Declaring “Bankruptcy” in the “Banking” Concept of Education!

I had just begun reading Paulo Friere’s essay, “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” when, as I was turning the pages, I discovered a photocopied article from the New York Times obituaries announcing Paulo Friere dead at age seventy-five. Then, I noticed the date: Tuesday May 6, 1997. It startled me to learn of this fact when I was just beginning to warm up to the author. At first, I was distracted; I had to read the article at once. The article labeled him a “…radical Brazilian educator known for his methods of using everyday words and ideas to teach illiterates to read and to be skeptical about prevailing social and political systems” (New York Times, May 6, 1997). This statement was my first indication about the political and sociological implications of his ideas. A true end to oppression and slavery is the proliferation of principles embodied in the problem-posing concept of education.

I particularly liked a quotation from an interview Paulo Friere gave when he was named education secretary of Sao Paulo. He said, “We want to create schools where questioning is not a sin. It’s no sin to make a critical study of Brazil’s reality” (New York Times, May 5, 1997). This comment characterizes his main focus: to grant permission to anyone who wants it to rise above his assigned task. Friere has given us quite a lot to consider. Deep contemplation of these concepts has led me to believe that the principles Friere has described are indeed spiritual in nature because they parallel the goals common to all beliefs: the need for redemption and enlightenment.

The current system of education, as described in Friere’s essay, has long dominated the learning process of almost every human being alive today. Freire, in his essay, suggests that humanity has become enslaved to a misguided and oppressive system of education that deprives students of creativity, reduces their potential for personal transformation, and leaves them feeling depreciated and unfulfilled. The proprietors of this system, Friere states, “see knowledge as a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” (Friere 213). In other words, there exists an element of superiority within the ones in the know, and inferiority in the ignorant. Friere also implies that this system of education has served the governments well because it creates docile, “well-behaved” citizens that more closely resemble sheep; they can be easily controlled and manipulated (Friere 221).

Friere goes on to describe an alternate method of education wherein the students and the teachers are equals; he calls it the problem-posing concept. Instead of considering students as mere “receptacles to be filled,” the problem-posing concept considers students as “conscious beings” and teachers as knowledge facilitators (Friere 218). Within this system, students are transformed by the “emergence of consciousness” (Friere 219). This "emergence" causes a “critical intervention in reality” that affirms their innate potential (Friere 219).

Many times in the past I have felt like an equal with my teachers. A few times in the past I felt dehumanized by my educators. I remember a particular situation involving a piano teacher who had a tremendous reverence for classical music. She felt that only those who had years of instruction were qualified to compose music. I was so excited about learning to play a few songs on the piano. But we always had to practice for an hour doing finger exercises to warm up before we got to play any particular pieces.

While practicing on our piano at home, I began to experiment with patterns that I saw emerging before my eyes on these black and white keys. As my fingers glided from one end of the keyboard to the other, my mind was seeing multiplicity. I had an ear and an inherent knack for improvisation. Well, I created some songs of my own. On one particular day I really wanted to show my teacher what I had created. My songs had become my emotional expression of wonder. She wouldn’t even let me play the songs for her. She scolded me for having the audacity to imagine that I could compose music after only having had lessons for three months. I was crushed. I swore that I would never touch a piano again. I stopped having lessons, but I kept on experimenting in secret.

Years later, I met a woman from Brazil who played the piano. She impressed me with her ability to improvise. She took the time to show me some basic techniques that helped to rekindle my passion for music. This woman exemplifies the kind of problem-posing teacher that Friere talks about. I feel lucky to have met her, and I feel privileged to have since had several teachers who must surely be committed to the problem-posing concept.

What is the essence of true knowledge? Is it a combination of memorized information filtered through the eye of personal experience? Or is it a storehouse of endless bounty freely imparted to cognitive minds? Who are the authorities? Who decides?

We do! Each and every individual must take response-ability. What is true for us is what coalesces as a result of our decisions that we make based on the available data and experience at any particular moment in time. Friere wants us to consider ourselves as beings in progress who are able to reevaluate and restructure our reality at will.

Many things I know either by memorization, personal experience, reading, watching television, and so on; some I know because of unpleasant circumstances, and others learned out of great joy. Throughout all of my academic experiences, my personal point of view, my fundamental perceptions of reality, I find a common thread; no cohesion existed in my life until I took the time to stop learning and reflect on the past. I needed to take an inventory of my life’s accumulations. I started with all of the things I feared or hated. These seemed like as logical as any a place to start because they caused me the most discomfort.

