In this essay, you will be learning to work with two primary sources. Everyone must use Paulo Freire’s “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education” and Michael Moore’s “Idiot Nation,” These texts share a number of common concerns—such as the Canon, the student/teacher dynamic, educational funding, issues of control in the classroom, the effects of education on students and society, and many more—but each author takes an individual perspective on those shared issues and makes a different argument. How do these ideas fit in with Freire’s? How does each author’s perspective agree with, build on, differ, or argue against another’s?
Length: 1200-1500 words (with word count at the end!)
Full Rough Draft Due & MINI Conferences: Thursday, June 6, 2024 (bring 2 copies!)
Final Draft Due: Thursday, June 13, 2024 (hard copy AND emailed as .docx attachment)
Format: Times New Roman, 12 point. Double spaced. One inch margins. APA citation format. Full Header on the first page. Last name and page number at the top right corner of every page.
For this essay, the skill set that you are learning is to control two sources equally, making and developing connections between them. To do this, you will be discussing how one other text from the unit (that you choose) creates a dialogue with the ideas in Freire’s “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” In other words, this is somewhat similar to a “compare and contrast” essay that you might be familiar with, but with more depth: instead of just a simple compare and contrast (such as “this author says this, but the other author says that”), you will be going deeper into what ideas the authors share, how these ideas differ, how they might influence one another, and/or whether the ideas build on each other.
A good way to think of it is to put the two authors in conversation with each other about the theories and practice of education. While these authors are talking about issues within education, they aren’t making identical arguments–instead, they are focusing on specific ideas that are of particular interest to them. Your task is to discuss how these authors’ ideas compare to one another in terms of what they say about education. A good way to develop an argument is to start by identifying a concern that your chosen author shares with Freire (things like: education as an act of oppression, the student/teacher dynamic, education through dialogue, the uneven distribution of power in the classroom, curriculum as a form of control, etc. There are a few more listed at the top of this page, and we will be discussing many more in the coming weeks in our conversations about the texts).
Basing your analysis in their texts, some questions you might ask yourself in order to put the two authors into conversation are: In what way is your chosen text’s author building on or departing from the thoughts of Freire? (To be clear, Freire’s text pre-dates all of them except Achebe.) How do the two authors take different perspectives on the shared concern, and what influences that difference? Where is the common ground? Where do they depart from one another? How would they suggest moving forward?
