Student And The Teacher example essay topic

The centerpiece of the Getty exhibit is the Cabinet of Wonder-what co curator Barbara Maria Stafford calls "furniture to think with". Fashioned of ebony, chestnut, semiprecious stones, marble, and tortoiseshell, the rare 17th-century German display cabinet was built to house hundreds of specimens, with a special drawer or tray for each marvel. During an era of expanding exploration and trade, European travelers returned from trips to distant shores with truckloads of exotica, natural and man-made. Enshrined like relics in rich cabinetry, these treasured finds-an Indonesian spiked helmet, perhaps, or a piece of brain coral-became emblems of family wealth, power, and knowledge. Sorting through these mementos was an evening's entertainment, a way to contemplate natural history in the comfort of the drawing room "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" in the ad campaign against drugs, a television advertisement is used to portray frying an egg in a frying pan.

This is the concept that I feel is portrayed through Paula Freire's essay The "Banking" Concept of Education. Freire discusses the inadequacy of our education system. The wasting of our education to minds that are not permitted to be available to think, react, comprehend or understand are therefore just a waste. Freire addresses the method of educations similar to that of the banking concept.

The teachers prepare the lesson for the classroom assuming the students lack the knowledge which the teacher is about to present, as if the student is ignorant. "Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorized, and report". (260).

This concept separates the student from the teacher and therefore separates the understanding from knowledge. This relationship of narrating subject (the teacher) and listening objects (the students) tend to become lifeless and petrified. "Education is suffering from narration sickness" (259). This narration leads the student to memorize mechanically, turning the student into "receptacles" to be filled by the teacher.

The more knowledge the teacher is able to fill the receptacle, the better of a teacher he is. The more receptive the student is to being filled with this knowledge, the better the student is. Thus education becomes the act of depositing. The students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. The dominant tools would include memorization and repetition. This concept controls the students thinking and actions, therefore dismissing any form of creativity.

Freire offers an alternative to the banking concept which is termed problem posing education. Through this method of education, communication is vital for a person to learn. It engages the student in critical thinking and requires the student to be passive and adapt creativity. This method breaks through to reach new levels of awareness where the subjects are neither ignorant or naive but equivalent to the teacher where learning is knowledge. "The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach.

They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow" (265). The problem posing method of education constantly changes the reflections of the student". The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the dox a is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos" (266). Problem posing involves a constant relation of challenges followed by the understandings and commitments. This method produces students that are allowed to think on their own level and become productive members of a free society. Under the "Banking" concept of education, the life we live would have no meaning.

Life would consist of a chain of memorized elements from multiplication tables to the capitals of each state. This process does not allow one to discover the meaning or story behind the information given for memorization. With the combination of posing the problem to both the student and the teacher, the benefits outweigh the circumstances. We are never too old to learn new tricks. It is through communication that human life can hold meaning. blank.