You step into a local bank, cash hot in your hand, find yourself asked what you wish to do with it, and promptly ask to have it deposited. A moment later, you’re on your way back out. The money resides ‘safely’ tucked away, deposited as asked, able to be withdrawn later, unchanged from the way it went in –the same quantity, the same form of currency: simple, lifeless, common. Such interactions are everyday occurrences in modern society, but reactionary writer and critic Paolo Freire would suggest that this process of depositing one thing into another and having it remain unchanged occurs not only in your local bank, but in the classroom as well, where he believes, it is not only oppressive but dangerous.

Freire refers to this concept as the “Banking Concept of Education,” in which he states that, “Narration (with a teacher as the 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,” with the idea that the more the teacher deposits without allowing for critical thought of any sort and the more the students allow the information to be deposited by memorizing it without complaint, the more successful each is deemed to be by society.

Here is a link to Freire's article on this concept/phenomenon/critique on modern society and education. It isn't overly long, but it definitely provides some food for thought. If you have the time, I urge you to give it a quick read and respond below while considering the following:

Are you or have you ever been guilty of memorization without thought, of 'learning' for the test rather than learning for yourself? Do you believe it to be harmful? What do you consider learning and what do you consider to be pure memorization? Is there a difference? What was your initial reaction to Freire's article? Why?

Obviously, these are not the only issues that you may address, but I believe that they will serve as a nice jumping off point, especially when coupled with the fact that memorization is thought of, in many circles, as an excellent teaching tool / one of the styles of learning.

One of the scariest things for me in observing education-- either the actions of the reachers, or the reactions of the students-- is watching people focus on memorizing facts, instead of practicing understanding.

I think I may be lucky. I've always been terrible at the former: Names of people or theories, dates, and the like just slip away. To really understand an idea, I need to be able to use it, manipulate it.

In addition to that, I've seen a lot of instances where critical thinking is stressed, but means little more than learning to solve x type of problem in x way, as though to mask the fact that students ought to be learning to think for themselves, to look looking something over, come at it from various different angles, and come to understand it and solve x problem on their own, regardless of whether or not the solution found is the normally the accepted way of solving it. It's like packaging up a few nice little shortcuts in life and saying: here, we thought about this and found a quick solution so that you don't have to, now take this, pretend to be clever, and don't give it second thought, because this is all that you need to be successful in the modern world. It's rather frightening.

I tend to have the same issue when it comes to the memorization of names, definitions, dates, and so forth. I'm not saying that memorization is inherently bad (it has it's uses, to be sure). This isn't the 'I suck at this so it must be bad' thread, but one cannot simply memorize a series of things and call it learning in and of itself (chiefly because memorization, and the ability to parrot something back, does not mean that one has reached an understanding of that thing, idea, concept, what have you).

I think one of the major causes of these issues is political.

In short, politicians want to "solve" education, but they also want to get re-elected. So they want to come up with plans that will have a confirmable success within one political term.

Real systematic changes to education can't be done in four years, but a tweak to standardized testing requirements can. So they add another test, or another level of testing, or a new target, or updated quotas, hoping that in a few years that can show that test scores are up, or something equally simplistic.

Once they start spending time doing that, they stop spending time actually trying to improve the system. The teachers have to teach for the test, so the students have to study based on the test, and there's no time to actually work with them to make sure they understand the topics.

Testing real understanding is hard.

Seridano, this one of the subjects I have a soap box for... *digs it out of the closet and dusts it off*

My first experience with this issue came when I was a freshman in High School and had the good fortune to get a teacher that could actually "teach." And by teach, I mean he actually made us think. No spoon feeding the baby birds what was on the test, although, there was a little of that because he had a school board breathing down his neck, like most teachers do. He was the first to say that the system had become greatly flawed, first at the grade school level, building up through middle and high school and was snaking it's fingers into the college system. (He also taught English classes at one of the community colleges in the county.)

The further decay of the educational system, at least in my humble opinion, is the mass pushing of ITT Tech, DeVry University and University of Phoenix, schools that teach only for a specific "degree" or "certification" of higher learning. (At this point, I will go ahead and say that I went to a vocational college for Medical Assisting. Was not a college that I got a degree from, more of practical training for a real life job.) I say these schools are pushed due to the relatively short amount of time it takes to obtain a degree.

A little random, but my brain is fried from work. Learned lots of new things today.

So that's why I liked my engineering class so much... it was more about "finding my own solution" rather than "do it my way"...

But honestly I've known about this "banking" system since middle school... I learned very quickly that I wasn't actually learning anything at all. Not only because it was just useless memorization of useless things....
...but because I have extreme difficulty with memorization. So basically my school thought I was an idiot.

