Freire’s “Banking” concept of education is intriguing, but in the end seems oversimplified and contradictory. By classifying students as nothing more than “receptacles” in the “banking education” paradigm, Freire implies that students have no power in classroom exchange; in other words, the teacher controls the fate of the student—whether they learn or don’t learn. While Freire acknowledges that the students do have control over how they catalogue and inventory the knowledge that they collect, he implies that the teacher is the one with the power to, in this banking situation, withhold “creativity, transformation, and knowledge” (1).
In his attempt to argue for the rights of students as “truly human”, he presents them as helpless victims vulnerable to the instructor and his/her pedagogy. The reality, I think, is more complex. At some level, the teacher does hold more knowledge and power than the student, and can better identify what the students need to learn. Students don’t know what they don’t know. While I do feel there is room for instructors to bring more student-centric teaching into the classroom through things like expressive writing, to which Hairston briefly nods, the goal is ultimately to get the students engaged enough to listen to what the instructor has to say—to create wise and empathetic “depositers” (instructors) and engaged and critical receptacles (students). The relationship isn’t inherently bad.
And, at the end of the day, the onus falls on the student along with the teacher. Becoming a “truly human” student has a lot to do with recognizing that all the information you receive shouldn’t automatically become something you go on to deposit to someone else; the truly human student can humble him/herself to receive information, critically engage with that material, and confidently go on to counter it, or agree with it, and perhaps pass it on. No amount of a teacher’s insistence or orchestration can guarantee truly human students–that again gives the teacher all the power. Students have a responsibility to develop the ability to analyze, to disagree, to ask questions, and to push for more, rather than just receive apathetically.