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Banking Concept

Many instances throughout a person’s life can be thought of as oppressive.   Among them is church.   The church can easily be compared to the educational process in Paulo Freire’s banking concept.   Freire states, “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” (15).   In every church there is a leader.   This person can be called a pastor, father, or preacher, among other names, depending on the specific religion.   In a church, there is also a congregation which is made up of many people.   The leader of the church represents the teacher (depositor), and the congregation represents the students (depositories.)   Every Sunday, the head of the church stands before the congregation with a sermon he has prepared for them.   He fills the congregation with his knowledge on various readings of The Bible and other religious ideas.  
From birth, a child is shoved into his or her parents’ beliefs and one of the biggest of these is in the area of religion.   My parents chose to bring me up in the Methodist faith.   I have been forced to sit and listen to our preacher every Sunday for as long as I can remember.   Our church has gone through several preachers in my 18 years of attendance.   Most of them bored me; very few did I find the slightest bit interesting.   This narrative effect upholds Freire’s traditional pedagogy.   No matter what my opinion of them was, I still had to listen.   Children are unable to form their own opinions because the faith that their parents brought them into is all that is known.   Their parents have raised them to believe what their pastor says is what must be right.   The congregation sits before the head of the church and listens to what he avows as gospel.   He is thought of as more knowledgeable than the body of the church.   I believe no matter what religion a person is they will always be oppressed.   The church a person belongs to does not...