "individual" and the phrase "critically consider reality" to indoctrinate the readers with his views and send up flags in the reader's mind in regard to the importance of the issues at stake. Percy uses a greater variety of rhetorical devices in his essay than Freire does in his paper. He uses a lot of real-life examples and analogies to support his theories in order to engage the reader and invite him to partake in the discovery of his own "loss of sovereignty" (the ability of the reader to "critically consider reality" by using his own valid experiences). His ideas are presented in the physical world, and are easy for the reader to apply to their own reality. To illustrate his idea of the "symbolic package" (573) he uses the example of two students: the biology student and the poetry student.

Both students are robbed of their experience by the circumstances surrounding their discovery. The new textbook, the type, the smell of the page, the classroom, the aluminum windows and the winter sky, the personality of Miss Hawkins -- these media which are supposed to transmit the sonnet may only succeed in transmitting themselves. (573) To illustrate the converse of this situation, true discovery outside the boundaries of a "symbolic package", Percy used these examples: A young Falkland Islander walking along a beach and spying a dead dogfish and going to work on it with his jackknife has, in a fashion wholly unprovided in modern educational theory, a great advantage over the [biology student] who finds the dogfish on his laboratory desk. Similarly the citizen of Huxley's Brave New World who stumbles across a volume of Shakespeare in some vine-grown ruins and squats on a potsherd to read it is in a fairer way of getting at a sonnet than the Harvard sophomore taking English Poetry II. (572) Percy's examples are real, they are tangible.

They transport the reader into the classroom, the Falkland Islands, the undiscovered world. They are relatable, understandable, and easy to grasp. He invites the reader to experience and understand his ideas, instead of telling the reader what to think. Percy also uses metaphor to make his concepts come to life.

For example, when he described the sensation created by the accidental discovery of something beautiful (in this case the music of Beethoven), and the purity of experience that discovery like that creates, he said, ... we notice two traits of [this] situation: (1) an openness of the thing before one -- instead of being an exercise to be learned according to an approved mode, it is a garden of delights which beckons to one; (2) a sovereignty of the knower -- instead of being a consumer of a prepared experience, I am a sovereign wayfarer, a wanderer in the neighborhood of being who stumbles into the garden. (575) It paints a beautiful picture, doesn't it? Perhaps a picture a reader could not help but believe in, and hope to be a part of? Indeed. Percy was very aware of how to manipulate the reader into agreeing with him, but, again, he kept his ideas concrete. Also, like Friere, Percy casually alludes to many authors and works to establish his intelligence as a well-read man, however he does it in a much more relaxed and comfortable manner than Freire does.

He mentions Huxley's Brave New World, Shakespeare, Whitehead, Toynbee, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter all within three pages of his essay. The reader either understands the allusion, or he doesn't. Either way, Percy wins the reader to his side. If the reader understands the allusion, then he feels camaraderie with Percy, and agrees with him on the basis that they are both intelligent and capable of understanding the problems with the educational system.

If the reader doesn't understand the allusion, he still agrees with Percy. He believes Percy is a more learned person then he is because of the allusions he makes. Therefore, Percy knows what he is talking about, and is correct in his conclusions. The reason, ultimately, that Percy is more convincing in his arguments than Freire is is because his reasoning remained concrete. He had already applied his ideas to the real world so he knew his arguments could stand up under the weight of real world situations. His use of examples, metaphors and allusion kept his arguments grounded.

Freire, however, kept his arguments completely in the metaphysical realm. His arguments were successful in theory, but his reasoning did not apply to the real world. He seemed to forget humanity in his enthusiasm to manipulate his audience into accepting his theory. All of his rhetoric, the strong diction, the repetition are very emotionally convincing until the reader realizes that she is, in fact, a human being who exists in a concrete world of fuzzy gray lines, and not an oppressed automaton who lives in the harsh netherworld of black and white that Freire painted.

Bibliography

Bartholomae, David, ed., and Anthony Petrosky, ed. Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford / St. Martin's, 1999. Freire, Paulo. "The 'Banking' Concept of Education". Bartholomae / Petrosky 348-359 Percy, Walker. "The Loss of the Creature". Bartholomae / Petrosky 565-578.