Complete summary of Chapter no 2 of Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed".

1. “PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED” BY PAULO FREIRE”
CHAPTER 2
Module:
“Teaching English in large Classes”
Presented by:
Unaiza Saeed, roll #6
Submitted to:
Dr. Mamona Khan

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Characteristics of traditional western classroom
2. “Banking” model of education: An instrument for
oppression
3. “Problem-posing model”: An instrument for liberation.
4. Comparison of a peasant’s and Sartre’s POV.

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADITIONAL WESTERN CLASSROOM
 Narrative aspect of classroom
 “Narrative” one sided nature of traditional
teaching.
 Teacher Narrating subject
 Student Passive listener
 Narration Disconnected from students’ life
experiences.

4. BANKING MODEL OF EDUCATION : AN INSTRUMENT FOR
OPPRESSION
• Education Depositing
• Teachers deposit knowledge into students’ minds.
• Knowledge Teachers have but students lack.
• Knowledge is possessed by authority figures
• Powerless people are ignorant.
• Teachers are subjects and students are merely an
object.
Oppression

5. DISADVANTAGES OF ‘BANKING’ MODEL
 Dehumanization
 Students Empty vessels to be filled by teachers
 Stifles creativity
 Does not encourage students to ask questions
 Closely tied to oppression
 Teaches them to adapt to the world as it is, instead of
questioning it or trying to change it.

6.  Freire argues that oppressors combine “banking”
education with institutions like welfare, which treats
oppressed people as if they exist outside of normal,
“healthy” society.
 To liberate themselves, oppressed people cannot
become “integrated” into oppressive society; rather,
they must transform society entirely.
 “Banking” education combats this transformation by
turning people into “automatons.”

7. “PROBLEM-POSING MODEL”: AN INSTRUMENT FOR
LIBERATION.
 People do not act on
the world: they merely
live in it and observe it.
 Teachers control how
their students observe
the world and teach
them to fit in.
 Authentic
communication in the
classroom.
 Teachers cannot
impose their ideas on
students, but should
instead work with
students equally.
Banking Model Problem-Posing Model

8. PROBLEM-POSING MODEL
 Fosters human freedom.
 Encourages communication
 Transforms the relationship between students and
teachers, merging them into teacher-students and
student-teachers.
 Teachers and students “co-investigators” who
question reality together.
 Pushes students to gain critical awareness.

9. BASE OF PROBLEM-POSING MODEL
 Humanistic approach
 Individuals cannot be truly human until they possess
knowledge.
 Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention,
through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human
beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
 Humans are naturally creative and can think creatively.
 Teachers and students can become partners and solve
problems.

10. • Freire calls out the “banking” model as oppressive so that revolutionary
leaders do not use it in the struggle for liberation.
• Revolutionary leaders should “reject the banking concept in its entirety”
and replace it with a new model: the “problem-posing” model.
• “Problem-posing” is “revolutionary futurity,” because it relies on the hope
that oppression is changeable and can be defeated in the future.

11. Comparison of Peasant’s and
Sartre’s POV

12. DISCUSSION: ANTHROPOLOGICAL (WHAT MAKES US
HUMAN) CONCEPT OF CULTURE
 Peasant: "Now I see that without man there is no world."
 Educator: "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on
earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together with
trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars . . , wouldn't all this be a
world?"
 Peasant: "Oh no, there would be no one to say: This is a world.”
 Lacking world of consciousness Lacking consciousness of
world

13. JEAN PAUL SARTRE: EXISTENTIALISM
 “Consciousness and reality (world) are given at the
same time; reality is external to consciousness by its
very true nature, and subject to it, at the same time.”
Significance of this Comparison
 Sartre was an academic and philosopher, the peasant
(ignorant in traditional class) was able to develop a
similar idea without reading Sartre’s work.
 It shows how oppressors create a false dichotomy
between people who have knowledge and people
who don’t.