Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The cons of the banking concept of education is that all knowledge could possibly not be completely understood only memorized and so limits the ability to adapt to real life situations."Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other." Also the student in this concept of teaching can only learn what the teacher knows which can be limiting. The student is not given as much freedom to think for themselves and new ideas can be lost. "it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity." The student may not feel as inclined to learn if they are felt that they are oppressed by their teachers. The pros of this form of education is that there is more guidance to start in a path in the right direction. The teacher knows more about the world or different things than the students do in the area of real world situations. The pros of problem-posing education is that the student feels more empowered and will in turn desire to learn more . "The students- no longer docile listeners- are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher." The student has more ability to be creative and think for themselves. "presents the material to the students for their consideration and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own." The student learns more about real life situations and how to adapt. The student also is given better chance to understand and not just memorize. The cons of problem solving education is that without proper guidance to the path in the right direction unnecessary information can exhaust needed time and thought power. This teaching can also cause maybe overconfidence in the student in certain situations.

Raw Material Reflection

This essay made me think of several prison movies and television shows such as The Green Mile and Prison Break but the one that came to me the most is The Shawshank Redemption. The Shawshank Redemption comes to mind for a couple of reasons such as that they both base off of prison obviously. Another reason is that I believe both stories have a lot of hopeful and hopeless points that the audience feels. The last and biggest reason is that it made me think of the old man, Brooks, he got out of prison after living most of his life in jail and becomes very overwhelmed with the world and commits suicide. "I felt that i was the cause of their suffering. What followed was a type of silence that only the mental disorganized can recognize." I believe this quote shows a similarity to the way I believe Brooks probably felt internally before he committed suicide. This essay mad me feel very sad because its mostly about the struggles of people who were not given the same childhoods as most people. The women were abused as children and that caused them to have different behaviors from what people with better backgrounds would have.  "I question the way Wright's Grandmother brutally beat him after he accidentally set her house on fire. The women look at me in amazement." "One of them describes the way her confidence had eroded after years of being called "fat house" by her stepfather." These women were treated very poorly and in turn acted out and that's what put them in prison. Most of them uneducated and young but years in prison made them more focused in terms of their future which is a hopeful part. "Many of the women in the college program are very smart; a few are truly brilliant. One of our math instructors, a retired IBM executive, used to say to me every week as we left the prison that some of the students in his Introduction to Algebra class could be CEO's of a Fortune 500 company. (We both know, of course, that these women will probably not even get entry-level positions in such companies once they check the "yes" box under the criminal record questions.)" This quote shows a very large level of hopelessness for these inmates. No matter how hard these women can work they may not even be able to get a good job. These women's spirit is a big part of the hope in this story though and which keeps it together.

Essay Reflection

I overall liked my paper because I believe I was really able to show how I feel about language and how I branched off with writing. I'm not the happiest with my work though I felt very worried when I heard the topic of the essay because I don't remember anything from when I first started to learn to write or read so I didn't know how to start my essay. I believe I could have taken more time to look over my grammar. I believe it was a pretty clear assignment, it was just a hard one to think of a early personal story that you would like to share. My writing process is I wait almost as long as possible the day before its due to start writing my essay and I don't stop because usually I get a good flow of writing and it helps to do it all fast. My process worked in high school I'm not sure about college yet. Reading a classmates peer review helped me get some ideas to edit into my essay actually that I used. I also fixed a lot of formatting stuff because of the peer review.

Reading To Write

I believe that King is right to tell people that if they want to be a great writer their time would be better spent reading than watching television. "Reading takes time and the glass teat takes too much of it" Although a picture is worth a thousand words i believe that a book gives much better information and obviously is better for a writer to take from than watching a screen. There are things a writer can learn from television though. There are many television shows and movies that can give many similarities to aspects of a book which can be picked up by a writer and converted into literary devices. Most books even become movies or television shows and many elements can be seen if looked at carefully.