Banking Concept of Education

The idea that education can be a process of depositing, banking, or lodging information and knowledge within a passive learner has its origins with Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. The idea of banking education as it relates to curriculum studies has been given its fullest expression in Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. What Freire was critiquing was the notion of education as a submissive act in which a largely compliant learner was a recipient of knowledge developed and conveyed by somebody else. At the core of the banking concept of education is a transmission view of education based on the belief that knowledge is mostly of a factual kind that exists in order to be conveyed to learners, who accept it without question. There are obvious similarities with John Dewey's notion of teaching by “pouring in” and of learning as a process of passive absorption.

There are several overlapping issues that flow directly from or accompany a banking view of education as it relates to curriculum studies. First, there is the question of power, or who has a legitimate right to know. Related to this question is the second aspect: the clear and unambiguous separation of the role of the knowledgeable teacher on the one hand from the deficient or less than knowledgeable learner on the other hand. Third, there is the nature of knowledge, which is seen as factual, certain, agreed upon, and therefore amenable to easy and amenable transfer from teacher to learner. It is as if there is a private granary of knowledge that is warehoused and that has to be unlocked and delivered to those unfortunate enough to be suffering from a deficiency. Fourth, flowing from these concepts is a presumption that the nature of learning, and by implication the act of teaching, is essentially about remedying a defective situation by filling knowledge deficits or gaps. Fifth, it follows, furthermore, that the nature of the relationship is a hierarchical one as between an authority who knows and a person who is underdeveloped and whose deficiencies have to be remedied or rectified. Finally, knowledge is presented as being disinterested, neutral, objective, and value-free and as purportedly being above and beyond politics.

Freire found the banking concept of education that he described to be troublesome at several levels. First, the depository view of knowledge seemed to fly in the face of reality. In many instances learners do not come to learning as empty vessels; they bring with them rich knowledge and understandings gained through the experiences of living. Second, learners do not always present as passive absorbers of others people's proclamations or diktatshuman beings come to learning situations with active and inquiring minds, which make them powerful and active cocreators and coproducers of knowledge. Fourth, in the process of learning, teachers are not unaffected by the process; their students can reveal to them things they previously had not known. Power is thus much more dispersed, less hierarchical, or even inverted, and hence, learning is more democratic than a banking view of education would have us believe. And finally, as long as knowledge is treated as being hermetically sealed, then those whose dominant positions are represented in what is regarded as legitimate or worthwhile knowledge are bolstered [Page 71]or buttressed against the possible incursion from those whose views are excluded, and the status quo is maintained.

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