Reflection 2

Reflected on the articles: Freire's Banking on Education and  Anti- intellectualism by Yetkin Işık

-ON THE TOPICS OF BANKING OF EDUCATION AND ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM-

In this paper, I will mention some school observations that I did in internship and my own experiences in my education life by referring to the banking of education and anti- intellectualism issues.

First of all, by looking at the first article which is from Freire’s book: The Pedagogy of Oppressed (1970), I want to state that the topic was very familiar to me. While I was reading the article, I always nodded my head by confirming what it says but also I must accept that till I read it, I had never thought that the education problem covered there is something related with modern global communist, materialistic world. What I mean is that: although I know very well that education is based on memorizing without getting meaning, I had never thought that this consequently/ in turn provide benefit for oppressors who execute the world, who skim cream/gold off from our middle/ lower class efforts in this global world. I find it very disappointing.

When I look at my own education years, from the very beginning of my school career, from the primary school to the college, I can easily say that I always had to memorize something as every student does in our country. I say ‘every student’ so sharply and conclusively because I certainly know that in our education system, it is impossible for a person to go on his education, to pass his courses, to get approval from the universities, briefly to be successful without memorizing. Giving example, we memorized a lot of formulas in our Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology courses. We memorized lots of rules, stuff, dates in our History, Geography, Philosophy, and of course in our field courses (both in Anatolian Teacher Training High School and at METU). However, I can again easily say that I do not remember most of the things that we memorized in all those courses since unfortunately I did not attach meaning to them, and just memorized in the past.

Now, looking at the curriculum and the schools where I did my observation, I think that students have to memorize lots of things still. In METU Development Foundation High School, I can say that teachers are much more focused on student understanding the realities, facts, educational content rather than student memorizing. However, in high school, it is quite appear that students are still passing their courses by memorizing things. So, I think that actually, whichever the school is, students are somehow bound to memorize things. Since our education system wants us to take lots of exams which make us to memorize a lot of things from a lot of branches, I do not see it possible to resist memorizing. Besides, in our curriculum, we see that lots of contents are tried to be deposit in the students as the writer states. So, it will be highly true that both in the past and in the current Turkish education system, students have to memorize in order to go on their education, and this act is done without gaining meaning of the content. In addition to this, I forgot to state that our teachers were not like student-teachers in my past educational life. They were generally narrators. They were just giving lectures and we were just listening to them (frankly not listening but pretending to doing). Now, even in my college life, there are some instructors that do the same thing. It is not so hard to guess that I do not like those lessons as a student and they discourage me.  So, overall, we can say that the banking of education, the issue the writer states is absolutely dominant in Turkish education in terms of teaching to fill the students like receptacles by narrating the facts and sciences as if they were tales.

Secondly, when I regard of the second article written by Yetkin Işık, this time I want to tell that I was some kind of shocked when I read his sentences in the article. He was looking from a very different perspective to the anti- intellectualism issue in Turkey. Actually, this was the first time that I heard about even this “anti- intellectualism” word in my life. However, apart from hearing it for the first time, the writer’s point of view, arguments and examples to support these arguments made me astonished. For example: I always thought that our history was glorious because it was earned with blood and I was really boasting of this kind of expressions. Now I am questioning whether my own brain is limited to think as others want me to think like. This is an awkward situation and hard to accept, either.

Coming to the other things that made me mull over, for example, the writer said that Turkish people are reading specific novels/ books which are presenting to the anti- intellectualist world and evaluated “Da Vinci Code” and these kinds of Dan Brown books as “kültür endüstrisinin içeriksiz ve hazmı kolay ticari ürünleri” and “Şu Çılgın Türkler”, “Efendi” kinds of books as “kitlelerin öfke, romantizm, korku gibi duygularına seslenen veya ana hapsolmuş tüketim kültürünün tarih açlığını en zahmetsiz yoldan gideren”. I really love to read Dan Brown and I always kept saying that I was learning new scientific things when I am reading this guy. Also, in my high school, our Turkish Language and Expression teacher made us read “Şu Çılgın Türkler” because he was thinking that every nationalist should read that book. Now I am thinking what the right thing is or whether they were really a part of anti- intellectualism. I never thought that I was so close to this issue myself. Shocking.

Another argument that I want to mention is that the teacher start to behave as if they were the state/government itself after some work experience is state foundations/schools. I think this is the situation all over the country in all areas of government job. All people who work in government foundations tend to behave like a frightening, despot and dominant state figure. What I mean here is that people are looking after state’s interests much more than enough as the writer exemplifies by saying ‘Teachers are saying ssssssh here is school, a state building, so you cannot behave here like this’. I think this certainly restrict intellectualism because creativity, intellectual, critical thinking arouses in free environments rather than limited ones as buildings which are executed by strict state rules.

In the article, it is also stated that anti- intellectualism is also a consequence of globalization, modernization, consumption and individualism in our world. I absolutely agree with the writer at this point. In our world, we are focusing on earning our lives, more than enough money in the easiest way without much effort. Our perspective is just narrowing and it embraces money issue most of the time. So, we are reading personal development books, how to make money, how to be successful and brilliant books to achieve this goal. This, in turn, causes anti- intellectual but practical, pragmatic point of view in people, and of course in the field of education.

All in all, I again want to state that I really love the articles for this week. I learned what banking of education, narrator, depositor depositing, anti- intellectualism and lots of things. I certainly see that both banking of education and anti- intellectualism are seen in our teaching and learning environments. Although it is not so surprising to see that education is again used as tongs for meeting modern world needs of oppressors/ executives, still a person who reads these articles will go on to think deeply and will not be able to accept the irritating situation. I hope that we, as teachers or rather teacher- students who are continuing to learn, can play a broken ring in this chain and rescue the education from these pre- determined modern era games. Thanks.

I also want to share this photograph here. I saw it on one of my friends’ wall on Facebook, and directly thought that I should share it with you. J