What Happens

Chapter two opens with the claim that education suffers from “narration sickness”—wherein teachers treat their students as receptacles to be filled with content. This “banking” method of education is characterized by features that mirror societal oppression:

• The teacher talks, disciplines, and enforces their choices. Meanwhile, the student assumes a passive role—they listen, follow, and comply.
• The student does not act. Instead, they maintain the illusion of acting through the teacher’s actions.
• The student has no say in the program content; they simply adapt to it.
• The student’s freedom is placed in opposition to the teacher’s authority.

As a result, critical consciousness fails to develop. Students are forced to simply memorize and repeat information without grasping its significance. This aligns with the interests of the oppressors, who aim to integrate individuals into the strict structure of oppression. It is in this way that the banking method trains students to slot passively into the mechanism of oppression.

In contrast, a libertarian education aims to resolve this teacher-student contradiction. Rather than roles such as teacher-of-the-students and students-of-the-teacher, it employs teacher-students and student-teachers. Through consistent and authentic dialogue, the teacher is taught and, in turn, teaches their students. While banking and deposit-making concepts of education adopt a fixed, mechanistic view of consciousness, “problem-posing” education regards consciousness as an ongoing project in which people are empowered to take action upon the world. Authentic liberation—the process of reclaiming one’s humanity—is aided by a profound partnership between educators and the people.

Freire focuses on the distinctions between the two educational styles: 

• The banking method unfolds in two stages: 1) the educator formulates an opinion in preparing for the lesson and 2) imparts this opinion as objective to the students. Meanwhile, the problem-posing educator engages their students as critical co-investigators in regarding objects of reflection.
• Banking education treats students as objects and resists dialogue, while problem-posing education relies on dialogic relations to unveil reality.
• Banking education domesticates and isolates one’s consciousness from reality while problem-posing education awakens consciousness and stimulates critical action upon reality.

Problem-posing education helps empower individuals to perceive their place in and understanding of the world. Unshackling themselves from fatalism and static reality, students are taught to problematize, apprehend, and transform reality. The chapter ends with Freire’s assertion that the revolution must be dialogical from the outset—leaders cannot use the banking method as a means of emancipation. Transformation and critical inquiry must be nurtured through problem-posing education, carried out in solidarity, and aimed toward the humanization of all.

Why It Matters

As opposed to education as the practice of domination, the chapter presents an alternative to the banking method—problem-posing education, which is oriented towards the people’s freedom. Freire once again utilizes the work of Erich Fromm to demonstrate how the banking method mirrors the broader oppressive structures in society, as it is necrophilic—a mechanistic force that chokes critical thinking, action, and creative power. Thus, he describes those who use this method as a means of liberation as misguided or distrusting of the people. Banking methods of domination, such as propaganda, slogans, and populist rhetoric, fail to evoke praxis and simply maintain the illusion of action through submission.