Freire’s “banking concept of education” unfortunately is still common in education. Even more unfortunate still is that it happens here at Illinois State. I am fully aware of the teachers that I have who exercise this form of education are in fact “Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, [and] negate education and knowledge as processes of inquiry.” They believe that Socrates was correct in saying that “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Only they believe they have wisdom and are doing you such an immense favor in bestowing that information upon you. As a student, I know I always feel inadequate or unintelligent when a teacher begins to talk condescendingly to you, as if you are a complete and total idiot and they are surprised at the fact that you were able to dress yourself, let alone attend class. I also am appalled when a teacher only lectures, and speaks the information at you; all the while I am thinking you are the teacher, so teach! Explain more, give some examples and ask us questions, anything! I am beginning to wonder how I ever learned anything in my classes where the teacher “leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content.” Students (and myself included) who memorize the facts never are really capable of actually talking about the material. They only spit out what they’ve recorded in their minds or on their paper, in spite of the fact that it might make absolutely no sense. To truly learn something, students must be presented “with the posing of the problems of men in their relations with the world.” They must realize that “knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” I feel that in order to completely comprehend something (at least for myself) you need to be able to hear examples of it, see what they are talking about, and above all else, read the words they either are talking about or writing on the board. I can never grasp the concept of math simply because of the fact that you don’t use words to explain it. You use numbers. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for me to understand it. Freire’s educators who use the “banking concept of education” do not appreciate what a teacher is supposed to do. I do not want to be a teacher who, in using the banking concept, “turn men into automatons,”, as in robots or some other being who doesn’t feel, but are only there to receive the message. I would hate myself if I ever found out that a student felt like they didn’t learn anything in my class. As a teacher, I want to be able to have a class discussion with my students, and not look at them as my students, but as my peers, as people whose opinions and thoughts matter to me. I want my students to respect me, and I in turn must respect my students. I’m not saying that if they don’t do their homework ever I’m not going to say something about it, but I want them to want to do their homework because it will help them understand the material, or as far as helping them in life. I want to be able to talk about meaningful issues with my students, like Eagleton says about English being the “arena in which the most fundamental questions of human existence—what it meant to be a person, to engage in a significant relationship with others, to live from the vital center of the most essential values—were thrown into vivid relief and made the object of the most intensive scrutiny.” With my class, I want to be able to have significant conversations about the literature we read and how each person interpreted it and feels about it. I want them to read as I read, as Helen Vendler puts it, “everything we know and are is unreflexively brought to bear; and the hesitations, pleasures, and perplexities we encounter and absorb in that state are the material, as we bring them to consciousness, for all subsequent intellectual reflection. It is this state of intense engagement and self-forgetfulness that we hope our students will come to know.” I want them to be able to love what they read. We want them to know the books we love and start to love them too. As a teacher, I need to make sure I am teaching what I love, for “If the authors we love are not being taught, it is not our students’ fault; it is our own.” My high school English teacher loved the book The Catcher in the Rye, so we read that book in class and had class discussions about it. You could tell he cared immensely for the book, and wanted so desperately for us to read it and connect to it and understand it and love it just as much as he did. I hope my students find happiness in reading, and I hope I can take a little credit for that.
As for goals for myself, as English major, the list is quite long. I would love to be able to read a book in a completely different language. I want to have a better literal comprehension of what I read. I need to learn how to analysis and make more connections, because that is one of my weaknesses. I want to learn about all kinds of different literature from all over the world—not just from Europe and America, but from China and Africa and everywhere else. I want to be able to state my opinion on something in a more professional matter. I would like to be able to recognize rhetoric and augmentation. I want to improve everything about myself and my learning habits. I want to be more understanding, sympathetic, charitable, gregarious, and thoughtful. From the start, I’ve been “hooked by literature…seems to be a lifelong addiction,” and for me, I believe it will be.
-Erica Steinhauser
