Freire, Paulo. “The Banking Concept of Education.” In Austin, Michael, Reading the World: Ideas That Matter, 2nd Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Pp 62-66. Print. As in much of post-colonial South America, Brazil in the mid-20th century was a nation of political turmoil. Oppression of various groups was not an uncommon governmental practice, and civil liberties which are so cherished today were trampled upon regularly. Though not born directly into such a condition, Paulo Freire (1921-1997) – an educator and philosopher, - witnessed firsthand the degrading dehumanization which took place in his native Brazil. Freire had succeeded in having some of his educational policies, developed over several years to support the poor, oppressed, and colonized, implemented in the early 1960s. In 1964, however, a military regime came to power which derailed his policies and arrested him for two months under charges of, “Subversive influence.” Freire would later flee to Chile and the United States. It was during his stay in the latter as a visiting professor at Harvard that he published his seminal treatise Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), of which The Banking Concept of Education is an excerpt from the 2nd chapter. This work, which outlines his ideology for a new education system, cemented his place as an integral education theorist of the 20th century. Freire evaluates the current system of education by using the analogy of a banking system. He explains that the methods used in schools are akin to depositors (teachers) and those into which deposits are made (students). Teachers perceive themselves and are perceived by students as authority figures who dictate when, what, and how something is taught. Operating under the presumption that the teacher is knowledgeable and that the student is ignorant, the banking system sees teachers depositing kernels of information into students’ heads which the students readily memorize and mindlessly repeat. Inquiry, therefore, has no place in the banking system, which prioritizes mechanical memorization, facts, formulas, discipline, and regurgitation of information over critical thought and the forging of new knowledge. Freire refers to this banking epidemic as a, “narration sickness”. “Narration [by teachers]” he writes, “leads students to memorize mechanically the narrated content.” Freire likens the banking concept to oppressive sociopolitical regimes, asserting that the banking system of education is used to suppress individual thought and thus maintain the power of those in authority. Naturally, Freire decries such an institution. To replace the banking system, he proposes a, “liberation education” system which he likens to progressive political relations (which stand in stark contrast to oppressive authoritarianism). Supposing that, “Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of knowledge”, Freire’s liberation model supports a dialogical rather than lecture-based teaching method. Teachers and students will engage in a conversation as equals with the teacher posing questions without definitive answers; in turn, the roles of teacher and student are abolished in favor of teacher-student & student-teacher, each learning from the other. In order for the liberation model to be effective, he argues, the banking concept must be abandoned in its entirety – no remnants of its principles can permeate the new system. Teachers must surrender their authority, and students must bear the responsibility of determining what, when, and how they are taught. If this structure is followed, Freire concludes, education becomes a pathway to freedom. - Austin R. Justice is RCRC Chair and a tenured contributor specializing in classics, the American Civil War Era, and Lincoln studies.
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Douglass, Frederick. "Learning to Read." In Austin, Michael, Reading the World: Ideas That Matter, 2nd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. Pp 46-52. Print. The early to mid-19th century in the United States was plagued with an ever expanding system of slave labor, particularly in the American South. So entrenched was this peculiar institution that it stained the fabric of the Constitution, which was burned & decried as a slaveholder's document by some such as William Lloyd Garrison. A racially based system, millions of African Americans were born into chattel bondage. Many of these men, women, and children were entirely uneducated in any formal manner -- a majority had little to no literacy skills. Indeed, with the politics of race being a volatile, fiery issue in American society, laws were adopted which denied the right of education to the slave. It was into this inhumane condition, near Baltimore, Maryland, that Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was born. Propelled to international note by his 1845 autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, of which Learning to Read is the 7th chapter, Douglass would in time grow to become one of the nation's foremost influential figures. A Garrisonian abolitionist, Douglass employed the fame he attained to combat racial prejudice and advocate for policies of national emancipation. Though hyper-literate and possessing an extraordinary intellect in his adult life, Douglass too began his early boyhood years as an illiterate. Learning to Read is his narrative account of how he came to know the intertwined worlds of education and freedom. Slavery, according to Douglass, has a brutally corrosive effect on the hearts and minds of both the master and the bondsman. He makes this clear through the story of Mrs. Auld, his mistress. Auld initially set about teaching a young Douglass to read, showing him kindness and compassion while viewing him as a human rather than