Both Percy and Freire acknowledge the role of a teacher in education, in the formative assessment form, this allows teachers to have a lesser role in a student’s education. Percy and Freire both agreed that a student can’t learn from a direct presentation, but rather from an outside source. In the formative assessment form, teachers monitor students by providing ongoing feedback. One way to use formative assessment is to provide students tests to show them what they need to study or not. Also by allowing students to be able to take tests multiple times allows the student to decide the pace they go. Percy proves this would be an effective way of learning by saying, “A student who has the desire to get a dogfish or a Shakespeare sonnet may have the greatest difficulty in salvaging the creature itself from the educational package in which is presented” (Percy 4) . This shows that a student can not learn from a direct presentation. It allows the student to follow their own path or the least beaten path by learning taking assessments to learn what they need to. Friere also proves this would be an effective way of learning by saying, “It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to 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 shows if a student does not ignore the direct presentation they would not learn. By avoiding the direct presentation of the object, allows the student to gain sovereignty and to take the beaten path to further their education.
One form of learning is inquiry-based learning. This is where the student drives the class and takes over. This is done by the student who is given a problem or scenario, and the student completes this task by asking questions and figuring the problem out for themselves with no previous lecture from the teacher. This type of learning would eliminate lecture-based classes which are proven ineffective. Friere proves this to be an effective form of learning by saying “Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality” (Freire, 6). This shows that in the beginning, people do not know the answer to the question. So they must find the answer for themselves in order to actually learn. Percy also finds inquiry-based learning to be true. He stated that “The educator whose business it is to teach students biology or poetry is unaware of a whole ensemble of relations which exist between the student and the dogfish and between the student and the Shakespeare sonnet”(Percy, 4). This demonstrates the need for the student to learn without the professor. Since the professor can not see the connection between the individual student and the topic they are learning, the student must learn the information for themselves. The student also needs to find their connection to the topic in order to understand the true answer to the problem.
