13 The Disadvantages of Banking Education
Colin Jerome
Freire exposes the flaws in the system of “banking education” and its that it doesn’t teach true skills other than memorizing the info long enough to pass the test. Freire’s argument can be explained through this video. My artwork relates to this exact idea because when asked “what can this information be used for” the teacher satirically responds “the final”. This resembles the fact that the information given is deplorable and ultimately won’t help them in the long run but will rather help them pass the test in the near future. Also, my artwork relates to Freire’s argument because he says that teachers use their authority to control what is being “taught” which means they use their power over the students to make the students comply to what the teacher knows. This is expressed in my picture because the professor is sitting on a throne and wearing a crown to show their authority, and he is force feeding the “knowledge” to the students.
This artwork shows the value of inquiry-based learning because although it shows the satirical side of how useless banking education is, the underlying feeling of the artwork is that this shouldn’t be the overall goal for our children learning. My picture reveals that education is centered around teachers forcing knowledge in students head that will only have the use of achieving a good grade on a test that will have no real meaning in the real world. Also, it reveals that inquiry-based is much better because it shows the distraught faces of the students being forced to learn for tests rather than skills, and showing how much unhappiness and unfulfilled students are after going through this process.
No one should be stuck trying to memorize to pass a test but they should rather learn to develop skills that will help them become the person they want to be. Although memorizing can be a useful skill, that should not be what education is solely focused and centered around. Inquiry-based learning is so hugely important to help improve education because this makes the student more engulfed in the topic and deeply understand the information; rather than memorize something for a certain amount of time until it is safe to throw out that information and memorize the next topic. This achieves nothing other than bad habits in children because this destroys creative and individual thinking because they are taught to think and act exactly the same as the people preceding them.
