Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my parents and instructors as well, in helping me come up with the ideas of brilliant education practices and helping me out with the things I commit myself to in my life. In this regard, I would like to take this opportunity in telling them how much all their hardships in assisting are all appreciated at all times.
I would also like to show gratitude for all the support I get from my family. Every little thing they do really means a lot to me and all this things I am doing in return to what they have given me, which made the way I am right now.
Introduction:
Paulo Freire is one of the innovators of educational practice in the entire world. He is known for being a pioneer in making use of the pattern of progressive practice in education as well as the strong conviction he has when it comes to introducing and uplifting informal education as well as supporting the oppressed people in the society by providing them the essential education they really need for living.
Among his most famous theories in education is the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” which simply depicts the “banking” ways of educators when it comes to their teaching methods. This theory shows how oppressed the students are when it comes to the lack of quality education which they receive from local schools. As said earlier, Freire intends to introduce a more progressive way of teaching and learning as well (Freire 5). To him, this factor contributes so much in the ability of the student to grasp the lessons being discussed in class and be able to use them properly in life (6).
There is also another educator who is almost the same as that of Freire. He is John Comenius of Europe. AS A teacher, John Comenius was well aware of the shortcomings of the 17th-century school system in which he worked (Freire 14). True, no educational system had ever been perfect, but the school system of 17th-century Europe was just plain dreadful.
Rather than stand on the sidelines hurling complaints or accusations, Comenius decided to do something about it. Comenius was not the first to speak out about the need for educational reform. In England, Francis Bacon had decried the emphasis on Latin and suggested a return to the study of nature. Wolfgang Ratke and John Valentine Andreae in Germany as well as others also attempted improvements (Freire 15). All of these, however, failed to gain official backing for their ideas.
Comenius proposed a system that made learning fun, not drudgery. He called his educational scheme pampaedia, meaning “universal education.” His goal was to establish a progressive system of teaching that everyone could enjoy. Children should be taught in incremental steps, he said, with elementary concepts naturally leading up to ones that are more complex. Comenius also promoted the use of the mother tongue during the first few years of school rather than Latin.
Applying Freire to your Own Experience as a Student
Education, however, should not be confined to adolescence but should embrace one’s entire life course. Comenius wrote that study should be “entirely practical, entirely pleasurable, and such as to make school a real game, i.e., a pleasant prelude to our whole life.” He also believed that school should focus on educating not just the mind but also the whole person—that it should include moral and spiritual instruction.
Indeed, many educators believe that the way of teaching should have a strong effect in a person’s life. However, as obviously seen, not all teachers around the world are able to apply the said method of progressive education. Instead, they are using the “banking” practice, which is widely performed by educators today.
As an example, the author of this paper shall introduce an event that happened in his life during his earlier years of being introduced to the education offered in schools. Through this, the theory of Freire regarding the use of the “banking” method in teaching by teachers especially in elementary level shall be proven true.
AN Experience
An elementary teacher named Laura just came in school for her first day of teaching. She is a new graduate form a university and is now about to face the challenges of her first days in her first job. Everything seemed fine but when her class started, there is an undeniable boring environment within the classroom.
One of her students noticed the reason behind this entire sudden dull environment in the class every time the said teacher enters the room. Since the subject matter she teaches the class is language and literature, she simply tends to remain focused in the book and base all the lessons she teaches in class from there. The usual activities she introduces to the class are reading stories, then writing some vocabularies in the board, after which, some parts of the story would be tasked as a memorization assignment for the students. This manner of teaching has become a daily routine for this teacher for quite sometime. This is one reason why the students in her class could actually preempt what was going to happen next in the discussion.
Aside from this, she barely asks the students to express their own ideas in their own words. It is as if everything is placed in a platter and she even tends to spoon-feed all her students with the lessons, which must be learned. The view of formal education for this teacher appears to be so much based on a traditional way of teaching small children. For this matter, her students began to doubt her teaching abilities simply because of the fact that she is not able to help her students retain the lessons in their heads unlike other educators in the same school do.
Applying Freire to your Own Experience as a Student
As the yeas passed, and the students of her class have already graduated from the elementary grade, the way Laura teaches her students has not changed even a bit. This is the reason why many students, which followed the first class she ever taught, criticize the way she introduces her topics and get on with the discussions she present in her class. Obviously, all she does is to put knowledge into the heads of her students without actually assuring that those knowledgeable facts would be of benefit to her students.
Also, it is quite obvious that the teacher being discussed in here have completely forgotten the aim of education: “The goal of education is to inform people of the necessary things they really need to know. This is to assure that they would be able to face the challenges of life which they have to face day by day”…. (Freire 24). Indeed, teaching requires more than just the act of talking and instructing and so on and so forth. It also includes having the ability to incite encouragement and interest within the students. In this way, instead of simply staying in the traditional way of learning, the students themselves find ways in which they could be able to learn more and get much out of their education.
Conclusion
In trying to account for what is happening to teaching and learning, the magazine U.S. News & World Report reviewed two decades of experimentation, during which billions of dollars were poured into improving one of the world’s biggest educational systems, that of the United States. Old-fashioned methods of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic were largely abandoned in favor of “picture word” methods of learning. “New math” replaced the multiplication tables (14).
Stung by criticisms, some schools and colleges have begun to discard “innovations” and swing back toward traditional goals and techniques. Educators are caught in a “chaotic swirl of pressures and trends” in a “tormented field where armies of theorists clash” (Freire 16). However, part of the crop of illiterates produced are some of the teachers themselves. It is estimated that one in five teachers has not mastered the basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic well enough to teach
Because of the fact that as time passes through the generations, education to must be equally progressive as well. As shown in this paper, the experience related herein depicts the neglecting attitude shown by many educators today when it comes to adapting the new and progressive ways of teaching. In this regard, constant change and improvement could as well be implemented in the world of education.
Indeed, a fine practice of educating students produces fine results. This means that as educators remain open to changes and are much willing to adapt to new ways of teaching, education would continue to flourish and improve as generations pass.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Paulo Freire. (2005). Education For Critical Consciousness. Continuum International Publishing Group; New Ed edition.
Peter Roberts. (2000). Education, Literacy, and Humanization: Exploring the Work of Paulo Freire (Critical Studies in Education and Culture Series). Bergin & Garvey.
“The New Practices in Education”. (1999). U.S. News & World Report. New York.
