Cheese

Throughout my high school experience, I have encountered many teachers, each with their own approach to instructing lessons. Two teachers stand out in my mind, one who seemed to use the "banking concept" and the other who proposed the "problem solving" method. Both methods, presented in Freire's essay, have had both their negative and positive influences on me as a student and how I obtained the information being taught and what I actually learned. Using the "banking concept" as a way of educating students should be limited; problem solving should be incorporated to allow students to express their thoughts and opinions on the subject at hand. If you have a fair balance of the both, then students will remember and gain the knowledge trying to be taught to them.

When one person does all the talking, no connection can be made and learning cannot take place. For example, in tenth grade, I had a math teacher who taught our class by sitting in the back of the classroom at her desk. She had already wrote the notes on the board and just read it to us verbatim. After each section of the notes, there were example problems but instead of us trying them out for ourselves, she had already completed them and put the answer below the problem. She seemed to make no connection to the class and just lectured us and tested us on the material on the board. There was no interaction among the students to be allowed to solve the problems and rarely did she give us the opportunity to ask questions. By the time we completed our notes there was only a few minutes before the bell would ring and class would be dismissed. My teacher demonstrated the "banking concept" by the way she conducted her lessons and she only expected us to memorize the information and be able to repeat it back to her on our test and quizzes.

When a teacher is able to connect with the students as a whole and allows himself to be taught by the students while trying to guide them in the right path, is an example of the "problem solving method". My eleventh grade English teacher