ON LEARNING Essay Example For Students

ON LEARNING Essay ON LEARNINGHave you ever had a teacher you really enjoyed? Why did you enjoy him? For most people it is because the teacher interacted with the student and made them feel involved in the learning process. As Carl Jung puts it: One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. (para. 249). This situation has proved true in my educational experiences, with the most positive experience stemming from a Public Policy professor that I really enjoyed. I learned more knowledge in a few weeks than I had in all the previous classes on similar topics I had taken over the years because we worked together at a common level to solve a problem. This is contrary to the action taken by most teachers who instead dictate words to the students like they were depositories. (Freire 213). These students t hen learn have learned the cold hard facts but not the greater context within which those facts lie, or as E.M. Forster put it : Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. (Columbia Dictionary of Quotations). Freire in his essay The Banking Concept of Education confronts this situation. He calls this one sided way of teaching the banking method of education. Also, he proposes a problem posing method as a solution to the unfavorable banking method. In the problem posing method the students and teacher work together at a common level and learn from each other. His analysis of the banking method of education and its antithesis, the problem posing method, has many parallels to my educational experiences. These similarities make me agree that Freires problem posing method is more advantageous than the common banking method.Our views on the essence of human beings and how they learn is related to our views on whether, why and how, humans acquire or develop knowledge. If we believe in born criminals the amount and kind of knowledge that we will grant to that particular human being will be the one that leads her or him into what s/he was born for. Freire in his essay The Banking Concept of Educat ion defines two methods of education. The first is the banking method, which describes the current status of education and Freire exposes the faults of the system. The banking method is characterized by the relationship between the student and his teacher. Teachers deposit knowledge in the students and his task is to fill the students with the contents of his narration. (Freire 212) Students are dehumanized and are compared to objects. Freire describes them as containers and receptacles to be filled by the teacher. (Freire 213) The students are considered to be absolutely ignorant, while the teacher presents himself to be their necessary opposite. (Freire 213) The second method Freire proposes is his solution to the banking method is called the problem posing method. In this method the teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. (Freire 218) The students and teachers work tog ether as coinvestigators in which the teacher gives the students materials for their consideration, and the teacher reconsiders his own considerations as the students express their feelings. This situation causes the students to feel increasingly challenged and obligated to respond to that challenge. (Freire 219) For Freire, the human world and mind are in a never-ending process of becoming. If this is the case, how do humans learn or acquire knowledge? Freires viewpoint is not free of contradictions. He holds the human mind to be both active and social; and states that we learn through a process of abstraction: abstracting information from the out-there reality and reflecting upon it through the use of critical thought. But true knowledge only emerges when critical reflection is combined with transforming action and further critical reflection, in a never-ending process of these beings whose vocation is to be more human. (Matthews 85). Gwen Harwood Gender Analysis EssayThe problem posing method of education provides a more positive and productive learning environment for students in comparison to the banking method of education. A student learns to analyze problems and situations critically through the problem posing method and create their own unique solutions. Contrarily, students of the banking method become depositories for information, and they never really gain any understanding of the information in a larger context. As Freire says, knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (Freire 349). WORKS CITEDThe Columbia Dictionary of Quotations. Columbia University Press. 1998. Freire, Paulo, The Banking Concept of Education, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, (1972). Rpt. in Ways of Reading, eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martins. 1999. 347-359. Jung, Carl, The Gifted Child, (1943). Rpt. in Collected Works, ed. William McGuire. 1954. vol. 17, para. 249. Mathews, Michael, Knowledge, Action and Power, Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Robert Mackie. New York: Continuum. 1991. 82-92. University of Vermont. Literacy and Social Change Conference: Blue Series and Green Series, Burlington: University of Vermont, 1981. 1-115.