“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 narrating 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.”
I haven’t read anything truer than this in a long time. Not only is education suffering from narration sickness, but so are students and teachers. I have fallen into the trap of acting as the narrating Subject and filling my fellow listeners with junk. We all need to remember this and learn from it.
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
This reminds me of one of the first articles we read about students being “co-creators of knowledge”. I LOVE this idea and think that it really works well. Students build off of each other, there is no issue of “non-engagement”, and everyone gets to give their input. Everyone is learning, even the teacher.
“Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize)….”
This happens all the time. I think its sad that teachers who maybe were once great, have fallen to this “sin” of education. This whole idea of having tenure really pisses me off because sure they may have been teaching for many years, but does that make them great teachers? Does that make them worthy of teaching students who are to become the future? I think that if a teacher works on improving themselves as teachers, and that there are requirements of every teacher, nobody will fall into this role and everything will continue to progress. The problem is that too many teachers think that as soon as they are a teacher, they are no longer a student, which is so far from the truth. Great teachers are the one who are continually expanding their minds and theories and practices. Great teachers attend and participate in conferences and classes, they continue their own education and in turn, produce greater students.
“The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant majority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe. The theory and practice of banking education serve this end quite efficiently. Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, (3) the methods for evaluating "knowledge," the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.”
I see this happen everyday, not just in education. It reminds me of getting the flu shot or vaccines or antibiotics. We often just do what we’re told as opposed to thinking for ourselves. Not to say that other people who are telling us what to do are wrong, they are often right, but we need to take a step back and think before we act. We need to act like humans and not like machines.
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