Banking Concept of Education worksheet

1. Paulo Freire's concept of "narration sickness" is about someone, in this case a teacher, saying/teaching something and expecting the students to memorize the information. The teacher just talks and expects the students to regurgitate the information at a later time.

2. This notion of narration sickness mimics standardized testing because those tests are given to every student in the state. All the students are expected to know the same things as if they were all taught in the same way - by getting told what the need to know so at a later time they can open up their minds and dump out all the facts. Like Freire mentions, students' minds are like "containers" to be "filled".

3. When I was in 8th grade, my physics teacher taught in the way that Freire describes. He basically stood in front of the classroom with projector slides and read from the slides word-for-word, as if we, the students, couldn't do that for ourselves. Some days he would put us in a circle and we would read directly from the book. It was terrible. I'm sure most of the students in my class learned something about physics, but it definitely didn't make physics very exciting to learn. Freire stated this "the teacher talks, and the students listen."
Well that's exactly what happened. And I know that most middle school children don't know much about anything but teachers should want to make learning exciting, not recite exactly what the book says. We could read the book on our own and gain the same amount of knowledge. We could have skipped class every day, read the chapters at home and still left the class knowing the same things. Needless to say - the class was incredibly boring and it made learning physics boring as well.

4. A teacher that stands out for me would be my Spanish 1 & 2 professor from my first two years of college. He is from Mexico and was totally awesome. Not only was his class fun to go to - mind you it started at 6:00pm and went until 9:00pm - but it made Spanish fun to learn. He is a jokster and always wanted to keep spirits high. He would tell stories from his own past, and his family's past to teach us about the Hispanic culture. We would watch YouTube videos and listen to songs, even sing along with the songs.
He would open up the class for discussion so he could learn things about us as well. He was new to all the slang words and we would fill him in on what things meant. This dialogue turned the class into a great learning environment. My favorite part of the class is when he would bring in a movie for us to watch in Spanish. There would be a pot luck and we would just watch a movie. I found this a great way to learn Spanish because it wasn't just doing grammar, it was being able to hear the way the words were spoken and that helps me to pronounce the words. He was a great teacher overall and really tried hard to supply us with all the different ways we could learn a new language. He made the environment fun, friendly and relaxed. I think that's why I enjoyed that class so much because it is important to feel relaxed and comfortable while you're learning.


5. Based on Neil Postman's "My Graduation Speech" I think that the Athenian culture would embrace the concept of problem-posing education. 
In my introduction to the Bible course, we practice problem-posing education in the form of "dialogue". There are a lot of times when we get into small groups and have to communicate with other students in order to answer questions and/or grasp concepts that the professor has given us. Some days the professor talks and we listen, but never a day goes by when questions go unasked and/or answered. There is always some sort of dialogue going on. My Chemistry class on the other hand could probably use a bit more dialogue. The professor breaks up the chapters so we talk about them for several days. The first couple days he stands in front of the class and lectures the entire time - almost putting the whole class to sleep! Then the last few days of the chapter he opens the class up to ask him any question we want to ask him. So there is some dialogue going on, but I definitely think that there could/should be a little more discussion and dialogue from the students.