Solorzano 1

Jazira Solorzano

[Link]

English 1 + 28

16. Sept .2024

Students are human and need to develop critical thinking

Teachers and students seem to already know that teachers are the people that we just listen too

since they are the teacher and students are just supposed to come and shut up and listen. This can really

block out creative and transformative ideas and because it's a really repetitive system of the teacher giving

information and then the student would have to take the information without a problem and just follow

what the teacher wanted in the book says”meekly”. Change should happen to be able to create more

creatives and expand people's critical thinking. As well as not let students hide away their opinions about

certain things to teach them to cope with others ideas while still believing in their own.

Students need to develop critical thinking skills cause if you teach students to only follow with

what you say which is from the textbook can create students to just have a mind set of im just gonna

follow what someone tells me even though i don’t actually like the what is happening but i was taught to

just go along with whatever someone who seems to more than me or authority than me i should just go

with it. When that's not how the world works you need to be able to do things to be able to develop on

your own “ The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the

critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that

world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to

adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.”(Freire 73). Teachers

using the system of “ banking education to minimize or annul the students' creative power and to

stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world

re-vealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their "humani-tarianism" to preserve a profitable

situation. Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in education which stimulates the

critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality but always seeks out the ties which link
 Solorzano 2

one point to another and one problem to another.” (Freire 73). Students need to learn these things or else

they can be very behind on how they develop into adults and it can cause many to have a very old mindset

when the rest of the world is developing so fast. It can really make the student now a young adult

experience life much harder. Many believe that young adults are lazy or incompetent and so they try to

change their mentality when they are young in hopes to create more young people with mind like them

and not “ lazy and incompetent “ in Friere he states “The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the

healthy society, which must therefore adjust these "incompetent and lazy" folk to its own patterns by

changing their mentality. These marginals need to be "integrated," "incorporated" into the healthy society

that they have "forsaken.” ( Freire 74) . This mindset can really make the younger generation seem very

oppressed in a way that they can't be themselves and can't be creative and won't be able to properly

function in society.

Also teachers need to remember students are also human with their own thoughts “The

"humanism" of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons—the very

negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human.”( Freire74). Using the banking system

many realize when they are out and actually experiencing things for the first time that they weren't taught

to deal with and realize they can become fully human without learning the proper learning of how to cope

with these experiences “Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are

innumerable well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to

dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality. But, sooner

or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against their domestication and

the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through existential experience that their present

way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human.”(Freire 75). They are human and

need to be able to think for themselves and be able to be conscious of our own decisions.

As we all know we were taught from a very young age to not really start “argument” or

“conflict” with one another as to not anger or sadden our peers but if we keep being restricted like this we

tend to nor be able to cope with this whole safety in the classroom concept can really b damaging. In a
 Solorzano 3

sense that we won't be able to defend ourselves in the real world “ Belief systems that we had been

comfortable with for all eighteen or more years of our lives were being contested. And yet we were being

told that we should accept that this spirit of contestation and challenge should take place in a placid

environment, where the rivers of our being should remain calm and no one should make waves.”( hook

85). Students also tend to be scared of not being liked and rather want to be like then be able to truly

express themselves and eliminate them to create freedom in themselves “At times it was evident that

students wanted to be liked by their peers more than they wanted to learn. These at-titudes trivialize and

undermine democratic education as the practice of freedom.”(hooks 88).

From reading and annotating bell hook teaching critical thinking and Freire pedagogy of the

oppressed i can say that students are human and should be taught critical thinking skills and not just

taught to sit thor and nothing but be a deposit to just be filed with information and can teach others to

develop more in a human and be to function properly in society. The authors believe students should be

able to have freedom and develop further into oneself. As we see in today's society most of the teachers

are now realizing that hey this works and the students are starting to come out of their shells more with

this freedom.
 Solorzano 4

Works cited

Freire, Paulo. “Chapter 2” [excerpt]. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 50th anniversary edition. New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. 71-80.

hooks, bell. “Conflict”. Teaching Critical Thinking. New York: Routledge, 2010. 85-90.