Engaged Pedagogy

"This meant that whether academics were drug addicts, alcoholics, batterers, or sexual abusers, the only important aspect of our identity was whether our minds functioned, whether we were able to do our jobs in the classroom."
pg. 69 "Engaged Pedagogy", Gloria Watkins

The way educators go about teaching in schools they do not necessarily create well-rounded individuals inside and outside the classroom, it is mostly inside the classroom.  There is no connection of the public and private lives, and this creates a division of self.  In my own experience I can attest to this because I feel like throughout my life I have been almost like two different people.  First is my school-life which consists of me doing what I am told and remembering what I am told to remember, basically I am a drone disconnected with society as a whole "progressing" toward a goal which I selected years ago to give my life some kind of purpose.  I am living for the future and ignoring the present, I am always trying to advance my position, never content with where I am standing at any particular moment.  Then outside the classroom I turned 180 degrees, living completely in the present, and not really considering many long-term goals.  In one life I will never truly be satisfied and in another I am perfectly content.  During the school week I could be doing reading, homework, or studying, and then switch gears to a party-animal who would be unrecognizable to anyone who had seen me during the school week shows how large the gap between private and public lives really is.  The current educational system employed fuels this gap because of the vast contrast of the two settings.

            I choose this quotation because I felt that it explains what my education has felt like to me.  In my experience it has felt like there is no connection of public and private life.  The way schooling has been set up I have been leading two lives.  So I really feel like there needs to be connections made between both of these lives for a student to really succeed.  We have to teach the whole person and the education should be more personalized to aid this connection, and a way that we can personalize education is through a more equal partnership between the teachers and the students.  There needs to be an incorporation of the private life to aid in the education of the whole self.  Through this combination then students can start to become whole through self-actualization.

The Banking Concept of Education

"Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning.  The teacher's thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students' thinking."
pg.78, "The Banking Concept of Education", Paolo Freire

This quotation best exemplifies Paolo Freire's point that problem-posing education is better than that of the banking concept of education because if a teacher is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students' thinking, then the student must have an equal part in the educational process.  Though at least in my case I have had little to no say in my education, sure I may have saved up a nice little nest egg in my education bank, but that knowledge is useless without context to use it.  Schools are too often not a communication of learning, but a test of how well a person can memorize the useless knowledge deposited by a teacher.  We are taught to memorize facts as an end to pass a test, and since if you don't use those facts every day we lose them. At least in my case my brain has gotten so good at this turnover that I can memorize something that I need for a test and as soon as the test ends so does my knowledge of the subject.  I think that banking education is like someone giving a kid a book (and a test on it later) to read on how to ride a bike.  The kid does a great job on his test showing that he possessed the knowledge to ride a bike, but after a year he decides to try and ride a bike and fails miserably.  The kid never really knew how to ride the bike he just had facts from other people's experiences riding a bike.  So the way I figure it Freire was trying to say that we can't just this is how you do this go do it, but instead apply the material in a way in which the students can gain real experience in the process.  Thus the students will have achieved the authentic ability to think reflecting positively back on the teacher.

In schools it is almost like we are only trying to breed good workers and the students are turned into oppressed mind-less drones controlled by the lucky elite oppressors in society.  If you look at what a government thinks makes a good citizen we see a middle-class hardworking person who pays his taxes.  They are drones created by the oppressed to do the oppressor’s bidding.  I chose this quotation because I believe that in a society which prides itself on equality and freedom we cannot employ a system in which people are oppressed.  It doesn't matter if they are children or not they are still humans who should have the ability to operate as equals in their discussion of knowledge.  The students are there and without the students no teachers would exist, so it is important to acknowledge the fact that both are equal parts to the process of education.