Nowadays the notion of education plays an essential role in an individual’s life as it has been drastically transformed throughout the last decades. The competition in the workplace has become so high that getting a degree is no more just an approach to unleash one’s potential and expand the knowledge. Education is a necessity in the modern world to live a full-on life and be able to sustain oneself financially.
The given articles are focused on the consequences of the aforementioned evolution of education and elaborate on its disappointing outcomes. Caitlin Flanagan (2021) shares her own experience of being a private-school teacher, then a private-school parent, and finally becoming a teacher at Harvard school. From my point of view, the main idea that is described by the author is the segregation among students, schools, and, overall, in the educational field. Particularly, elite private schools are focused on this discussion as they support the luxury status of education. Moreover, private schools allow the wealthy to have leverage over the education sphere by letting private-school parents have more power. Such an approach only amplifies discrimination and, specifically, institutional racism by allowing wealthy parents to decide which school initiatives to support. Therefore, the unfortunate injustice puts money above equality and tolerance, thereby strengthening the oppressive system of capitalism.
To conclude, I would say that one of the main goals of the 21st century should be the worldwide accessibility of education. However, it will not be possible as long as the elite private schools are spaces of self-regulation based on wealthy parents’ views. Thus, the anti-segregation initiatives are necessary for schools’ policies and must not be questioned.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed details the hands-on experience of Paulo Freire working as a teacher in Brazil while in political exile. In the book, Freire describes his vision for an educational system that, rather than being built on sectarianism, encourages political radicalization. In support of his theory, the author criticizes the banking concept of education (BCOE), which is based on students receiving deposited knowledge from their teachers without ever critically evaluating or questioning it. The following paragraph will discuss BCOE in the context of modern oppression, teaching, and learning experience.
To begin with, the author links BCOE with institutional oppression and proposes a solution to this problem in the form of an alternative concept of education. Freire (1970/2000) argues that BCOE, being rooted in pupils’ unconditional trust in and loyalty to the teaching figure and the material being taught, deprives students of creativity, critical thinking, and freedom of expression. Furthermore, the author suggests that this conservative form of student-teacher dynamics “negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry”, thus relating BCOE to the ideology of oppression (Freire, 1970/2000, p. 73). Freire goes on to elaborate that the oppressors are seldom interested in helping or promoting positive change in the living conditions of the oppressed. They rather make sure that the oppressed put up with and adapt to the situation they are put in owing to societal injustices. Finally, the author offers an alternative to BCOE – problem-posing education, where the banking concept of the student-teacher dynamic is replaced by a more liberal one that encourages equality and critical thinking.
In conclusion, I feel like BCOE prevented me from fully deepening into and appreciating the subjects being taught on several occasions, be it biology or physics. In turn, I believe that if I were to study the same disciplines with the use of problem-posing education, as I had with literature and maths, I would achieve significantly higher results as compared to BCOE.
References
Flanagan, C. (2021). Private schools have become truly obscene: Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change. The Atlantic. Web.
Freire, P. (2000). The banking concept of education. Pedagogy of the oppressed. (Ramos, M. B., Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1970).