The "Banking" Concept of Education

The “Banking” concept of education is, as I have interpreted, sit down, be quiet, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know. Students go to class, listen to their instructor for an hour, and they’re on to the next “teacher,” someone to fill them up with knowledge that they do not quite understand. But somehow it’s okay because they know all the information they need to know to do well on next week’s exam. What about life?

I mean, our goal as human beings is ultimately to succeed at life and be happy, right? Whether that means making six figures, having a Mercedes-Benz and a big house or becoming a grade school teacher because you just love kids, we all aim to be happy. And while we are taught that if you do well in school, you will succeed, I cannot count how many times people have told me, “once I got to the workforce, they told me to forget everything I learned, it’s no use here.” We are taught to take exams, to spit back information by bubbling in fifty little circles on a piece of paper. But we as people do not just walk around regurgitating information we learned for a test. Rather, we apply, we adapt, we are constantly taking in information from our environment and we use that information to affect that environment. It’s a lot different than just filling out a scantron.

In my time spent here at the University of Florida, I have got to say that my most interesting classes, and the ones I learned the most from, have been the ones where I have had my hands in the curriculum: my labs. To this day I can take a random person, gather information about them, perform some baseline exercise tests, and design and administer a workout plan for them, because in my Exercise Prescription class, we spent hours doing hands-on simulations, experience that prepared me for real life situations, not a test. Until our professors and instructors start preparing us accordingly, life will be our best teacher.