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To many, education is seen as a “gift” or a privilege – but is it really? Is it truly a wealth of knowledge? Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paulo Friere, delivers a powerful insight in regards to how education revolves around the idea of “narrative sickness” in his work, The “Banking” Concept of Education. In today’s system of education, teachers indirectly give lessons not on a particular subject, but on memorization – in that these educators orate information with expectations of their audience (the students) to be able to regurgitate the material word-for-word. Education has become purely “an act of depositing”. (Friere, 318)
My view towards the harmful transformation of education is similar to that of Friere’s. As a student, I can agree with the philosopher’s belief of narrative sickness in that some of the courses I have taken followed a memorization-based routine. Teachers “teach” and students “learn”. However, what teachers perceive as learning, students see as a reiteration exercise. The process of “learning” slowly develops into a habit of relying on memorization. Students then conclude that memorizing formulas and content for tests and quizzes is what scores ‘A’s’. Sure enough, “words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollowed, alienated, and alienating verbosity.” (Friere, 318) Individuals no longer learn to grasp or understand content, resulting in a deterioration of education’s purpose.
Freire stresses the importance of ridding the idea of banking educational needs into depositories (students’ capacity to learn) that are embedded in teachers’ minds and instead, replace those intentions with goals of spreading critical consciousness. Rather than creating a strictly teacher and student environment, teachers and students should collaborate to work on activities pertaining to open-mindedness and how to think analytically. This way, the younger generations, also known as the “transformers of the world”, are exposed to experiences...

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