Though on almost all points I agree with Freire (indeed, my own liberal, dialogue-based education allows me no other choice), I find myself most frustrated by his argument that narrative is antithetical to a useful, productive educational experience. I understand, theoretically, that he means lecture-based teaching versus dialogue-based, and I agree that the former can be mind-numbing and the latter can be vibrant and engaging. Perhaps it is my own love of narrative and of narrating that makes that word the sticking point for me, but I can’t help wishing there was another term he could rail against. Narrative, though it can be all the things that Freire rails against, does not have to be soul-crushing dictation.

Narrative can be lively, entertaining, useful, and still invite feedback. I believe this can be true in all disciplines. In composition, and indeed in most of the humanities, I see how Freire’s point seems sound. If true knowledge “emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other,” then how are students going to learn without being able to vocalize curiosity and take part in a dialogue (1)? Rote recitation of grammar rules and agreement on the One True Thesis™ do not invite interpretation. Yet, I could imagine a scenario where information was offered narratively, as a story, information offered in a more traditional lecture form leading to a later discussion. Perhaps it is disingenuous of me to question whether a dialogue is really the most appropriate format for teaching the hard sciences, but even though Freire himself is not speaking of that, I worry for the students in those classes as much as for those in my own introductory composition course. I remember too well the dull, plodding info-dumps of Astronomy 101—a subject I actually have a genuine interest in. That class remains the only class in college I ever fell asleep in, my head nodding as my professor droned, in the planetarium, under the beautiful shifting stars. If, instead of mindlessly spewing statistics, that professor had instead taken a page out of Bill Nye’s or Neil Degrasse Tyson’s book and engaged us with a story leading to, perhaps, some open-ended questions for discussion….I would have missed that five minute nap, to be sure, but I feel I would have learned something more lasting.

When I try to come up with an analogy for the type of narration I am imagining, the scenario that comes to mind is a role-playing game. In the bi-weekly Dragon Age game my friends and I play, our Game Master calls the shots. He is the teacher, the imparter of information, the one who “cognizes” and then “expounds” (Freire 5). Yet we, the players, are not the mindless receptacles that Freire is so concerned about. Instead, we are active participants in the expounding, because our imagined characters have a real investment in the consequences of the expounding. And, when decisions need to be made (let’s imagine that the professor has posed a question, or brought up a sticky paradox), we are invited to react, in character. We add to the narrative. We tell the teacher what happens next.

I’m not suggesting that students should create imaginary personas and integrate them into a fantasy scenario in the classroom; however, I think that narrative can be a hook, a carrot dangled in front of the bunny, that draws students into the discussion. In short, though dialogue is perhaps an ideal, I don’t know that I believe it is necessarily always an immediate possibility in a classroom environment. I wouldn’t invite a dialogue about MLA formatting, for instance; however, I would show them what I know, and then raise possible issues, inviting students (after the narrative, let’s say) to comment on and discuss the problems they foresee, or challenges they might face.

From this week’s readings, I found the Freire article most interesting. Freire posits that the banking method of education is a tool of oppression. In this system, teachers are in a privileged position and the students are robbed of their ability to gain true knowledge “through invention and reinvention.”

I never thought to look critically at the relationships I had with my teachers in the classroom. I did as I was told. In some cases, that meant I was a passive recipient of knowledge and in other environments, I grappled with the material at hand, forming opinions of my own and reforming those opinions by discussing them with the teacher and the rest of the class. Looking back, I always preferred the problem posing method. In the banking method, I simply memorized content and spat it back out, knowing that such an act was exactly what the teacher wanted. That’s how I would get an “A.” But how much did I learn from this method? Memorization does not equate knowledge. Sure, I could define those terms or identify these patterns, but did I truly understand them? Was I investigating other ways of looking at the concepts taught?

Upon examining my education thus far, I feel as if the banking method typified my elementary, middle, and most of my high school education. Perhaps, this method was in place as my teachers were motivated by AP exams and standardized tests to “fill” their students with the “right” answers. However, my undergraduate studies more closely resemble the problem posing method. I’m not sure if the switch indicates that the paradigm is shifting (though I hope this is the case), or if it simply means that as a young adult in college, I am given more free reign to critically engage with the material.

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.

I found the piece by Paulo Freire quite interesting. I had never thought of teacher-student relationships as one that could be oppressive. According to Freire, there is a teaching method called banking education that is an oppressor (teacher)-oppressee (student) relationship. Under this system, creativity and free thinking are discouraged and by minimizing this thinking, the oppressors gain more power over the oppressed. Teachers gain from this by having their egos stroked, as they feel they are above the students, who “they consider to know nothing.” Furthermore, the teachers perpetuate this relationship, as they concentrate on “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them.”

Freire states that education should be a mutual learning relationship in which both sides learn from the other; I agree with this method of education. I feel as though I have the potential to learn from my students and teachers should be open to this. Dialogue and open communication is imperative and the relationship of “teacher-of-the-students and students-of-the-teacher [should] cease to exist.” The students should be taught by the teacher and the teacher should be taught by the students, making them “become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow.”