Crotts 1

Courtney Crotts

Professor Bullington

English 111

29 November 2018

Comparing Similarities and Differences

‘The Banking Concept of Education’ by Paulo Freire has many similarities and

differences to ‘The Achievement of Desire’ by Adrienne Rich. The most important concept

though, being that both articles make the same main point of education being an important factor

in shaping a students’ life.

Throughout ‘The Achievement of Desire’, the author shows us how the environment a

student endures can shape their success later in life. Rich tells us about a boy named Richard

Rodriguez who obtained his Ph.D. and became a successful writer with several published essays

and books. The author states, “His essays have been published in Saturday Review, The

American Scholar, Change, and elsewhere He now lives in San Francisco and works as a

lecturer, educational consultant, and freelance writer. He has several published books” (Rich).

Rodriguez became successful with hard work. The author depicts how it is difficult to balance

education and life while in a working-class family. Despite having teachers who strived for his

success and attending a great school, made clear when the author says, “I’d admit, for one thing,

that I went to an excellent grammar school. (My earliest teachers, the nuns, made my success

their ambition)”, his success was mainly a factor of him being an exceptional student and

working hard. The entire message being portrayed in ‘The Achievement of Desire’ is that

education is not just about learning and how that shapes a person's life, but how their educational
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environment helps with the growth of that student. The author wants you to realize that life itself

is also an education and that it affects you as a person.

On the other hand, in ‘The Banking Concept of Education’, the author makes it clear that

the style of teaching that an educator uses will affect the student. Freire tells us about how a

teacher uses a style of teaching that is about a student memorizing and reiterating information

rather than learning when he says, “Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to

memorize mechanically the narrated content”(Freire) and “Instead of communicating, the teacher

issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and

repeat”. This shows us how that style of teaching affects the student's life by molding them into

someone who doesn’t think for their self and follows the crowd. This is made clear when he

says, “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”. The

article shows us how the teachers' tendency to not communicate with the students and to just

spout information for the students to memorize causes the students to become robots in a way.

Later in life, they become assimilated and their creativity is minimalized.

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Each article has a strong take on education. They are similar because the main point

behind each article is that your educational environment and how you are taught affects who you

become later in life. This point is also made in a journal article where it says:

We propose that education gives people access to nonalienated paid work and economic

resources that increase the sense of personal control, and that education gives people

access to stable social relationships, especially marriage, that increase social support.

Through these processes, we hypothesize, education affects subjective quality of life

(Ross and Willigen.).

All the articles tie success to education in some shape or form. They are different because ‘The

Achievement of Desire’ talks about one's environment and how that affects you, and ‘The

Banking Concept of Education’ talks more about how you are taught and how that shapes you

into the person you become. Another point is made in a journal article about education affecting

you when it says, “Education socializes people into the norms and values of society, thereby

comprising a key component of culture (Stevens 2008)” quoted in ( Schwadel). It becomes clear

that education has a direct correlation with success and personality.

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Works Cited

Freire, Paulo. “The “Banking” Concept of Education.”

https://clev.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/pid-1478301-dt-content-rid-

8580121_1/courses/46408/freire_banking_concept.pdf

Rich, Adrienne. “The Achievement of Desire.” https://clev.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/pid-

1478301-dt-content-rid-8580122_1/courses/46408/Rodriguez%20text.pdf

Ross, Catherine E., and Van Willigen Marieke. "Education and the Subjective Quality of

Life." Journal of health and social behavior 38.3 (1997): 275-97. ProQuest. 4 Dec. 2018 .

Schwadel, P. (2011). The effects of education on americans’ religious practices, beliefs, and

affiliations. Review of Religious Research, 53(2), 161-182.

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13644-011-0007-4