Imagine a world where the
humans are not mechanized rather humanized. Once as a child, I was able to
answer different kinds of questions in different ways, Suddenly, I was admitted
to school. I was told by my parents, as you go to school you will learn lots of
stuff. You have to work hard to learn and respect your teacher. Follow the rules
and regulations as you’re told. So it is a place for learning. As you learn lots
of stuff you will be able to find a good job and you will be having a happy life
ever after. I supposed things which were told to me was right, well as I grew
up. I successfully passed the national examination for entering the university,
and managed to join the university and graduated with B.A Honors. That led me to
pursue a master’s degree in teacher education from the Aga Khan
University-Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED).
On the first days of the M.Ed. program, we were assigned an assignment to read
an article on ‘how we think’ followed by a set of guiding questions. As I was
reading, I was looking to find answers for the guiding questions. I went to my
teacher and informed her that I had found answers for some of the questions but
not others. She explained that you found only those answers which were clearly
outlined, but you were not able to get the answers which were stretched
throughout the chapter. I realized how mechanized I was, because I could only
pick and write those answered directly given. The reason for such a mechanized
thinking could be the way I have been schooled. For instance, in our schools we
are told that you can find the answer for question 4 in page 15, line 8-13 and I
have subscribed to that sort of thinking so much so that I could not think
otherwise.
On the other hand, Dewey (1933) said, that “no one can tell another person in
any definite way how he should think” and he also relates that to how he ought
to breathe or to have his blood circulated. This is really contradicting with
what we see in our current world especially in the education systems. Because we
are made to think in a particular way, Paulo freire states that, the teacher
teaches and the students are thought, and the teacher knows everything and the
students knows nothing, and he also strongly emphasize on the teachers chooses
the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt it;
especially if we take history as in our context as an example, we are asked to
of the world as presented to us and not to ask question about its rightness or
otherwise. As a result when we grow up we already developed some kind of
perception about the specific country, without it being necessary right or
authentic. As Paulo Freire mentions that” The "humanism" of the banking approach
masks the effort to turn men into automatons-
To summarize this, as in my understanding this is an example of mechanization of
the Students mind. Why the education system and teachers do that? Paulo freire
says that, the capability of banking education to minimize or annul the
students’ creative power and to stimulate their credulity serves the interests
of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor to see it
transformed. The oppressors use their "humanitarianism" to preserve a profitable
situation. Keeping that in mind as an educationalist we need to try to transform
the way we teach, from mechanizing it to humanizing it, we do need to think
about the ability and capabilities that a child possess all we have to do is to
build up on those and develop them according to their abilities.