Banking education substitutes trivial content for critical engagement with lived reality.

Evidence

The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger gave green grass to the rabbit. The “humanism” of the banking approach masks the effort to turn women and men into automatons—the very negation of their ontological vocation to be more fully human. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 213

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘Roger gave green grass to the rabbit’ example is a memorable, quotable illustration of trivia-as-banking-education.
• SEED: Essay angle: inventory the ‘Roger and the rabbit’ trivia in the reader’s own field — the canonical content that masks the absence of critical engagement.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberal school reforms operate as Freirean banking education — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 943