As educators, the need to always further our own education is unquestionably important. In doing so, I have recently had the pleasure of reading Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s Pedogogy of the Oppressed. In it, Freire outlines his ideas and plans for mending disconnections that exist between traditional models of education and those students/people who are oppressed and marginalized by such models. In simple terms, he discounts the “Banking System” of education where generally speaking, educators are tasked with pouring the information they know into the minds of the students sitting in front of them.
To his point, I am pleased to report that an education at The New School Montessori contains no such “Banking System.” It is bottom up, not top down. We look to empower children so that they can support one another and be collectively involved in successfully tackling the challenges before them. It is our belief that this is the best way to prepare our children for the future.
To learn more about the benefits our educational model presents, read The Answer Sheet.