Don’t Fill Buckets, Light Fires!
Education must reject the Gradgrind mentality
The Irish poet W B Yeats is often credited with having said (or written) that “Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire”. Nobody has ever been able to find proof that he actually did say or write those words — but that does not matter. It is the line itself that matters!
It seems that far too many politicians, when given the task of running education at national or local level, are more ready to fill buckets than light fires. They are advocates of the Gradgrind approach, as presented by Charles Dickens in his novel “Hard Times”:
“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are what is wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else”.
The children in the classroom under discussion are described as “the little pitchers … who were to be filled so full of facts”.
Filling Buckets
A bucket full of water does nothing. It is motionless — still and cold. The water is the same all the way down — devoid of life, movement and interest.
