revise my original manuscript.

10-26-2018

REVISED DRAFT

Learning is fun

Education should base on the self-interest of students with discoveries made by teachers to let their students continuing have an interest in developing new knowledge. Based on the first article by Engel, she clearly states that current schools are lack of the subject of joy only teach in facts and standard rules. In the first article that we read before, the author says that “ A look at what goes on in most classroom these days makes it abundantly clear that when people think about education, they are not thinking about what it feels like to be a child, or what makes childhood an important and valuable stage of life in its own right.”( Engel 4). This quote says that in most classrooms in schools, educators are not focused on children’s happiness they need to enjoy during childhood. Children are born with curiosity, at the age they are ready to learn in school, they are curious about everything they saw. So educators should not only teach children how to study facts but instead lead them with true pieces of knowledge to discover.

Freire uses two concepts to education in the current society; problem posing and banking. In banking, the teachers take the students as a passive group and take control of everything. The teacher will determine what the students should learn and then they will go to class to narrate or fill the mind of the students with the information which they had selected. On the other hand, problem-posing education gives people the freedom to choose and fully develop human natures they have chosen. Problem posing relies on the dialogue made, encourages creativity and discoveries, and recognizes people’s relationship in the world hence leading to transformation. From experience as a student, I agree with the problem-posing method of teaching because it encourages the students to be creative. The main purpose of the paper is to understand the correct method of teaching which should be used by the teachers.

The concept of banking is used to show how students have just become a bank where the teachers deposit their narrations and fill the mind of the students. In this case, the students are oppressed because they have to accept what their teachers offer without questioning and have to remain submissive to the roles of the authority. The concept of banking does not allow the teachers and the students to dialogue and it inhibits the creativity of the students.“ To resolve the teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescriber, domesticator, for the role of student among students would be to undermine the power of oppression and serve the cause of liberation” (Freire 16).Teachers should not just providing knowledge they have and directly give to their students. Students should be interact with teacher with different roles to have some discussions. But under the “banking concept” education system, students are just passive objects of what the teacher is offering, and they will have to adapt to the world where the teachers are just depositing or filling their mind with narration. The teachers narrate their knowledge to the students so that they can memorize it and anticipate the complete ignorance in the subject they are teaching. The students have to accept what is being pushed to them and continue to memorize it for reading exams. The action depositing the content in the mind of the students limits them from thinking critically and embracing the importance of creativity in their lives. It also becomes hard for the students to come up with a project which can lead to discoveries because their creativity is limited and they are used to the memorization of what teachers have given to them. I think that this has hindered the creativity of students because they are not being given the opportunity to participate what is being taught.

When I was in middle school in China, my Math teacher is basically like the “banking concept” mentioned by Freire. She just poured out tons of new questions and solutions for us. As students, we only receive what she taught on and wrote on notebooks. We have practice questions to answer for homework after school. I almost fall asleep if I do not squeeze my arm to grab my attention. I think if she changed a method of teaching it will be more interesting for most students and for us to discover the world of math ourselves. I lacked the creativity and critical thinking of the word problems in math because I used to think what the teacher had taught us. If she posted a new question and let us try to solve it before the next new class and award students that tried to answer by doing this way we might have an interest in learning math. As a student, I do not like banking education because it influences the oppressed students to continue accepting the dominant society quo status of the teachers.

The reforms in the education system can be made through rejecting banking method completely and adapting problem posing in teaching. Problem-solving leads to cooperation between the teachers and students as the students are eager to know more about what the subject. Students will be actively involved because the students want the truth of the matter to be installed or taught to them. The students end up thinking critically, understanding and getting committed to what they are learning. The teachers do not narrate stories, but they demonstrate with real-life examples and make the students put into practice what they are learning. The teachers prepare the dialogue together with the students and transform them to be better people or creative human beings.

Freire wants the students to completely reject about banking method and remain with the only problem-posing method as a teaching method. However, I do not support the statement because both methods are essential when teaching students and need to be integrated with the education curriculum system. Some of the information taught in the classroom can only be presented through narration, repetition, and memorization. Example, the concept of the equation in Sciences and Mathematics, need the students to memorize so that they can be able to solve the problems. It all depends on how the students memorize it and some of the memorization activities can lead to creativity. If an illustration accompanies the memorizing or demonstrating with the real world examples, then the students are able to think and be creative critically. Though it falls under the category of banking method, memorization of the concept is crucial in some of the subjects taught to the students. Both problems posing and banking enhance the ability of the students to understand what they have been taught.

In conclusion, both methods of teaching the students are necessary and should be used in the classroom. However, more weight should be given to problem posing because it enables the students to have a dialogue with their teachers and determine what to be learned together. Problem posing enhances creativity and critical thinking to the students. The students would be actively participating, and they would not be passive objects of what is taught in class. But no matter what kind of methods we us during classes, The main goal is to make learning fun and efficient in the right way to increase students' interest in learning.