Team Members: TJ Fitzpatrick (open for free agents)
Topic #2
Student power. It’s easy to see the role of teacher as oppressor in Freire’s analysis of education, and to recognize the ways in which teachers must change those oppressive behaviors. But Freire argues fairly directly that teachers can’t produce student learning or student freedom. On page 6, Freire says “people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation,” suggesting that progress–where it occurs–is going to result from student power, not professors changing their actions. Use your understanding of Freire’s ideas to analyze the role of student power at WCU, identifying and proposing ways in which students can achieve their own emancipation
Thesis
In “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire, Freire points out the disconnect that we commonly see in todays learning systems between the teachers and the students. Education is a complex system that is in a general form when most students need a more hands on and helpful approach. I will be discussing how better relationships between students and teachers will be more beneficial for both parties.
Quotes
“Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the practice of domination—denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people.”Page 4-5
“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.”Page 1
