Wilhelmsen 1
Petter Wilhelmsen
Kimberly Stewart
College Composition
09.09.2015
Draft for Essay #1 - V 1.4 Education and Globalization
People often say that we live in a society driven by globalization today, resulting in
smaller and smaller distances between people, cultures and continents. The effects of this
rather new trend, seen from a historical perspective, are in many cases positive. Many would
claim that it brings growth in populations, economies, and much more, but also that it comes
with several problematic aspects. For obvious reasons we do not want to slow down the
globalization, if we can help it, as we really do want the positive effects from this
development. What we do want, however, is to avoid the problematic aspects of it, and if
necessary solve potential future conflicts it may create in a sustainable and prosperous
fashion, and this should happen through quality education.
In order to do this, we will of course have to handle acute complications as they come,
but for the potential conflicts we are able to predict, we can prepare ourselves and our nations
to face the future with these predictions fresh in mind. What is then better than to shape our
children into open-minded, knowledgeable individuals capable of handling foreign cultures
and ideas in a constructive and productive way, so that the globalization will only bare fruits
of the edible kind, instead of seeds of unrest and possibly violence? Education is therefore an
extremely important part of the globalization, and not just the education itself, but also the
structure of it. Paulo Freire makes this clear in “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education,” where
he criticizes the way teachers transfer their knowledge to students, which, according to him, is
a decisive factor for how these students will interact in society. I believe that only by realizing
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the importance of education, we will be able to handle this development, which is rapidly
shrinking the world into a smaller and smaller place.
Education, however, is not synonymous with the same things in different countries and
cultures. The education one receives become an individualistic interpretation of what life is,
and which things that are important. That is why the structure of the education is important,
since it reflects how one interprets what is good and bad, what is important and not, and so on,
in different cultures. These things do not have to be identical, of course, across national
borders, but I think the values of the different cultures have to overlap each other in one way
or another, in order to be able to interact in a healthy and constructive way. Despite what
some may point out, it does not necessarily have to be traditions or rites; on the contrary, I
think these things should in most cases be preserved and kept alive. The values that go deeper
into the culture, though, have to be more or less consistent with those of the interacting part.
This can be anything from historical facts, to ideological differences/similarities, and even
theological values. Even though these things could solve many conflicts between cultures,
they will not make our world a perfect world. For this, we have to look at the people – the
individuals.
Although certain people might disagree, I would say that education is not a simple
institution. It relies on many different forms of infrastructure, but the most important aspect of
it is the structure of education, both with respect to the curriculum, but especially regarding
pedagogy. One could argue what the importance of the curriculum is and how it affects the
student, if the pedagogy of the education fulfills its purpose. This, of course, depends on what
the premises for the education is – are we doing this to pass on what we believe is the correct
knowledge? Or is it because we want to shape these individuals into critically thinking
participants in this constantly growing, but at the same time shrinking, global society, thus
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preparing them to handle alien cultures and situations in a better way than we can today, with
the knowledge of yesterday?
According to Freire, there are two different ways of teaching: The “banking” concept
of education and the “problem posing” education, using the following definitions:
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those
who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to
know nothing. (…) Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the
students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of
communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the
student patiently receive, memorize, and repeat (Freire 1, 2).
In problem posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically
“the way they exist” in the world “with which” and “in which” they find
themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in
process, in transformation (Freire 9).
To summarize, Freire believes that interacting with the students, instead of just
delivering knowledge, and not universally ‘correct’ facts, but knowledge acquired by the
teacher, to the students, is the way education should be. I agree with him on this matter, that
education should be based on knowledge processed through critical thinking, whilst guided by
the teacher, in order to better master the art of telling truth from false, and facts from opinions
– as opposed to just filling the students with subjective truths.
