Writing Project 1 Topic 1 Draft: Riley, Leah, Gabby, and Amanda

In Paulo Freire’s “The Banking Concept of Education”, he writes about the flawed practices of education. One of the flaws that Freire mentions is the banking concept of learning, which is a way of teaching that students absorb information rather than comprehending. Freire explains this problem saying, “The prevalence of the banking concept within most educational systems prevents students from developing skills that makes themselves fair-minded critical thinkers and continues to promote long-standing biases within society” (Freire). This way of teaching has been taught for decades. Here at West Chester University, it is practiced the same way. The classroom is designed a specific way for the student to come in, sit down in the exact same spot everyday, and absorb information that will never be comprehended.

However, creating a different way of learning needs change not just from the teacher but from the atmosphere of the classroom. The layout of all classrooms are almost exactly the same. Changing the layout within classrooms will help students during active discussions. Taking advantage of the areas we have (such as classrooms in dorms that are not used) and allowing students to use these resources can create a new way of learning. 

Figure 1: One learns from discussing a topic related to a teacher’s lesson by discussing  it with other students. These specific figures allow students to talk to each other. When desks are set up in rows facing the teacher it limits the ability for students to interact with each other and discuss the topic. This gives full control to the teacher and not the students. If we were to set up the desks in a curve or circles, kinda like a casino, it would allow students to discuss and have a better understanding of the lesson. That makes the teacher the mentor and give the students control. Problem posing education is when we discuss a topic relating to the world to another student. 

Figure 2: A lecture room is very hard to have teacher to student or student to student discussions. Students would just listen to “The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. His task is to “fill” the students with the contents of his narration—contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance” (Freire 1) in figure 2, we made it more compact and arranged the chairs in a half circle for discussion. This will allow conversation and interaction among students and the teacher which does not happen in a regular lecture. In a normal lecture hall the teacher is typically just feeding the students information and the students miss a lot of information. Reshaping the lecture room allows students to feel more comfortable in a setting and allows them to take more of their world and allow discussions and conversations with others. 

Figure 3: Changing the atmosphere of a classroom would  make students feel more comfortable and create creative opportunity because this is not a typical classroom. “Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (Freire 3) Using the classrooms in our dorm buildings will make students more comfortable and allow students to adjust to real world atmospheres. This opens doors for more creativity within the classroom and discussion between peers.