Schools have always had a problem finding different and unique ways to teach or connect with their students, whether it be middle schools, high schools, or colleges. Although it is a good way for students to feel more at home in their place of study, they are usually not successful. Compared high school, WCU makes every effort to make their students try to connect more with their professors and campus. In order to do this, they hold a second part of their original orientation that is originally held before the fall semester. Orientation Part 2 is held in the first few days of arrival for upcoming first year and transfer students. Within this two day event, WCU students, staff, and guest speakers, tell you all the do’s and don’t’s of college, along with ways to get involved. This may seem like a great idea, however, it creates a fear within students. As the students begin to realize that this is not like any other academic experience they have received, they start to feel as if they are a small fish in a big pond. Which, in turn, creates a stigma; that they are not worth the time of professors or councilors due to the amount of people in their class. This stigmatization is what causes learning to become absent in class rooms. It encourages students to feel alone in their struggle to understand material, ask for help, and succeed in their new life as a college student. “ Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.” As Paul Feire discusses in his passage, “The Banking Concept of Education”, there is a “teacher-student contradiction”. The contradiction, he says, is at fault by both student and teacher. This means, the teacher is at fault for their teaching techniques, that just allow students to soak information in as if the professor knows everything. However, students are also at fault for stigmatizing teachers, thinking that they are all knowing and do not have time to teach them, when, at the end of the day, it is their job. “Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.” Friere also points out that the “oppressors”, or WCU staff, are more worried about changing the students to fit them in the system, rather than changing the system so it fits the students better. This occurs in classrooms with the teacher not willing to change their techniques for the greater good of the student. This leaves the students, yet again, terrified to communicate with their teachers, for they make themselves believe that if they are not fit for their teachers techniques, they are not right for the class. The solution to this problem, begins with direct communication from both the student and staff at WCU. Once each party is willing to communicate with each other so they understand one another, learning will become and everyday occurrence. In Paul Freire’s passage, “The Banking Concept of Education”, he discusses the displacement of the relationship between the student and teacher, “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction”; until this “contradiction” is mended through communication no learning will take place.