Supporters of banking education would criticize Freire for not seeing the benefits from
it, but instead painting it black. They would argue that by using high quality teachers, we
would be able to educate, for instance five hundred students, much more efficiently, than by
using time and energy on critical thinking, on subjects that where the curriculum, some people
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would say, is not worth debating. In addition, it would be a nightmare to reorganize the
educational system to match the problem posing education, as its demands would result in
both economically (with regards to the cost per student) and logistically (when it comes to the
number of teacher needed to cover the demand). I, for one, agree with their train of thought,
that it is not possible to adopt problem-posing education in all aspects of the institution
overnight, as explained above. However, I believe this view is based on the wrong premises,
and is therefore not only incorrect, but it is insufficiently defending its own existence.
First, if we are to turn around the educational system, it has to be done over a long
period of time, not only for the state and society to be able to handle the change necessary to
carry its weight, but also in order to sustain this change. If there is something history has
taught us, then it is that one cannot enforce a change onto the population, if there is no will
among them to support this change. Changing the public’s opinion on education, then, is vital
for the sustainability of the educational change.
Second, the reason for changing the system would not be that we do not want an
efficient school – of course, we do. The more efficient we can educate people, the better.
However, efficiency cannot come on the expense of quality, and this is where their argument
falter. In contrast to what conservatives may think, school is not, and should not be, run by
economic principles. If education is dependent on being profitable, if it is but a matter of
numbers and figures, the value of education and quality schools will not be included in the
equation. Efficiency should therefore not come instead of quality, but in addition to quality.
Quality, though, is rather hard to measure, but the definition of it is easier. While
comparing banking and problem posing education, Freire manages to touch this definition:
Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problemposing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts
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to maintain the “submersion” of consciousness; the latter strives for the
“emergence” of consciousness and critical intervention in reality (Freire, 324).
In short, it is the student and how he perceives the education that determines the
quality. It is through education students are supposed to learn how to utilize their ability to be
critical and to question opinions presented as facts, rather than accepting them as truths. This
is also where they should learn to disagree with others, with factual argumentation and
become liberated. However, this is not always easy if the teachers are teaching on other
premises. A good example of this is from my own high school, where the teacher disagreed
with me interpreting a literary work, and stating that I interpreted it the wrong way. We all
know how art is possible to perceive different depending on who is looking at it, reading it or
listening to it, because we are all different from each other. Although I cannot recall the work
we were discussing, the teacher asked us to write down what thoughts came to our minds after
reading it, and then present it to the class. After listening to the teacher correcting student
after student’s interpretation, I raised my hand and asked, “Is it not possible that the author
only meant what he wrote, and nothing else?” The teacher seemed surprised that anyone could
ask such a question, and she replied, “Absolutely not. This author has thought this through,
and put a very deep meaning into it.” I tried explaining that a text should be possible to
interpret differently, but to no help.
I feel that in that moment when the teacher cuts off any attempt of individual
perception, it is not just disappointing, but also scary, since this usually go deeper into the
system, and does not just happen in class. Many students turn in papers several times a week,
and if the teacher is making the paper deeper or shallower, depending on her mood, then that
directly affects the students’ grade, future and life. Furthermore, this could affect our society
as a whole, since the students one day will become the core foundation of, not only the society
we live in, but also potentially our world. Therefore, we can choose to make a stand for how
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our future will look like, or we can blind ourselves with naïveté of banking education and face
the consequences.
Globalization is an extremely complex matter, and although this text only discuss a
tiny portion of it, there are numerous aspects of it that have not even been mentioned.
However, education is an important contributor to globalization and a subject to it. This
makes education even more important, as its symbiotic connection to the world directly and
indirectly affects our society. Freire has already explained how we can solve the problems
related to banking education, thus making our global society a safer and better society. By
building our actions on knowledge and by being conscious of our own consciousness, we
liberate ourselves and are able to look at the world around us with a critical eye, for our own
judgement to decide how to think and react to the matter at hand.
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Works Cited
Freire, Paulo. “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” Ways of Reading 9th ed. Ed. David
Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 318-328.
Print.