Response to "Pedagogy of the Opressed"

One of the passages that most intrigued me was, “Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality.”  Whether I have good intentions or not, how do I treat those who look to me for knowledge?  Are they dehumanized?  When they sit in my class, are they there to stare at the old guy at the front of the room, waiting for me to tell them what notes to write, what information to disgorge onto a test?  Or are they there for an experience?

What happens to those who are met with such contradictions—what they are being taught is not only different from the reality of their real life, but functions to “dehumanize” them?  People are like snowflakes—there are very few that are the same.  Why wouldn’t I give students every opportunity to grow and flourish? “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.”  Students are not objects.  If there is one thing I have learned as I have observed in the high school environment, when I look in the eyes of kids, is that they are anything but static and normal.  Everything about them is unique; they all have unique stories and unique ideas.  Every single one of them has something to teach me.

The question to ask is simple, but lacks a simple answer: how do I keep from teaching with oppression as an intentional, or unintentional, tool?  How do I lead them to “liberation?” There is a key: “Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”  If I enter a classroom in which I do not expect to grow or learn, I do not only show myself disservice, but also to the students.  If a student senses that a teacher is not interested, there is absolutely no reason they will expend themselves, especially when there is so much else going on in their world.  Why not learn from them? 

They might teach me something.