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Chapter 8 of Educational Foundations discusses Paulo Freire’s concept of banking education. According to Freire, when students are ordered by teachers to receive, memorize, and repeat information, “this is [known as] the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” of information. This sort of concept treats the students as “receptacles”  that are “filled” with the information the teachers give them.

I have experienced banking education first hand on multiple occasions. In grade school and high school, I was often told to read a textbook and take notes, and then I was given more information that I was later expected to regurgitate for a test. Immediately after taking the test most of the information would leave my head and I would feel as if I had not actually learned anything.

Students should question the information that they are being given and are expected to learn. As Freire states, “tranquility rests on how well people fit the world the oppressors have created and how little they question it.” We should be actively questioning the things we learn, not only to help prevent ourselves from being taken advantage of, but also to continually challenge ourselves to grow in knowledge. By doing this we are allowing “a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world.”