Rhetorical Analysis of Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Freires purpose of Pedagogy of the Oppressed is to enlighten teachers and students of the
problem of banking education. Throughout the novel, Freire explicitly describes the problem of
oppressive education with direct examples. He also provides a resolution to the problem and
supports reasoning to his claim. Freire hopes to influence students and teachers to stop banking
education and to instead utilize problem posing education. This rhetorical analysis will discuss
how Freire effectively supports his claim that the banking education is oppressive and that
problem posing education can resolve the societal problem of education oppression.
In the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, education is described as oppressive.
Freire believes that education is a banking concept. In the banking concept of education, Freire
states that teacher-student relationships are suffering from the lack of meaning and purpose.
Banking education is an act of teachers depositing information into students. Students are seen as
ignorant, waiting to be filled with information by teachers who are portrayed as knowledgeable.
This of course is the ideology of oppressive education.
Teachers play the role of the depositor and teach students what they believe is knowledge.
Most of which are unimportant subjects, rather than subjects that relate to students, that
ultimately help students succeed. To prove his position on this, Freire states, Narrative
education is the sonority of words, not their transforming power (Freire, Page 57). Instead,
teachers just try to fill students with as much information as they can. Freire continues on
stating that The more completely he fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he is (Freire, Page
58). This of course, is what Freire finds wrong with banking education. Education has become
how much information students can memorize and repeat rather than the significance of the

information being taught. Freire states that teachers teach students to memorize, not to think,
and to just believe everything teachers say, instead of challenging them. In the banking concept
of education, it is teachers versus the students as the teacher presents himself to his students as
their necessary opposite, by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence,
(Freire, Page 58-59). The teachers consider themselves to be knowledgeable and therefore they
bestow the gift of knowledge to the ignorant students. However, Freire believes that students can
educate the teacher as well, The students alienated like the slave...accept their ignorance as
justifying the teachers existence- but unlike the slave, they never discover they educate the
teacher (Freire, Page 59). Even though teachers play the oppressive role in the banking concept,
Freire states that students do have the power to stop oppressive education.
Students are trained to just memorize and repeat what teachers lecture instead of
challenging and realizing the true significance of what the teacher is saying, therefore they are
not really learning. Instead, students just become like robots and machines who memorize
mechanically and repeat the narration of the teacher whether or not it is accurate. Freire states,
this is the banking concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students
extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits (Freire, Page 58). However,
Freire also states They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of
the things they store (Page 58). Even though banking education is oppressive to students,
students do have the opportunity to master knowledge by challenging, problem posing, and
critical thinking. Freire believes that Knowledge emerges only through invention and
reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world,
with the world, and with each other (Freire, Page 58.) Although it is the teachers role to

educate students, students decide whether or not they actually understand and utilize what they
learn in school.
Freire heavily states his belief that problem-posing education is the resolution to the
oppressive education of the banking concept. According to Freire, banking education
anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, whereas the problem-posing method does not
dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student He is always cognitive (Page 68). With
problem-posing education, teachers and students work together, simultaneously teachers and
students, not teachers versus the students due to oppression by the teachers. Students, they
educate the teacher, by challenging what the teacher is teaching, instead of blindly following
exactly what the teacher says. With problem- posing education the teacher does not just fill the
students with worthless information while students just memorize the information without
critically analyzing it. Instead, the teacher presents the material to the students for their
consideration, and reconsiders his earlier considerations as the students express their own
(Freire, Page 64). Problem-posing education is what Freire believes will stop the banking
education when students and teachers work together to teach, learn, and grow together. In order
for education oppression to end his efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in
critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization to achieve this, he must be a partner of
the students in his relations with him. (Freire, Page 59).
In short, Freire thinks that only when teachers and students begin to work together as
critical co-investigators (Freire, Page 68), to challenge new and important topics, that the
oppressive education system can be fixed. Freire effectively establishes his purpose, and utilizes
the audience, persona, and context to support his argument.