In my list, I included some ominous things like religion, taxes, and law. I began to see how many decisions I had made in my life were based on the circumstances of the moment. For example, I learned that I could hurt myself falling off the table when I actually did fall and hurt myself, regardless of the fact that my mother had told me repeatedly not to climb up on top of the table. I learned not to play with matches when my mother made me sit and light a thousand matches in a row until I puked. I learned that elementary school children can be very cruel and vicious because of their taunts and prejudice. I learned the times tables by heart. I learned that you could be placed under arrest for picking flowers in someone’s front yard. I learned that some freedoms I could not posses, no matter what the cost. All of these things that I had learned as a child remained with me into my twenties. I was very unhappy about a lot of things, and I had no idea where to begin the arduous process of sorting things out. This process, for me, was very much like declaring bankruptcy in the banking concept of education.

The problem-posing concept may seem to be something new - a coined phrase created by a Brazilian educator. But its roots are deep in the philosophical teachings of many of the world’s religions. Have you ever heard of the expression “The Truth will set you free?” Friere says that “in problem-posing education, men develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Friere 220). Many individuals throughout history could say, “Amen,” to this statement. Men like Friere. They are the pioneers of such principles. They had the courage to disperse true knowledge in the face of ignorance and austerity. They have set the example for us to follow.

So how does one go about declaring bankruptcy? Some would call it psychoanalysis, others would call it personal meditation and reflection, while still others would call it waking up; Friere calls it an “emergence of consciousness” resulting from a “critical intervention in reality” (Friere 219).

The reason I had been so unhappy was because of the tremendous conflict that existed between my politics and my religion: two authorities dominating my reality that restricted me from seeing how my accumulation of knowledge had made me any more human. My loyalty was divided between being more human and being an obedient citizen.

I was experiencing many side effects from the banking concept of education. For one thing, I was suffering from indigestion, experiencing physically what I had taken in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Another symptom was denial in the form of intellectual pride nestled in ignorance. I had so much misinformation, so many myths and heroes to contend with that I didn’t have a moment when I wasn’t obsessing over something. I worried that my true feelings were too much for people to accept. I worried that other school children would not want to be my friends. I worried that I was going to hell. I worried that there was no heaven. I began to see my life in this world as a waste of time. I felt utterly powerless to change anything. I began to look to death as the only possible solution to silencing the voices of knowledge that consumed my conscious mind. I had no life because it was being stolen by the past.

Fortunately, I happened upon a group of people who use a problem-posing approach to self-help. They gave me permission to reconsider the facts of my life and change all of the decisions I had ever made. They helped me to make new choices through which I was able finally to begin to digest the knowledge I had consumed. I was affirmed as a being, able to transcend. I saw the inventory process as a way to move forward. Looking at the past became the means of understanding more clearly what and whom I had become and empowered me to “more wisely build a future” (Friere 221). I was no longer a hostage of the banking concept of education. I became truly committed to my personal humanity.

Where does this all lead? What is the ultimate purpose of this “critical intervention in reality?” (Friere 219). Friere writes,

Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of men as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take man’s historicity as their starting point (Friere 221).

Therefore, according to Friere, an earnest and thorough self-evaluation must be the starting point. But to what end?

The key may lie in a statement Friere makes about the role of the problem-posing educator. “The role of the problem-posing educator is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge, at the level of the doxa, is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.” (Friere 219)

I could not find a meaning in the dictionary for doxa, so in breaking down the roots, I turned to the Greek language. Dox is a Greek prefix that can mean respect, praise, and adoration, as in doxology, and it also can mean a mistress or a prostitute of obscure origins as in doxy. Logos is a Greek word that means word. Now, consider this passage from the bible: “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God (Theos), and the Word was God (Os logos Theos)” (John 1:1). So maybe we could say that the role of the problem-posing educator is to create the conditions under which naive and rudimentary knowledge is superseded by true knowledge, which is at the God level.

This is where expressing my innermost thoughts gets tricky for me because some people have serious emotions tied to words like God, spiritual, etc. However, metaphorically speaking, I see the banking style of education as the oppressive system of dissemination of knowledge that has emerged as a result of the primary choice of mankind by the original inhabitants of Eden handed down to us through all generations. The fruit of ultimate knowledge was a delusion that left them naked and ashamed. In making their choice for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they initiated a fundamental denial of their created divinity. God had said only that if they ate of the tree they would surely die; however the serpent said that what God had said was a lie and that they would become like God. But didn’t the text say that man was already created in Gods’ image? Was death then a choice that they made because of personal indulgence in a fantasy?

They, in fact, created the concept of Law by perceiving their choice as disobedience and death as the punishment. This concept became the foundation of all knowledge passed on to their progeny.

Oppression—overwhelming control—is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also necrophilic. Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power (Friere 217).

Problem-posing education is the consciousness creating opportunity to make a new choice for ourselves by choosing the Tree of Life, thereby releasing us from the effects created by the primary choice. Wherein we transcend to the logos, where consciousness is knowledge, already, for all time.

Truly, problem-posing education is a revolutionary movement toward a full restoration of humanity in all its divinity. It leads us to the explicit awareness of our field of intuition. It is emancipation from the convergence of politics and religion, the two authorities demanding our allegiance. It is a pursuit of full humanity, a process of inquiry where we are remade in the praxis.