I think you have a good point in critiquing the duality between the banking pedagogy and the problem-posing approach. Without any doubt, we need to think about what we miss to conceive when we reduce complex processes such as teaching and learning to models. Nevertheless, the gap between the educator and the student, the precedent and the successor, an experienced and a fresh mind, and memories of past and aspirations for future requires us to come up with strategies to fill this gap.
My learning experience was closer to the banking pedagogy. Before I was introduced to the concept of critical thinking, all I knew was trying to improve my memory. I was aware that what I knew and how I expressed it had a value in my social and cultural exchanges. I think it is valid for all cultures and societies; however, it is shaped in different ways in accordance with the historical development of social organization within a particular society.
I observe that the form of banking pedagogy is embedded in our pragmatic and economical thinking, which aims at accumulating our knowledge capital to exchange it when necessary. It ensures to reproduce and reinforce cultural values as it is narrated by the constituting ideology. Freire urges us to challenge this structure and rehumanize this process.
Although I am critical of the discourse on humanity and tolerance, I think he addresses an essential dynamic which is critical for all relationships and all forms of social organization. The teaching process should have a horizontal structure, where the teacher and student will shape the process together, rather than a vertical one, in which the exchange value is set by the those, who have a hierarchically superior position. – Ezgi
