However, there were some problems or situations that were very hard to change with relying only on one’s faith. Some traditional systems had been carried on by hundreds or even thousands of years. The collective examination in China was one of the examples. All the students were required to take this magnified and important exam at once in order to advance to a higher school. For example, it’s mandatory to take a collective exam for advancing from middle school to high school. Test scores would be used to decide which the school the students would go to. The higher the scores, the better schools the students ended up with. Besides that, all schools would be ranked depending on how well its students did in the examination. As a result, Mr. Chen emphasized the importance of the collective examination. One month before the end of my third summer in middle school, I received a call from Mr. Chen in the morning. “Jiawen, I would like to inform you all of our class’ students will need to go to school earlier.” Said Mr. Chen, “we only have eight months left to the collective examination; it’s time to work on the preparation.” After I hanged up the call, I went to my bedroom, put all textbooks into a bag pack by order involuntarily; I should say I was afraid and powerless to refuse the order from my teacher. In my mind, Mr. Chen was always speaking in angry, commanding and solemn tones. Even though Mr. Chen spent most of his time on the students in the class, it was impossible to overcome the alienation between the students and the teacher. The alienation might be developed year by year in our tradition banking classroom, where a one-way monologue of teacher-talk and silences students. “Dialog” was never happening between us; and I dreaded the interview with him. In the essay of The Banking Concept of education; Paulo Freire used the word alienation to express the relationship between teachers and students nowadays. This alienation would obstruct the students to have and see their own thoughts in the study. Consequently, learning becomes teachers’ sole property.
After eight months, everybody had struggled with a table of text books, which included Chinese, English, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and political science. During that period, every student was living under a heavy frame of mind. We spent at least six hour to finish all the homework which was given by teacher everyday. Especially the last week from the date of collective examination, Mr. Chen gave us ten pages of political science practices daily. He claimed: “According to my experience, the questions on the collective examination will be similar to my study guide. Once your can find out all the answers of the samples from the book and memorize them up, you will be correct on most of the questions.” After Mr. Chen finished his lecture on the board, he past out a twenty pages study guide, we were requested to cram them up within one week. On the following days, I always performed my duties faithfully--reciting every single word from the study guide and the text book. “The autocratic monarchy in China was overthrown by The 1911 Revolution; the political system reform must be suitable for the economy…” I just read and learned these large amounts of statements by rote without understanding. In my mind, education was not an act of cognition any more; it was just “an act of depositing, in which the students are depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (p. 260). Freire points out that this “banking” concept of education is an instrument of oppression. In the “banking” concept, students are only some empty vessels to be filled with facts, or sponges to be saturated with official information, or vacant bank accounts to be filled with deposits from the required syllabus. Those students who have domesticated by the “banking” concept of education will be unable to pass any of the real ordeals.
Subsequent to the cramming of force-feeding, I was pleased with my score on the collective examination; especially on the political science, 95% of my answers were right. I received so much praise from Mr. Chen and my parents. I was completely relaxed from oppressions as the result of examination came out. No more reciting liked a recorder, and no more inhibition of creative thought. However, I realized that I learned nothing from the past eight months immediately. One month after I took the collective examination, Mr. Chan dispatched three students including me to attend a political competition on behalf of our school. But we did not achieve and fulfill the task, we lost the game. We knew nothing about political science in actual fact. I couldn’t memorize anything from review guide and the textbook any more. I became conscious that “for apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, men cannot be truly human” (p. 260). Freire posits a process of education centering the concept of “praxis”, an educational process which encourages the learner to involve a constant unveiling of reality. By contrast, deposits of knowledge are made into students’ receptacles in the traditional banking education. In such education, knowledge is treated as giving and accepting a gift. People who were considered to know everything will give their knowledge as a gift to the people who they consider to know nothing. This is an extremely uncoordinated relation. Knowledge should not be treated as a gift; it is a common and sharable object. Therefore, teachers and students should co-operate in a dialogue that seeks to humanize and liberate. To achieve the liberated concept of education, dialogical instruction is the most essential method needs to be adopted. Teacher and students will become jointly responsible for a process of inquiry through dialogues; students are no longer docile listeners or objects of assistance. Rather, they are critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teachers.
I look upon myself as an uncompleted being; I am striving to become conscious of my incompletion and my attempt to be more fully human. Man’s ontological vocation is to be a subject who acts upon and transforms his world, and in so doing moves towards ever new possibilities of fuller and richer life individually and collectively. To be aware of my own ontological vocations, I am required to be brave in unveiling the structure of domination and oppression, so that I could be able to return to the proper path after going astray from the true essence of knowledge.
