New here and just discovered this website.  Could you help me with this essay.  I need to know if it is understood adequately, and follows a logical sequence, and any other general comments would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Paulo Freire, in his “Problem Posing Education”, provides a framework for understanding how people make meaning in their lives.  Freire defines meaning making with two different concepts: the banking concept of eeducation, which is the student listening and regurgitating information from the teacher and the problem posing concept of education, which encourages a dialogic relationship between the teacher and student.  Freire’s “Problem Posing Education is reflected in Sherman Alexie’s “The Joy of Reading and Writing”.  Freire’s ideas about the oppression that is caused by the banking concept of education and the greater learning and improved relationships that result from the problem-posing concept of education are reflected in Alexie’s writing.

Alexie submits to the oppression of the banking concept of education over the course of his narrative.  When Freire states, “The more completely they [students] accept the passive role on them, they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the reality deposited in them” (Freire 258), he means that when students accept the banking concept of education, students have a distorted way of thinking because they just absorb the teacher’s information and feel need not to apply that information.  During Alexie’s childhood, he noticed that Native Americans had fallen into the abyss of stereotype, and accepting those stereotypes as fact.  This describes the banking concept of education because the Native American’s are accepting the oppression, accepting the world from the viewpoint of the oppressors, and losing control of their own lives.

When Alexie was beginning to learn to read, he was relegated to use the banking concept of education.  When Alexie states that a, “paragraph was a fence that held words” (Alexie 1), he meant that he was developing a structure for reading, a type of memorization that comes with the banking concept of education.  However, when self-teaching, the banking concept of education is the only way to learn because there is nobody else to have dialogue with: you are both the teacher and the pupil.  As a result of teaching himself to read, Alexie is “simply an oddity” because most Native American children have not completed such a monumental feat.

The banking concept of education has contributed to the impoverished lives of Alexie’s Native American community.  When Freire states about the banking concept of education, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire 257), he means that the teacher is dumping information into the students heads, and the students are just regurgitating that information back to the teacher.  The treatment of the Native American’s by the United States government can be considered a similar relationship.  The United States government, as the oppressor, levies taxes and unjust laws toward the Native American’s without explanation, and the Native American’s, as the oppressed, have no choice but to follow, or regurgitate, these laws that the United States government has set, which has severely impacted the lives on Alexie’s reservations.  Alexie’s family was poor and lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear, and government surplus food, and so they had been forced to rely mainly on the oppressor to survive.  The way the United States government treat Native American’s also contributes to them solely being a depository because the Native American’s have no power to fight back the oppression.   

The problem-posing concept of education is what Alexie uses to communicate with the Native American children to help turn around their lives.  According to Freire, problem-posing education “epitomizes the consciousness” (Freire 263).  Freire means that having a dialogic relationship between teacher and student enriches the mind, and increases meaning making. Since Alexie has become an author, he is “epitomizing the consciousness” with his works and speeches because he is trying to change lives by enriching minds and influencing children to improve their lives. Alexie is doing his part to participate in “epitomizing the consciousness” when he teaches creative writing, which is logical because Alexie has backgrounds in a wide variety of texts from his childhood. When Alexie states, “They look at me with bright eyes and arrogant wonder.  They are trying to save their lives” (Alexie 2), he shows that these Native American students are thinkers because they are not submitting to the stereotypes that prevail in their everyday life. 

The problem-posing concept of education encourages a dialogic relationship when it comes to learning.  Alexie learns how to read because of the dialogic relationship he had with his father.  When Alexie states, “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well” (Alexie 1), Alexie shows that he has adapted many of his tendencies from his father and is making meaning, not only for himself, but for the numerous Native American’s he speaks and writes about because Alexie has become a successful Native American.  Slowly, Alexie uses different teachers to try to make a dialogic meaning because Alexie is trying to understand the words in the text.  From Superman to Watergate, Alexie was able to find many teachers in these texts and be able to improve his reading skills from each author.

While speaking, Alexie urges Native American children to make something of themselves, to become a part of the problem-posing concept of education.  Alexie implores Native American children to not fail because it will lead to continuing stereotypes and degradation by the white people.  Alexie provides the tools to make Native American’s successful by reading, teaching children to write, and many other necessary tasks that will help the underprivileged children become more successful in life.  Alexie does not want these children to regurgitate the same information of the past, or to go in the same downward spiral so many in past generations have because Alexie has experienced his own family take that route. Instead, Alexie wants education and a dialogical relationship with the author while reading because Alexie feels that the problem-posing concept of education is the best way to learn.  Though there are possible consequences to learning to read such as being an outsider in the Native American community, when Freire states that, “Education is the practice of freedom” (Freire 263), it validates Alexie’s point that books can save the Native American’s from their impoverished life and to eventually improve not only themselves, but the entire Native American race in the United States

In conclusion, Freire’s “Problem Posing Education” is reflected in Alexie’s “The Joy of Reading and Writing”.    According to Freire, meaning making is defined with two different concepts: the banking concept of education and the problem-posing concept of education.  Paulo Freire’s concepts of meaning making help provide a framework for understanding how people make meaning for their lives.