ANALYSIS ON THE VIEWS OF PAULO FREIRE
Essencial B. Acabado
The writings of Paulo Freire are concerned with education and social struggles. He is
indeed a humanistic leader. His concepts of problem-posing education and its cultural
concomitant, dialogical action, and his working out of these concepts as the dialectical opposites
of banking education and anti-dialogical cultural action is if not profound, then significant. Freire’s
words were most likely to serve as a reminder to those who already approach life emphatically.
Freire saw that the banking approach to education was about inculcating submission to the
status quo. Freire focused on this as a process of class domination and looked at how the recipients
of education in a banking system were alienated from reality for a teacher in this kind of system
who represents social authority as well as subject authority pushed knowledge into the ’empty
vessels’ lined up before him or her. ‘Pupils’ are marshaled around as ‘efficiently’ as possible to
absorb as much ‘knowledge’ as possible, making as much use of technology as possible to control
them. Based on Freire’s analysis, the teacher was the only Subject permitted in the classroom while
the pupils were mere Objects. In contrast to the banking approach to education, Freire promotes
problem-posing education wherein the students were involved in reality; they inquire critically and
thus were able to transform everything into reality.
The concept of Paulo Freire’s problem-posing education is agreeable. In reality, students
learned based on critical inquiry. In this case, the students share their ideas. Educational success
is measured by their ability to regurgitate those ideas.
Paulo Freire’s approach to education includes three key dimensions. First is a respect for
the basic dignity and humanity of students, the second is that all decisions that will affect learners
must include thoughtful ethical analysis and the third is that all decisions should be made in
dialogue with all those who will be affected by the decisions to be made. In other words, a teacher
should portray an emphatic relationship with students thereby giving them the freedom to think of
any ideas and translate those ideas into action to achieve a positive learning process.
By comparing the humanistic approach to the education of Paulo Freire with K to 12
Education in the Philippines, it can be concluded that both types of approach to education explicitly
indicate a warm, democratic, positive, and non-threatening learning environment in which learner’s
self-concept and self-esteem are considered essential factors in learning.
Freire’s concept of “Problem-Posing Education” is similar to K to 12 in the Philippines
wherein the educators are encouraged to conduct Inquiry-Based Teaching wherein the focus is
through inquiry or questions that spouse’s investigation, exploration, search, quest, research,
pursuit, and study enhanced by the community of learners, each learning from the other in social
interaction.