Chapter 2 of P of P also impressed me with the "banking" metaphor and the problem of seeing education as the rich teacher making a deposit into the mind of the poor student.
A couple of scattered thoughts at this point. Maybe the banking metaphor is not so evil. We can make a deposit and build up credit in the noosphere but it doesn't have to be in a particular bank but rather it adds to the general balance of knowledge in the world of ideas. We don't have to pay the outrageous fees and overdraft charges the the Bank of Corporate Education gouges out of us. Learning is actually more like a Green dollar LTSystem or a gift economy. but we are bamboozed into paying for Corporate Education for what is freely available.
Here is a whole other angle on the banking money thing. Freire was writing in the 60's. I can't remember when the world abandoned the gold standard for currency but it is within my memory so it must be around then. Regan era, I think. With the gold standard each $dollar unit was actually represented by the equivalent value in gold bullion. So if a country printed a million dollars of banknotes there was the expectation that it be backed by something tangible a Fort Knox full of gold.
World economic volume surpassed this system so the world mostly abandoned the gold standard for currency and the dollar was allowed to float. Essentially, money is no longer real but is virtual. If I have $100.00 in my bank account it doesn't mean that somewhere there is an actual $100 bill representing my wealth.
We don't even think about the fact that we only really have virtual money but we are concerned if we have virtual education. Something interesting there? We are economic cyborgs.
