Banking Concept

"This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to students extends only as far as receiving, filling, and storing the deposits."

I think this quote symbolizes Freire's negative opinion of the education system. He feels that teachers are too authoritative, and that the knowledge they give to their students is controlled by the elites to subject them to their beliefs.

"The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order, and social peace (that is, the peace of the elite)."

I'd agree that what I learned in school is Euro-centric, but as for the material I was taught being used to control me, I disagree. I think that Freire brought up a good point that teachers should not consider themselves all knowing, and not take questions from their students or admit when they are wrong. While there are teachers like this, I think Freire overgeneralizes the system of education. A lot of my teachers in the past have stimulated my interest in what they were teaching; it made me think critically about the material like Freire says should be a part of good education.

Overall, I think that Freire is just ranting about a lot of random things he sees wrong in the educational system. He never really even gave a good definition of the banking-concepts or the problem-solving concept methods of teaching. While he brought up some good ideas, he never really made much of any kind of point.

Refering to your own writing with in a paper

"This writer is consistenly and framatically conscious of herself, forming something to say out of what has been said and out of what she has been saying in the act of writing this paper"

I found this to be the most crutial point Bartholomae had to make on 'good' writing. When reading the essay he is refering to, I found it dramatically different than the previous one's. It had a complete a sense of flow that the others seemed to lack. Some showed this at times, but none through out like this one. I like how it referenced itself, none of the other did that.

I felt this essay had flow because it went through a process of thought. It didn't just say what creativity was, it explored what it is, and gave different view points before making any sort of definition of creativity.

I learned a great deal on writing with a 'voice' from reading this essay. I could see how my writing would improve by useing similar techniques to this essay. I reference myself at times, but I still feel it is too systematic at times.

Academic Writing as Bullshit

"I was just bullshiting"

I can't count home many times I've said this about a paper or an answer to a test I just took. However, what does this mean, and was I really bullshiting? I think of bullshiting in academea as writing that is used to fill up space in order to try and get a good grade. I do this when I'm not sure of were to go with an idea in a paper, or trying to get partial credit on a writing question on a test in other classes.

What does this constitute. Basically throwing vocab words and definitions out, pure memorized things, to make it sound like I know what I'm talking about. Quotations of lines from a book can take up a lot of space. You can then explain what the quote means and give and example of the quote. This can take up half to and entire paragraph at times. Totally bullshited information that has little substance but to prove and opinion.

This quote explains what I mean by bullshited information in a paper, "So in your paper, you say Moby-Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland. . . . If you can regularly come up with lunatic interpretations of simple stories,...."

It's funny how ridiulous this sounds, but you could proable get a good grade on a paper if you argue your point correctly, even though the author of the book had no intention of Moby-Dick representing the Repbulic of Ireland.

Is all acedemic writing bullshit? No, but some definatily is. If acedemic writing is based on something with substance, say scientifically proved information, it has some backing; so it's not bullshit. But arguing things such that Moby-Dick reprsents the Repbulic of Ireland, bullshit.