Surveillance-capitalist digital tools function like Freire’s banking method of education

Evidence

Freire (1997) famously demonstrated how traditional forms of education often play a key role in this dehumanizing process by leveraging what he called the “banking method of education,” where students learn to passively accept the knowledge of their oppressors rather than to critically engage the world on their own terms. What I’d like to offer here is that digital technology, like Freire’s conception of education, is never neutral, and likewise, despite its reputation for extending opportunities for intellectual development, can also work in discreet but powerful ways to foreclose critical thinking. In its current, surveillance capitalist form, many of our everyday digital technologies share features with the “banking method of education,” in that they are designed to make users passively accept their exploitative influence in their lives as an unchangeable given. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 521

Categorization

• SEED: Strong essay angle: applying Freire’s banking-method critique to everyday digital platforms as a way to name their pedagogical effect on users.
• XREF: Ties the author’s Freirean framework to Zuboff, with a parallel to Ellul’s technique and Marcuse’s one-dimensional man on docile adaptation. — connects to: Foucault’s panopticon parallels Freire’s banking concept of education — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 407; Surveillance-capitalism theory understates what digital platforms actually do — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 905; Reform legislation citing Freire reduced his ideas to catchphrases — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 937 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Surveillance-capitalism theory understates what digital platforms actually do #complicates (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 905
• Mindful bidirectional attention produces the critical consciousness Freire described. #qualifies (0.80)
• Reform legislation citing Freire reduced his ideas to catchphrases #qualifies (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 937
• His revolutionary class critique is stripped from watered-down versions of Freire #exemplifies (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1409