Teachers: Oppressors

Never did I realize that teachers act oppressive in almost all ways that he does inside the classroom. When he imposes rules, he deprives students of certain rights. When he insists that the syllabus or prototype lesson plans be followed through in a year, he denies them of the chance to include matters that they wish to be taken in the class. Moreover, if he acknowledges only one correct answer in a question he raises about a poem or a short story, he is imposing.

My contentions that I wish to write in this column are enthused by what Paulo Freire presents in his highly acclaimed work The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I confess I raised my brow when I read Freire’s work and I should admit too that my ego was quite hurt when it occurred to me that so much of his principles strike us--the people in the academe. On the contrary, if we consider viewing his points from a perspective of a student, it will come to us clearly that we indeed have become oppressors sometime in our lives as a teacher.

The second chapter of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed examines the controversial issue on the system of education where he suggests that students are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the teacher. He terms this “banking approach”. Freire nonetheless rebuffs this because he claims that it results in the dehumanization of both the teachers and the students. Also, he believes that banking education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through these various attitudes and practices: (1) the teacher teaches and the students are taught; (2) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; (3) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about; (4) the teacher talks and the students listen-meekly;( 5) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined; (6) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply; (7) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher; (8) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it; (9) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students and (10) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.

Pondering on this, I realized that I might have become oppressive in some ways inside the classroom as far as banking approach is concerned. Perhaps, the domineering aspect of being a teacher lies principally in the fact that he is the authority in the teaching-learning process. He decides, probably not at all times what to teach, but how to teach. He plans the lessons, constructs the tests, asks questions, disciplines the students and dismisses the classes. The conventionalists would assert that this has been what the educational system is all about ever since the word ‘education’ had been perceived by humanity. But the progressivists might as well get the idea that Freire’s principle is considerably true to the academicians. Let me take the side of the latter to lay my viewpoints. If Freire claims that oppression exists in a scenario where teachers talk and the students are just made to wallow, then all of us are just guilty. Let’s face it! More often than not, we make it a point that everything we say is understood and so we try every possible way to get our message across. Further, we always insist that our wants be materialized—projects, book reports, reaction papers, researches, all of which must be done no matter what, but taking in what Freire claims, haven’t we gone far too oppressive?

In my experiences in the world of literature both as a student and as a teacher, I came to realize that banking approach to education is just so perceptible. As a grade school pupil, I recall the days when we were made to dwell on questions whose answers should be exact: “What is the theme of the story?”, “What conclusion could be drawn from the ending?” and how I got so disappointed when my ideas, which I strongly believed were substantial, were not just the right ones all because the answers were all contained in the Teacher’s Manual! This particular instance exemplifies the idea that it is not only the teachers who are oppressors in the academe. The ones who create the books, those who decide the curriculum and those who implement rules are oppressors as well. I can’t forget the fact that teachers and students are restricted to follow the PSSLC, PELC, and the continuums that the department imposes. Let’s face it, because they are bounded by these competencies, more often than not, the learning of the students are sacrificed. This action fails to acknowledge the fact that most of the students might need extra time for more drills (e.g. vocabulary building) before they could actually move on to the next topics (e.g. paragraph construction) which the PELC or PSSLC insists to be followed at all cost.

At the outset, Freire does not only present the oppressive and dehumanizing acts that teachers are guilty of. He also proposes ways by which we could humanize our students and take part in what he calls problem-posing education. This can be obtained through dialogue in which the teacher is no longer the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. In my literature teaching, I am so grateful that I’ve learned about the Reader Response theory and other critical reading approaches in my master’s. In this way, I am confident that I have become a humanizing teacher and less oppressive when I teach Literature. There are varied ways to liberate students from oppressive situations in the classroom. All we need to do is to consider things and try. Trust me. It’ll be all worth it.