It's so hard to test knowledge/learning in a standardized way without asking students to regurgitate facts, which is probably why memorization styles of teaching remain so popular and common. Unless we decide that standardized tests are unnecessary, I don't think this sort of teaching will go away anytime soon. I think it would be great if we could ask kids to solve/consider open ended problems for most tests, but grading then becomes highly subjective.

I do think there's a time and place for memorization though. Learning times tables in math, for example, doesn't require much critical thinking, just practice. Although I think it helps if you encourage kids to seek out and find patterns to make memorization easier. I learned my "x5" tables by associating the multiplications with the hands on a clock. (3 equals 15 minutes, etc.)

Another thing to consider is that different education systems have different goals, so this system may not always be detrimental for students. I teach in Japan. The education system here really embraces the "banking" style of teaching. In the West, we value independent ability, critical thinking, and creativity. In Japan, students aren't trained to question their teachers and ideas. Students are taught how to function well in a group, follow instructions, and produce high-quality work. I'd say Japanese education focuses more heavily on mistake avoidance than creative thinking. But is that a bad thing? The end goal for both US and Japanese education is to produce functional members of society. They just have different ways of going about it. I think both systems have significant strengths and weaknesses.

The best solution I think would be to do workshops. Let kids try new things without fear of being graded on how well they do and more how much they progress. Then we can have more people specialized in things and less worthless degrees that don't mean squat.

It took me 24 years to actually find what I want to do with my life... had they properly exposed us to things I'd have lead a much more successful life...

I can see supporting working as a group as important as well though, but you don't have to memorize a million things to work well as a group.

@The Wandering Poet: Yeah, more exposure to skills necessary in "real life" would be great. I don't necessarily agree that memorizing facts is a great way to learn (it usually isn't) but it doesn't seem to impede the main goals of the Japanese education system.



This is kind of on a tangent, but there are some things I like better about Japanese schools than the US though. Students are taught how to cook and they are entirely responsible for serving their lunches every day and cleaning up afterward. Students have to clean their own schools/classrooms everyday. Generally students have more responsibility and respect for mutually used property as a result. They also have to spend a week or so volunteering at local businesses to gain work experience. Students run a lot of school programs by themselves (perform a culture festival every year, broadcast radio programs every lunch, etc.) with only a little oversight by adults. There are tons of after school activities available to students (in the city at least). Sports and clubs, while coached by teachers, are also mostly student-run with senior students mentoring junior students.

This creates a lot of pressure for students to perform and not let down the group, but it also produces very strong social ties and a sense of teamwork and belonging. Downside is that students have to conform and it's very difficult for kids who don't fit into the group. Plus side is that students are often way more responsible and organized than their American counterparts and typically maintain friendships made in grade school throughout their lives.

I got taught how to cook in school :O
Now some of those classes if anime is accurate in some of the things they get to learn I'd have LOVED to learn baking because I can't manage it for the life of me.

Well given they're running their own activities that right there allows them to get involved in other things like I had mentioned.

Honestly if I had been more introduced to socializing I might have actually learned how to properly socialize...

Most homes don't have ovens (aside from small toaster ovens) so I don't think baking is that big of a deal. How extensive were your cooking classes? I had maybe two weeks of "cooking" lessons in middle school, but I didn't really learn how to properly cook or plan a meal.

Yeah, the forced socialization is both great and problematic. Great because it gives kids vital skills for dealing with people, even people they'd rather not associate with. Everyone is responsible for the behavior of their group mates, so one troublesome kid can bring everyone down. But the group will self-moderate behavior so those kids will usually bow to social pressure eventually. But bullying is a much bigger problem when the power of "the group" is stronger. I think Japanese schools probably suffer more from bullying than US schools, although it's a universal problem.

I spent about a day... maybe two. It really should have been a class of it's own though.

The problem is... what do you do when someone can't read social pressure?

Yeah. D: For a skill as vital as cooking, you do wonder why we don't learn more than the extreme basics at school. I have a feeling part of the issue is that parents would complain about what food is being cooked. I imagine there would be a lot of hassles to make sure foods were acceptable for kids with allergies/special dietary needs/religious restrictions. Plus it would probably be expensive to make sure good supplies and ingredients were available to every school. I think the cost is a large reason why good workshops/hands-on activities aren't available at most schools.

I also wish that schools taught basic finances at schools. How does credit work? How do you make a budget? How do you file taxes? Those things trip up so many people and we get angry that adults make stupid mistakes. So why don't we teach them at school?

Well students could study the different types of cultures and the types of foods they eat. Like religious based restrictions, vegetarian, vegan, etc. Then they could study food allergies, how they work. It would not only make them more aware of other people's preferences, but then after that the class could possibly decide say... 3-4 things to cook after studying how to operate the oven.
That way anyone who passes the test to use the oven can cook and the rest have to retake it, making it easier to distribute the workload on the teacher and allow them to keep an eye on the cooking students easier.

