Pedagogy of the Oppressed: What is Education?

          When I hear the word “education,”the first thing that comes to my mind is the process of gaining knowledge through the means of classroom teaching. I was surprised to read how denigrating Paulo Freire’s thoughts were about the current system of education. Intrigued (although confused), I read on. He spoke of how it is like a “banking” system.  “Education thus becomes and act of depositing, in which students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (72).

          It was as if the teachers were the main focus of education, not the students. The teachers were the sources of knowledge who just put it upon students, and the students did nothing but mindlessly file away facts and figures. The teachers were the subjects, the students were the objects.

This made me take a second look at my personal definition of education: the process of gaining knowledge through the means of classroom teaching. In reality, that is only one form that education takes. Education is really a much broader term, I think. Education is often seen as an obligatory step--a rite of passage, even--into the “real world.” However, I do not think that education is not something that just happens to you. Gaining knowledge is not a passive action.Therefore, I believe that education is the pursuit of gaining knowledge, of taking information and mulling it over in one’s mind to best understand it in order to apply it; bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding, understanding and wisdom. This learning is what education should be understood to be, not a mandatory, mechanical mishmash of methods and other matters.