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Karen Sayago Sanchez

Portland FRINQ
Dr. Knepler
October 15th, 2014
The Place of Education
Education is one of the tools to create a better community. Once you become a well
knowledgeable and informed individual, you develop the skills to better make decisions and
problem solve. When you are informed and know the tools needed to succeed you become a
better decision maker which in general makes for a better community. But how do we become
the well educated individuals that our society needs? The answer might just be in the way we
revise education. Paulo Freire and William Cronon both pose educational theories concerning
how we receive education and how that affects the way we act and think about life. From my
personal educational experience, I believe education should be a tool to make students critical
thinkers, to be able to contribute to society and prepare us for the world ahead of us.
According to Freire, many education systems have fallen in to the threatening cycle of
what he calls narrative education or the banking concept of education. Freire defines the
banking concept as turning students into containers, into receptacles to be filled by the
teacher (Freire, 58). Students are being taught to take all this information and memorize, but the
problem is that they never go be on memorizing. They never really question or stimulate their
creative side. Freire states that education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the
students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor (Freire, 58). The banking
education concept creates students that become oppressed human beings, who care neither to
have the world revealed nor to see it transformed (Freire, 60).

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The banking education method from personal experience does not work. I remember
many instances where I would spend hours the day before studying for a test, trying to memorize
all the information I could. I would walk into class ready to take that test, I would always do
well, but in reality I never really learned anything because a week later I would have no idea
what we had been tested on. For example, in my Honors American History class we had to study
and learn all the states and capitals of the United States. I studied really hard and was ready to
take that test. I had memorized every single state and capital; I got a hundred percent on that test.
But if you ask me now what the capital of a state is or where it is on the map, I would most likely
not know the answer. Memorizing for me is not something that is effective by any means. Thats
what banking education does. It only teaches you to memorize and not actually learn a subject.
That does nothing to stimulate your thinking and creativity, therefore making those oppressed
individuals incapable of being an active member in the society.
In contrast to the banking concept, Freire proposes the idea of the problem posing
method. In the problem posing method the studentsare now critical co-investigators in
dialogue with the teacher (Freire, 68). Students become active members of their education and
they are no longer just listeners. They have the freedom to question and explore what they are
truly being taught. Students become what Cronon calls liberally educated people [that] have
been liberated by their education to explore and fulfill the promise of their own higher talents
(Cronon, 1). They are no longer robots or puppets in a class they are educated and become
educators. Not only do they learn from teachers but by questioning and exploring their learning,
in the process they also teach the teacher something. To become Liberally educated is not
something any of us ever achieve; it is not a state. Rather, it is a way of living in the face of our

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own ignorance, a way of groping toward wisdom in full recognition of our own folly, a way of
educating ourselves without any illusion that our education will ever be complete.
The time that I felt I was really learned something was the time when I was free to run
with my ideas and opinion. One of the classes were I felt accomplished this was in my Junior
English class. It wasnt because the teacher was a good instructor, but it was because he gave me
the freedom to express myself when writing papers. I didnt feel limited or restraint when
expressing my ideas on paper. I felt I wrote my best papers when I was given the freedom to
express my opinion and ideas. On the contrary, for my senior year English class, I had an
instructor who didnt really give freedom when it came to writing. She wanted papers written a
certain way and I felt limited. The reason I feel I didnt learn anything was because we would
write our papers and turn them in, she would then correct then and say that as long as we did the
corrections she made we would get an A. So, I would go from a C on a paper to an A on my
paper by making the changes but never learning how to improve my writing and what I was
doing wrong. That did nothing to teach me new skills or learn how to think for myself. When
information is being feed to you and others are doing the thinking for you it makes it difficult for
you to think for yourself and survive in the future.
With education comes a great responsibility. One cannot put all that knowledge to waste.
One must put everything we have learned and put it to work for the benefit of community and the
people around us because to continue to grow as individuals they must stimulate the people
around them. An educated person strives to continue his or her education, whether it is by
finishing a degree or just taking an active role in the community. The day an individual believes
he has reached the height of his education is the day they stop being an educated person because
they then become an ignorant person. They become oblivious to all the information that is out

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there that is yet to be discovered and to all the different ways of looking at something. An
educated person is always up for the challenge to learn something new. They are willing to
second guess what they think they know and question new opinions that come their way to come
up with the best facts to a situation. We all need to learn how to think for ourselves and becomes
active members in whatever we do.

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Works Cited
Cronon, William. "Only Goals of a Liberal Education, 1998. Print.
Freire, Paulo, and Myra Bergman. Ramos. "Chapter 2." Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York:
Continuum, 1982. 57-74. Print.