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Education Essay The terms dreadful and dreary are fitting descriptions to partly describe the education I had back in Korea. As Rose would explain it, schools that do well, with teachers and facilities that really contribute to the real education of the mind do exist (Rose 1989). However, during his and my time, the settings were somehow similar. I had gone through subjects that were forced on me as if food that makes one to flip over. Korean education for me was a little bit like â€Å"blind leading the blind† idea. Being raised a South Korean I experienced the hell education is. Vocational school really meant to prepare us for the world of work as it is also projected to do for people here in the United States. Back then, the vocational section of our school actually meant schooling for the average and the below average; students who seemed to have no other future like in the university, but to get married and work in some kind of factory or behind an isolated desk. Like the banking concept of Freire which the author elaborated as the absence of dialogue and problem-posing set-up and replaced or dominated by control and depositing of the all too-knowledgeable teacher, my past experience exactly mimic Freire’s descriptions when I was under the tutelage of mentors who also just passed on the kind of ignorance they received from others before them (Freire 1993 ch 2). It was a mixture of hell and a hellish kind of experience. Rose’s apt depiction of his adventure in a jungle of misappropriation of learning may not be as exactly the same as mine, but the fact that I just somehow drifted then and passively went through schooling was a dismal failure to me. Failure because I had emerged with the same credulity and only a bit sophisticated with getting away with my increasing ignorance about many things. Fortunately, despite my parents’ lack of know how, their wise supervision over us children became very crucial and important as I emerged an adolescent and a young person. The time when we reached mainland USA had somehow spelled differently for me. Things like being introduced to a teacher much like Rose had in the person of Mr. MacFarland (Rose 1989), worlds of ideas and opportunities opened for me when I was tutored by this wonderful person who had the patience to point to me my inadequacies and strengths in a very non-threatening yet forceful manner, awakening me to rise to the challenge of emerging from being average to strike at what I do best. I just wanna be average† (Rose 1989) is well maybe a safe battle cry for most because it removes the guilt and even more so the pressure to become somebody who actually has a lot more insecurities than the truly â€Å"average† guy. Or so I thought. However, things are a bit a changing as the song goes. I have a passion within me that had started to burn deep within and refuse to go away. This is the passion to inquire, to absorb, to learn and to explore the many â€Å"whys† that had cropped up incessantly since a teacher started to lead us how to make inquiries. This is exactly what Freire would have wanted. Teachers become dominators when they truly believe that the students are just out there in front of them as willing audience to a â€Å"play† with which only one is the protagonist and antagonist and that is the teacher (Freire 1993). Unless the mentor thinks as a student as well, immersing himself again in the shoes of his â€Å"mentees† he will soon forget that these little people in front of him actually have minds of their own; that no matter what one teaches, those minds will leave the hall devoid of real encounters and real and practical materials that they ought to carry with them until college days are over. Conclusion and recommendation Indeed, being average has its place, but when the teachers start to label and judge a student or students as only that, the teacher ceases to understand the mindset that is still very much malleable, and capable of immense exploits. Several suggestions not very different from the proposed learning set-up by Freire are in my mind. The management of the classroom experiences are structured or planned such that the students or pupils will have sufficient time and space to develop their powers of inquiry. This is their entitlement to empowerment; i. e. he students start to have a sense of control and directions with their own learning. When this happens, the students feel committed and engaged and are â€Å"hooked† as what has happened to Mike Rose. What Mike Rose described in his accounts are telling of the general atmosphere in most traditionally run schools not just even in the United States. Elsewhere in countries who look up to Uncle Sam are institutions following our footsteps and producing the same sad, sad stories of students who are gripped by the powerful influence of teachers who do not teach but make their audience depositories of a different kind. The process of developing an inquiring mind is not very easy. It takes a lot of creativity and constant research and innovations from that of the teacher to produce materials or activities that encourage the students to make and generate questions pertaining to and not only confined to the lessons defined in the syllabus. This is the reason that Freire often referred to as the teacher playing and assuming the role as well as that of the student. This stance takes into the premise then, that students in whatever economic status in life they may spring from, are not dumb and altogether passive. They start to be that way because most teachers expect them to behave as such. Various theoretical perspectives in learning actually boil down to the realization that in order for real learning to happen, the students must craft their own ideas and concepts, and must take ownership of the kinds of lives they must eventually lead. This is accountability and responsibility.