I would love to learn how credit works... filing taxes would have been lovely...

I remember when there were Home Ec based classes. I think we may have been one of the last classes to get a class with a cooking component (mostly baking). Most schools in the northeast have done away with that. As for having students clean up their classrooms and what not, I could imagine that doing wonders for American students. Though, I can see how a cleaning roster might make a certain room dirtier on certain days (when someone being bullied / disliked by the collective was scheduled to clean it). Even so, I think it would help create a sense of responsibility that is lacking in both our schools (especially at lower levels) and in our culture in general. We're starting to create little monsters who believe that they are entitled to everything, that everything is going to be spoon fed to them in the real world because that's how it works in school. There is very little set in place to teach them real life skills, responsibility, what have you. So I agree that, when it comes to instilling certain values and the need to work hard in students, Japanese schools have us beat.

I'm also seconding the need for a crash course on filing taxes.

On a side note, Ferra, what sort of degree do you hold? I had considered doing some teaching abroad but, with just a BA in English, Japan didn't seem like a viable option, unless I went through the JET program (not that that that would be a problem, but I found out about it after the deadline). In general, they seem to have higher standards for foreign teachers than Korea or China, for example (I've noticed that the requirements for teaching in those countries is much less restrictive).

So true, so often I see that. Things like YOLO and stuff really prove that our generation couldn't care less about being responsible for their actions.

Also about the JET program, to my knowledge you don't actually teach. I think it was being a teacher's assistant grading papers or something.

@Poet: I think you have some great ideas on how a cooking program could be run that's educational, practical, and accommodating to various beliefs. But I still doubt it would work in practice. These days, anything that parents complain about (sometimes with good reason, other times not) will cause schools to avoid them. There are so many legal hurdles schools have to jump through.

@Seridano: Yeah, I think most Home Ec classes have been phased out at my old school district and what I experienced was just the tail end of it. It's a real shame.

Well, cleaning in Japanese schools is assigned to groups who are responsible for a specific area rather than one set task. A teacher supervises and/or checks off their work when they're done. That would probably make it harder for the bullying/non-cleaning issues to occur. Plus, I think cleaning would be resisted less in US schools if it was consistent all throughout their school lives. Start from first graders and go up to high school. A maintenance worker at every school can handle the big/dangerous stuff and they can call in people to wax the floors once a year or so. But really, most of the cleaning is just sweeping, dusting, picking up trash, and wiping down surfaces which kids can easily do.

There are also "moral education" classes at Japanese schools once a week. That would never fly in the US though. I haven't observed a lesson, but I hear it's mostly encouraging you to think about other people's feelings and be a better person.

(Note: I'm only talking about the positive stuff I've observed from the most part. There are plenty of big problems with Japanese schools and, in fact, I'm really nervous about potentially raising a child here. But I have to admit there are a lot of things done well.)

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re:JET Program/English teaching - My degree is just a BA in East Asian Studies, with minors in TESOL and Japanese. I have TESOL certification through my minor program. But I could have gotten the job with any major as the only real requirement is a BA to qualify for Japan's working visa. But since your BA is in English, that would probably help you find a job. What sort of jobs were you looking at? The bar is high for people seeking employment in private schools or universities, but it's pretty low for eikaiwa (English conversation schools) or ALTs (assistant language teachers), such as JET.

I came through JET since it's the most reputable ALT program with a lot of benefits and decent pay. But I can't give you an accurate impression of what the job is like since every situation is different (ESID). You'll see ESID used a lot when people ask questions on the JET program message boards. Your role in the classroom significantly varies by school and by teacher.

Since I have teaching experience and have proven myself capable, I'm allowed to teach elementary lessons by myself, but the Japanese teacher is legally required to be in the room since I don't have a Japanese teaching license. It's a bit more balanced at JHS, where I teach part of the lesson and make some activities, but the Japanese teacher is usually the one leading the class. Some teachers give me a fairly limited role and I respect their decisions. Usually I earn more responsibility the longer we work together.

An ALT job isn't necessarily difficult. You can do the bare minimum, spend all day on the internet, and probably still keep your job. Conversely, you really can't be a "super teacher" either. If you want to throw the textbook out the window and teach kids "real" English, never use Japanese, and lead all of the lessons yourself, well... good luck. That's possible in a private school, but not as an ALT. Doing things the "Japanese way" is much more effective at making meaningful changes gradually over time without pissing everyone off. Your relationship with your JTEs (Japanese teachers of English) is paramount. If you want to teach things your way all the time, then an ALT job will be torture for you.

Yeah that's true and very unfortunate. It was how the sewing portion worked at least. We had to pass a test on sewing machine operation before getting to use it. It really spread out the class.