The Conflicting Truth of the Banking System within Education

 I have always believed that there is never a right or wrong way to teach. Someone can thrive through learning in a way that can be completely different from someone else, whether it be through immersion or a more hands-off approach. This has been a topic that has been touched upon a multitude of times by various officials, but the fact that the education system within the US has stayed the same for over a century, and with the previous statement on how people thrive through learning in different ways, one can see the cracks forming in our education system.

This topic came to me as I read through the text. The "banking" system of the education system made way more sense to me as I realized how similar this resembled my past experiences with learning. The explanation of how "students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor" (Freire 1). To myself, the way Freire describes this banking system, makes me realize how much of a grind it was (and still is) for me within the classroom. The constant flow of intake and comprehension just does not work for me. I understand that this is just how it is, but it still doesn't help that people like me suffer due to the system just not being accessible to them. Freire lists various discrepancies with this method of teaching and one of the problems I noticed is in this listed factor. "i. the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge, with his or her own professional authority, which she and he sets in opposition to the students;" (Freire 2) There is no room for freedom to work around the material and even if there was, it would be less efficient than the more conventional ways presented. Students either conform or struggle. 

Don't mistake my beliefs for a complete reform of the education system, I do not want to have another common core incident (Sort of). I instead just wish for more avenues to be available to people who don't fit into a system that is essentially a tightrope walk of education. Right now, we are in a problem where students who do not fit into the main education system are thrown into special education and taught at a much slower pace. I specifically remember a time when I was also thrown into one of these classes at the impressionable age of 7. So saying that it was a challenge to recover from this experience and catching up with the rest of the grade would be an understatement. My idea of a solution to this problem would be to expand upon the idea of special education by instead introducing more experimental ways to learn. Now granted, this is a riskier idea than a complete reform, however, I believe that if implemented correctly, this can be a way to update the school system by slowly merging it with the more conventional route of learning.