[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Response Papers.Revolutionizing Banking

Far from being the sort of person who disagrees with the entirely plausible and logical arguments of the intellectual elites of the day I can see where Paulo Freire is coming in his article “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education. If students are not going to be active participants in a learning experience, then what’s the point of learning at all? Is there learning at all? Freire says no, and I tend to agree… to a certain extent.
It is to Freire’s distinct advantage in a place like Missoula that he is appealing to those of us who wish to be liberated and free, to have our idea heard and our voices unsilenced. Although Freire is hardly writing specifically for Missoula, the message can and will be received here more openly, but I digress. It must be that the old system be replaced with a new one, Freire argues, one which capitalizes on men being worldly men, and not on men being mere receptacles of the world: “Since men do not exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement must begin with the men-world relationship” (Freire 77). This revelation comes as little surprise considering the nature of Freire’s argument. He is a man for mankind, espousing the virtues of an educational system that treats students and teachers as equals in the battle against ignorance, as opposed to the former being the ignorant and the latter fighting the good fight against them. Mostly concerned with the need to reinforce his ideas as superior to the current regime, Freire poses many of the downfalls of an educational system that lacks a dialectic including his claim that “Banking theory and practice… fail to acknowledge men as historical beings” (76). Having thus presented his opposition in such a demeaning light, he is then free to espouse of the virtues of the “problem-posing theory and practice [which] take man’s historicity as their starting point” (76). In doing this, he effectively denounces the ‘Banking’ system of education and proposes a brighter future for all of mankind, one where all men are brought in touch with reality, the world, and each other as equals, and though this sounds a lot like communism to me I’m fine with the idea as far as educational systems go. After all, I like to have my voice heard too.
Amidst all of this grandiose argumentation of humanity’s moral and mental obligation to topple the oppressive forces of our own devices, Freire makes one small comment in one of his shortest paragraphs that really, really got my goat. He says that humans are the best of the species in the world: “Indeed,” Freire claims, “in to the other animals who are unfinished, but not historical, men know themselves to be unfinished” (76). As an animal lover and a witness not only of animal intelligence but of animal heroism and emotion, I should wonder how exactly Freire managed to delve into the minds of every species on the planet to come up with his data. He cites no sources for it, after all, so it must be a concept of his own devices. While I will admit that I have yet to see horses erect a university, or even have a two-sided conversation with my dog about existential philosophy, that is no proof that he hasn’t considered the subject, or that horses wouldn’t build a school given the opportunity and a few opposable thumbs. The mere coincidence that we are the only species vain enough to need to construct towers monuments to our own superiority does not, in any way but the same tyrannical fashion that Freire opposes, support that we are in fact superior. Perhaps it is that the dogs and horses laugh at us and our silly educational system while discussing the greatest minds of their species telepathically. This may seem like a leap of faith, or an outlandish fictitious view on reality, but if we aren’t going to question those values and ‘truths’ installed into us then we must concede that we are not ready for Freire’s ideas. It’s a good system, but if you can’t implement it at every level, then it’s only a sham, as Freire himself points out by saying “In the revolutionary process, the leaders cannot utilize the banking method as an interim measure… with the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must be revolutionary… from the outset” (78).