The Banking Model of Education

Justine Mack

The Banking Model of Education is a term used by Paulo Freire to describe the education system. Essentially the banking knowledge is saying that teachers are active participants and students are passive listeners. Teachers are said to be all knowledgeable people who are teaching their knowledge to students who have none. In this particular way of teaching students are expected to receive, memorize, and repeat information taught to them. It is said that this model is often used in large universities where a single class can have as many as 100+ students in a single class. In this case a teacher standing in front of a class of this size talking at them is the simplest way to communicate information.

I highly disagree with this model of teaching for several reasons. One of those reasons being that every class is different. In my own experience I know that many science courses require a large amount of memorization in which case this teaching method could work well. However, in English courses memorization of particular information is not practical for success. Another reason I am not a huge fan of this method is because although teachers should be highly knowledgeable in the subject they are teaching doesn’t mean that students lack knowledge completely. I like to believe at the age of 19 I have a great deal of knowledge. I also am not big fan of being talked at. I like to have a more discussion based lesson where the student is able to relate more to both the teacher and what is being taught.