a beast or property. Her demeanor began to shift when her husband, Douglass's master, began to reprimand her for such unlawful lessons. Not only did Mrs. Auld cease her lessons for Douglass, she grew increasingly hostile to his education even beyond the hostility of her husband, angrily snatching newspapers from his hands. Douglass looked on as this once gentle woman grew cold and as her heart hardened. Nonetheless, she had sown the seed of knowledge and Douglass was not to be deterred in his pursuit of literacy. He took books with him on errands, finishing his duties quickly so as to have time to absorb as much as he could from the writings. Explaining that he was always welcome to the family's bread, Douglass would also trade food for lessons from poor white children in the streets. "Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness." - Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read (1845). A book of particular significance to Douglass was the Columbian Orator, a collection of various speeches and orations. It was in this book that Douglass first learned of the plight of the slave -- of the terrible injustice being done to him and those around him, and of the arguments against slavery. One section detailed an exchange between an escaped slave and his master, who was so moved by the slave's arguments for his own emancipation that the he freed him voluntarily. It was through this that Douglass began to link education and freedom. Yet this knowledge of his own state brought a heavy burden upon him -- he notes that oftentimes he wished himself as ignorant as the others, and speculates he might have killed himself or done something to get killed except for his aspirations to freedom. He also notes his confusion as to meaning of the word, "Abolitionist" -- a term used derisively in much of the antebellum South, and the meaning of which he later learned from a newspaper. Having succeeded in learning to read, the task remaining was learning to write. He achieved this through a variety of means. At a shipyard, Douglass noticed that timbers would be marked with such letters as, "L", "A", "LA", "LF", etc. depending on what part of the ship they were intended for. Copying these letters, Douglass would then challenge white children to spelling matches by claiming he could write as well as them. The boys would, of course, win this game but inadvertently gave Douglass spelling lessons. At home, when the family was away, Douglass would use the old school copybooks of young Thomas Auld, rewriting in the margins what Thomas had written in school. Through these efforts, Douglass would come to learn to both read and write -- and inevitably escape to freedom with his new-found abilities. - Austin R. Justice is RCRC Chair and a tenured contributor specializing in classics, the American Civil War Era, and Lincoln studies.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali. “Manners to Be Observed by Teachers and Students.” In Austin, Michael, Reading the World: Ideas That Matter, 2nd Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Pp 24-31. Print. The Near Eastern world in the 11th century experienced an explosion of intellectualism fueled by the infusion of foreign ideas. Though the Near East had seen extensive interaction with the West in antiquity – namely with the Greek world, Koine Greek becoming the lingua franca and multiple Hellenistic states arising, - the advent of Islam & Christianity and the incorporation of religious divisions separated the two regions. In the 11th century, the spread of Islam to these regions (not exclusively the West), i.e. southern Spain or India, allowed trade & immigration to again flow between these areas. Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) was born into this new multicultural, “Golden Age.” Al-Ghazali was a Seljuk intellectual who was trained in the school of neoclassical thought. Like many of his contemporaries, his initial work primarily dealt with the philosophies of Aristotle. As one of Islam’s most widely respected scholars, he was appointed head of Nizamiyyah College in Baghdad. Yet despite such success, al-Ghazali resigned his post at the college in 1095 in the wake of a spiritual upset wherein he found it impossible to marry the ideas of a Greek pagan with his religious principles. In 1096-7, he authored the seminal The Revival of Religious Learning, of which Manners to Be Observed by Teachers and Students is a section. A highly influential treatise, al-Ghazali’s work remains the second-most read text in Islam behind the Quran itself. Proposing that religion is necessary for both learning and teaching, al-Ghazali’s work is divided into two major sections: one regarding students and one regarding teachers. The first section contains ten tenets which students should follow, the second section contains eight tenets which teachers should follow. Underlying effectually all of the tenets is Sufism – an Islamic notion that the purpose of living is to grow nearer to God daily. As such, the duties of the student and teach are often similar in their intent and seek a mutual effort between the two. Take the first through third duties of the student: free yourself from, “impure habits” and keep aloof from the world while submitting to your teacher. Simultaneously, the teacher must dissuade students from worldly things by caring for them as though they were his children, setting an example for human purity. Students must aspire to all branches of knowledge rather than being narrow in their educational scope, though seeking out the, “important” branches first. Teachers must thus never berate any subject before their pupils, instead helping them to better understand various sciences and to seek God. - Austin R. Justice.
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