Troy Duck

English 111
18 September 2016

Paulo Frerie Prospective

In the reading The Banking Concept of Education the author, Paulo
Frerie writes in the prospective of an oppressor being forced to oppress his
students. He is unhappy with the way his system makes him teach. He
believes that his current curriculum doesnt allow for students to be
independent thinkers. Instead they are just containers to be filled by the
teachers. He describes this, Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads
the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it
turns them into containers, into receptacles to be filled by the teacher.
The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is.(1)
Mr. Frerie also is very careful with the way he talks about the government. He
never calls out exactly who he is talking about when he refers to oppressor.
He says that the oppressor uses the banking concept to keep people from
having an open mind. Frerie states, Indeed the interests of the oppressors
lie in changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which
oppresses them; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that
situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the
oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a
paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the
euphemistic title of welfare recipients.(3) Basically he is saying that the
government controls the education system and they wont let teachers or
students think outside of what they want them to learn. This is one of the
examples of how he calls them out without calling the government out
directly.
From the beginning you can tell Mr. Frerie is not talking to the normal
population. He is talking to the educated upper class people. His tone and
vocabulary is beyond a normal understanding. You can see this in the first
paragraph.
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level,
inside or outside the school, reveals its fundamentally narrative
character. This relationship involves a narration Subject (the teacher)
and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether
values or empirical dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being
narrated to become lifeless and petrified. Education is suffering from
narration sickness.(1)

Troy Duck
English 111
18 September 2016

He shows this throughout the whole reading. Over all Paulo Frerie has a very
strong point and is trying to get it across to his readers. He seems to be
pretty passionate for his people and his students.