Banked!

One time I felt banked in my educational experience was in my American Government I took my senior year of High School.  This class was taught over IDL (inter distance learning) and the teacher had some interesting philosophies.  He was of the opinion that if you showed up to his class even if you slept through it you would retain enough information to pass the class.  In this class there was very little homework assigned.  The only means for a grade were tests and quizzes where all you needed to do was reproduce memorized facts.  We spent little to no time learning about concepts, or how to apply them to our lives.  Our text was also outdated, so the facts we were supposed to reproduce were no longer even accurate. 

I think I felt banked in this class because I wasn’t challenged to apply concepts to my life.  I was asked to reproduce facts, but I never made a connection between the facts and how they applied to my life.  Though I was able to recall information for tests and quizzes, I no longer retain that information.  However, if I had been challenged to apply concepts to my life and or forced to evaluate some of my previous views or thought processes, the class would have shaped me into a better developed person.  Therefore, I am of the opinion that education should be more than just a simple replication of facts.  It should be a process that challenges students’ ways of thinking, and forces them to think about how what they’re learning applies to their lives.