Topic: The Banking Concept of Education
Order Description
Summary & Close Reading of Paulo Freire’s The Banking Concept of Education”
A very common type of writing you will produce in your academic career involves carefully reading and developing a summary of a given text. The ability to engage in close reading to identify salient arguments and represent them fairly is foundational to entering academic conversations as a competent and articulate participant. Summaries also serve an important role in helping other readers make sense of a difficult text. You might think of summary as the job of a tour guide: you are offering your readers a brief glimpse into another world.
As you learned from Greene and Lidinsky’s chapter, writing a summary involves a great deal of critical thinking and evaluation on the part of the writer. You must identify the author’s thesis (what Greene and Lidinsky call “the gist”), uncover how the key claims of that thesis are supported and developed, evaluate the conversational contexts of the author’s work, and, at all points, consider how your perspective affects your interpretation of the text.
For Essay #1, please write a summary of an excerpt from educational philosopher Paulo Freire’s famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed after working with peers in class discussion to understand this difficult text. Your audience will be educated peers who have read Freire’s essay but who need your assistance understanding its “gist” and supporting arguments.
Your summary essay should include those elements Greene and Lidinsky recommend:
the context of Freire’s argument
a clear statement of what you feel to be “the gist” of Freire’s argument
a description of the key claims of the text
relevant examples (direct quotations or paraphrases) taken from the text to support your interpretation
As no summary is neutral, you will want to weave an evaluative thread throughout your summary that suggests to the reader your judgment of the value of Freire’s argument to your understanding of multiculturalism, education, freedom, and/or social class.
Guidelines for Essay #1 Length/Due Date: approximately 600 words.
Style/Format: This, as all essays in EN106, should be formatted in a standard scholarly format. (follow APA guidelines, which are outlined in Easy Writer.) No matter what format you follow, be sure to do the following:
Use 12 point, Times New Roman font, double-spaced.
Use 1-inch margins top, bottom, and sides.
Although no cover page is needed, you should include your name, my name, the course number/title, and date at the upper left-hand corner of the manuscript.
References: Essay #1 should include at least three references to the assigned reading. Such references will use quotation or paraphrasing, and they will include in-text citations that follow the particular style you have chosen.
Works Cited/References: Because you will be referring to Freire’s essay, please create an appropriate bibliography, with one entry for Freire’s essay.
Titles: Include a descriptive title at the beginning of your essay that tips your readers off to your central interpretation of Freire’s work. Do not format your title with quotation marks, boldface, underlining or italics. Quotation marks or underlining are only appropriate if the title borrows words from another source.
A Word about Plagiarism: Freire’s work is oft-anthologized and assigned in first-year writing courses; because of this, you can find countless Internet sites, free and proprietary summaries, and term papers that respond to assignments similar to this one. Please be advised that any undocumented use of another writer’s words or ideas constitutes plagiarism and will result in failure of the assignment. Multiple instances of plagiarism may result in automatic failure of the course.
