The Education System

The education system is subjected to the full measure of criticism from the two authors. The authors use symbolic language to describe the system. For Freire the system is sick: it suffers from the narration sickness. Freire (2004) further gives the outstanding characteristic of the system as ‘the sonority of words’. The author further claims that the education system has no transforming power. To clarify his claims he gives the example of how students are a taught arithmetic, “four times four is sixteen,” he claims this is what actually happens, “the students records, memorizes, and repeats this phrases without perceiving what four times four really means” (Freire 1). He also gives an example of example of students reciting the capital city of a nation without knowing what actually a capital city is. In his eyes the system has misplaced priorities; the priority should not be based on knowing what four times four is but rather knowing what it means. If a student understands what that is, it will be unnecessary for the teacher to teach the students what one gets when three is multiplied by three because they would have been empowered through understanding the meaning of four times four. This is why Freire refers to the education system as “sonority of words” and adds that it has “no transforming power” (Freire, 2004, p.1).

Percy (2005) on his part fires his criticism from two perspectives: the first is what he refers to as the media problem. The media in which the message is transmitted actually fails to transmit the message and instead transmits itself. Percy writes, “the new textbook, the type, the smell of the page, the classroom, the aluminum windows and the winter sky….. These media which are supposed to transmit the sonnet may only succeed in transmitting themselves” (Percy 4). Percy adds sadly that it is the rarest and cleverest of the students who will be able to salvage the message from the package in which it is. The second problem that the author presents is the devaluation of the package (Percy 4).

Freire (2004) in the perspective of the banking concept claims that the education minimizes the creativity of students, “the more students work at storing the deposits entrusted in them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world” (Freire 2). This leads the students completely accepting the passive role imposed on them leading to their adaptation to the world with the fragmented reality deposited in them. Freire describes the education system as the process through which the world enter into the students.

Freire (2004) discusses how the banking system of education fails to liberate people even though that seems to be the claim of the system. He writes, “Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students” (Freire 3). He argues that the intent for this is that of indoctrinating the students to adapt the world of oppression.

From the above two authors it is very clear that the basic goal of an education system should be to empower students. By empowering the students they are at liberty to operate on their own. Such kind of a system shall eliminate the dependency ration as it will close down the gap of lay men expert gap. Freire argues that the truly liberating system to exist there will be a need for the banking concept of education system to be eliminated. He writes that, “liberating education consists in acts of cognition” (page 4).

The education is a mixed up situation. It has encouraged discrimination practice to a great extent. The students have been reduced by the system to be mere vessels where knowledge is deposited. The teachers equally have been elevated to the level of depositor. They deposit knowledge to the vessels and believe that they have carried out their tasks well. This has created a gap between the teachers and students. This gap does not liberate but rather condemns the students to receiving knowledge which is powerless. The education needs to change in the order make it more empowering. By empowering students, it will be easier to liberate the student because they would be enabled to reason out without depending on the other people.