Kelsey Briddle English 1102 Exploratory Essay School, a safe haven full of learning and attaining wisdom; where

the Teacher is the main source of knowledge and the Student is the retainer of said knowledge. Sadly now a days school resembles a banking system in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits or [information] (Freire 1993). This idea of schools being a system of memorization specifically hinders students from critical thinking, problem solving and logic, as Freire mentioned, the act of receiving the knowledge is a portrayed as a banking theme. This system has children stuck in a repetitive process of recall instead of understanding. At first, this makes no sense, why would we want our children to distance themselves from understanding concepts and restricting the knowledge to memorization? In The Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work by Jean Anyon she visits five different elementary schools to observe teaching styles based on social class, status and or income of the parents. In the working class schools the procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice (Aynon 1980). This connects to Freires understanding as the repetition of feeding back information instead of making sense of the concepts of the information. In the end, the information being filtered through the brains of the students are not an efficient and productive process. Also, work is often evaluated not according to whether [the answer] is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps nor was there any attempt to relate the steps to an actual or possible thought process of the children (Aynon 1980). Anyon would say that this idea in itself presents

a huge problem with schools today; it seems that there is no direct communication as of why the answer is correct or not correct. I wonder if the teachers that are using this method understand that the student does not comprehend concepts of problems instead of just knowing the right or wrong answer. This observation of a Working class School fits perfectly to what Freire quoted about students retaining knowledge only to spit it back out without exactly understanding the information; simply depositing, retaining, then extraction. Since Freire understands school as an investment type scheme, Anyon declares it true but observing these exact types of systems in action. Simply memorizing information can make it seem that the student is a robot and when the answer is wrong it is just a malfunction in the repetition of recollection. I wonder if Freire was a teacher, how would he teach his class and would he use the banking concept? The majority of grade schools today have portrayed a banking system strategy of depositing and after a while receiving (in the teachers perspective, the teacher is depositing then shortly after; receiving from the students memory). This way of learning eventually burns out a student by forcing them to recall short or long term information that will keep them in a cycle of recollection rather than understanding. The students are taught most of their academic life to remember facts rather than concepts and the logical understanding of the problem. This also coheres to standardized testing method which does not acquire concepts but simply memorization. As a starting point, we need to recognize both the limitations of current tests but also their strengths (Cizek 2010). Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of tests, and being aware of the different types of students in a classroom can help the teacher determine how to create tests for an effective learning environment. I wonder if the teachers could at some point override standardized tests and create their tests based on concepts learned throughout the year instead of the same test for every student (which means there should be an equal teaching

approach, which there is not) then each individual student could be tested on actual knowledge rather than memorization. Further along in Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, Anyon begins discussing Executive Elite schools in which work is developing ones analytical intellectual powers Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality (Anyon 1980). Just this phrase alone convinces the reader that teaching how to analyze situations and come up with a logical answer sounds very effective; it forces the student to work out the problem rather than accepting a right or wrong answer. This is again, still a type of banking concept but in a rather logical setting, where the student is learning how to think through situations and coming up with a reasonable answer. The teacher is still depositing information while the student is recalling; and the student is using logic and reasoning to come up with an answer. This seems like a great learning environment; (according to Anyon) the only flaw is that each child learns differently and from Anyons research, social class has a lot to do with the way the student is being taught. Throughout Anyons article, she ties together the fundamentals for each level of education and the relationship between the students in the classroom and their parents social class. While all the while mentioning the structure of each classroom; the students who are in the working class schools have absolutely no advantage at such things that the elite executive schools would have. Freire, Anyon and Cizek are all just observers of the school system while they were once a part of the system like us; they are now critical spectators of a vast ever-changing system that will eventually have its effect on the world for generations to come. For we are the teachers of the future and if we do not have an education based upon reasoning then soon enough reason and logic will be obsolete.

Freire, Paulo. PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED. New York: Continuum Books, 1993. Aynon, Jean. "Social Class and Hidden Curriculum of work." Journal of Education. 162. no. 1 (1980). Cizek, Gregory. "Eight Questions for Gregory Cizek." The Economist. (2010).