Critical education theorist bell hooks, echoing Paulo Freire, calls this a “banking” model of education: we treat human learners as if they are safe-deposit boxes for knowledge and ideas, mere intellectual receptacles for beliefs. We then think of action as a kind of “withdrawal” from this bank of knowledge, as if our action and behavior were alway

When we talk about learning—as opposed to education—we’re really talking about replacing the traditional, one-way, top-down model of knowledge transmission with an active, connected system that teaches people how to learn. Education is what other people do to you. Learning is what you do to yourself.