Resolved:We should move all education standards to be based on Freirean Pedagogy.

1st point: You didn't address the time issue at all. If there were to be about 25-30 students, how would any individual student learn at all? A discussion takes time and depth, which an hour class does not have. The teacher must split the discussion equally among students, or the teaching process would become extremely unfair, putting some students with a major advantage over others. The banking system also allows discussions, only outside of class where it doesn't interfere with learning. Please respond to this point. 2nd point: I assume that this article is extremely old (and it is, at 1970) and is thus not credible. That may have been what education was like then, but it is definitely not now. It says: "The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. "Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem. " The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of "capital" in the affirmation "the capital of Para is Belem," that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil. Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teachers. " This is most definitely false. Most classes you are REQUIRED to go in-depth, and understand the concepts to succeed. Say if you were in second grade and learning 4*4. .. only knowing that will not help you on the test. You have to understand multiplication to pass. To even go on to capitals, most education systems would go over what a capital actually is before going on to it. Most AP classes are described as "More than the regular class, will go more IN-DEPTH and will proceed faster. " Do you think somebody could learn how to give proofs in geometry without learning the concept first? Not likely. Our education system today is most likely more in-depth than those of 1970. Understanding concepts most definitely does not make the students cattle, and also makes them independent thinkers. Your article from the Huffington Post has a few problems as well. While it does prove there is no class for critical thinking, it says that the teachers very much do encourage it. The only reason it isn't taught is only because there is too much information to be taught in core classes. They say that critical thinking isn't used because "It is a rare high-school graduate who can pinpoint 20 different kinds of fallacies in a line of argumentation while reading or listening; who knows how to distinguish between fact and opinion, objective account and specious polemic; who can tell the difference between value judgments, explanatory theories, and metaphysical claims, and knows how these three kinds of statement can or cannot be proven or disproven; who can argue both sides of a question, anticipate objections, and rebut them; and who can undermine arguments in various ways. " If freirean pedagogy is taught, who's to say they could do this as well? All of this is vocabulary, (also debate vocab, which is also a class taught in the same way and encourages critical thinking). If somebody took debate or a high english/literature class, they would also learn critical thinking. In fact, critical thinking is one of the main skills you develop in debate. Critical thinking is encouraged and developed by students in the banking process from near necessity. The time frame for freirean is completely outrageous, and would destroy individual learning in the process.