Problem Posing Education

Words: 885
Pages: 4

Much like the world, education is an ever-developing medium of communication and knowledge expansion in both children and adults alike. This development is intended to expand knowledge and creativity, allowing an even further advancement in learning through building connections and critical thinking. The success of this development is questionable. While the cohesion and embodiment of the student is maintained, the actual educational advancement of a “banking concept of education” (Freire 71) could be debated. Paulo Freire believes the teaching methods utilized today create a less knowledgeable student through repeated mental oppression of critical thinking and ineffective problem solving instruction. As opposed to typical thinking, mental …show more content…
With the “banking concept,” a student will sit and memorize facts and figures as if they are stationary in the world around them (Friere 75). In reality the student becomes stagnant in the timeline that is the evolution of the world (Friere 75). They attempt to make their own connections but are unable to do so because they do not understand that the world has moved past the knowledge they have been taught and they struggle to apply the words and ideas they have been taught to what they see (Friere 76). This can be solved by transitioning to a “problem -posing” teaching style where students are given an exercise or problem and think as a group to achieve the desired result (Friere 79). In this style of teaching the teacher is on a more equal level as the students and develops ideas along with the students (Friere 81). This seemingly simple method eliminates the wasted time and efforts to remember facts and figures that are quickly forgotten and instead promotes the ability to critically think about problems while relating to prior knowledge and experience. Along these same lines, skills can be developed as the students will exchange their previous knowledge with each other and teach amongst themselves with mere directional coaching of the teacher (81). This moderated exploration of ideas allows the teacher leeway to change up the teaching style as needed as well as to present different styles of problems allowing the teaching style to more fluidly develop as the world does while promoting critical thinking in the