Knowledge at the Level of the Logos

Response to Question Number Two

At, by, conditions, doxa, educator, is, knowledge, level, logos, of problem-posing, role, students, superceded , to, together, true, under, with, which. You’ve just read twenty-one different words listed alphabetically written within the English language. It is fairly reasonable to believe that a person of average intelligence, fluent in the language would know what each and every one of these words mean. However, if not, could easily find their definitions within the pages of a dictionary, or within the confides of today’s world wide web. But what would happen if the language of these words had changed, and so all of a sudden they’re not written in English anymore, they’re written in Spanish, or French, Arabic, or Chinese? Would their meanings change within the perceptions of there perceivers? What would happen if you took these words, and scrambled them into a statement written by Paulo Friere such as “The role of the problem-posing educator is to create together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa, is superceded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos,” (266). Sure you might know what each one of these words mean, but do you really understand the crafted complexity, portraying years of frustration through the artistic arrangement of those words fused together? Do you understand what Freire is trying to express? To understand such a statement as this, one must understand the context in which it was created, the beliefs embodied within its creator, and the message in which it’s part of.

Paulo Freire, a native of Recife, Brazil, he spent most of his early career working in poverty-stricken areas of his homeland, developing methods for teaching illiterate adults to read and write (as he would say) to think critically and, thereby, to take power over their own lives (258)… The choice, according to Freire, is fairly simple: teachers either work “for the liberation of the people -their humanization-or for their domestication, their domination… According to Freire, a teacher’s most crucial skill is his or her ability to assist students’ struggle to gain control over the conditions of their lives, and this means helping them not only to know but “to know that they know.”… For Freire, reading the written word involved understanding a text in its very particular social and historical context, and re-writing what is read (259).

If I follow these instructions, if I follow the guidelines to reading “The ‘Banking’ concept of education set by Bartholomae and Petrosky, If I am to truly understand, I must be able to perceive, interpret, and re-write what it is that I have read.

Getting started, what are the elements of argument being weighed up against within this essay? In one scale you have The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education, in which Freire states is a process in which “the teacher issues communiquйs and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (260). On the other scale you have the process of Problem-Posing Education which, “Responding to the esence of consciousness-internationality-rejects communiquйs and embodies communications,” (265).

To effectively measure these elements, one must understand that they are not held by Freire interchangeably in balance. One must understand that the scale (Freire) is skewed in favor of problem-posing education by the social realms in which his concepts were created. Specifically one must also understand the frustration felt by Freire, of being knowledgeable, and able to take on the world, freely. But at the same time being forced to spit information that would secure these illiterate adults roles in society by feeding them just enough information to do their jobs, tightening the poverty-stricken hold upon the people.

What is the Banking System of Education in accordance to Freire? More importantly why does Freire feel that education systems as a whole should abandon this policy? It is in Freires’ beliefs that the existence of the banking system lies within the act of domination within a non-existent student-teacher relationship. A relationship: justified by ignorance, brought to life though the passive acceptance by students themselves as inferior, and thus leading to the death of self-evolution, and the birth of adaptation. In the banking system, the role of the teacher is to spoon feed information to the student. Grades are given upon how able one is to swallow meaningless knowledge, and how well this information that lies within the bottomless pits of those being oppressed. The acts of receiving, restoring, and repeating becomes a three stage process in the production of educational necrophilia. Inhibiting the power of creation, and recreation, leaving