Socratic Seminar

Shawn Berger
ENG297 - Socratic Seminar
October 12, 2007
Dr. Mueller

Passage 1:
“Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to dehumanize), fail to perceive the the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. But, sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for liberation.”
-Paulo Freire
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, p.56
Explanation:
Freire reads very philosophically but does not leave me with a blank contradicting after taste. I chose this passage because it is here that he begins to explain that the “bank-clerk” teaching method does not enforce what the teacher hopes to achieve, rather it does the opposite. Instead of domesticating the student, this method forces the student to fight the domestication because it is forcing them to just be another number in a desk rather than to be who they are. This is a very important part because it shows that the banking method is totally flawed and that sooner or later students will realize what is going on and try to break free. The problem is that students should not feel as though they are being over powered when learning and be concerned with how to break away from being dehumanized, they should just feel like they are learning without being distracted by conflicts irrelevant to the actual class.
Passage 2:
“‘Throughout his historical course, Homo sapiens has been a “status seeker”; and the way he has had to follow, by compulsion, has been education. Furthermore he has always had to rely on those superior to him in knowing and social status to enable him to raise his own status....instructing the young in the tribal ways is as natural as breathing; [adults] have a vital interest in the children they teach, and they often seem to have even a broader interest in the tribal existence as a whole.’”
-Jules Henry
Howard Gardner’s The Education of Intelligences, p332
Explanation:
This quote stood out to me because in a way it is countering Freire’s stand. Henry is viewing people not as individuals but as a whole; Homo sapiens. He is also regarding teachers as “superior” to students. At the same time this passage does not counter Freire’s because it is saying that the teacher, in this tribal sense, not only has a deep interest in the individual he or she is teaching, but with their existence and interactions as well.
Passage 3:
After explaining the malpractice sect of teachers...
“Not so, says the other sect. The child is the starting-point, the center, and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal. It alone furnishes the standard. To the growth of the child all studies are subservient; they are instruments valued as they serve the needs of growth. Personality, character, is more than subject-matter. Not knowledge or information, but self -realization, is the goal. To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one’s own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion. Moreover, subject-matter never can be got into the child from without. Learning is active. It involves reaching out of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within. Literally, we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning.”
-John Dewey
The Child and the Curriculum, p187
Explanation:
Dewey’s point of view is clear and undoubtably correct. Without the student, teaching is nothing. Teaching is not meant to force students to memorize and playback it is meant to serve the child’s growth and development. Learning is part of personality character development. I especially like the line “To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one’s own self is as awful as a fate in education as in religion”. Dewey is saying “What is the point of being smart if you are not well rounded as a person. He also makes the point that learning involves reaching out of the mind. It is not just something in a text book, it is an experience.
Passage 4:
“What I needed in college was not, or at least not just, to bore into my own experience, which, however rich, was nevertheless parochial. What I needed was not self but society...I realized in short that my experience as a student needed to be enlarged by secondary-source knowledge.”
-Bob Denham
The Flight from Complexity, p.196
Explanation:
This quote is relevant to the other passages I chose because it is also about learning that comes from outside the teacher and student. Learning won’t be taken solely from the teacher, it will come from films, photographs, experiences, etc., and most importantly the ones who are around you at any given time. When conversing with others not only do you have your own experiences, views, and ideas to learn from but you also have all of theirs.
Discussion Questions:
1. Why aren’t teacher’s using the “bank-clerk” method corrected?
2. Why do most class room structures make the student out as a number who is not to step out of line?
3. Is it possible for students to run a classroom without a teacher? Not just without a teacher present but without a teacher at all?
4. If students of a class do not have an average that would be considered suit shouldn’t the teacher be to blame? And if found at fault fair measures should be taken, tenured or not.
5. A teacher who is arrogant and pompous obviously distracts students from the importance of the actual class and creates hostility. He or she most likely enjoys this. It is not fair that he or she can not be told of this without stirring up confrontations. How can one get around this? How can his superiors be notified but feel as though it is a significant problem, not just a complaint?