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Argument Essay: William B. Yeats

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Argument Essay: William B. Yeats
Colleen Byrne
Mrs McQuoid
Argument essay
11/25/15

William B. Yeats wrote that “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” Those words are a perfect description of the education system today. Education is no more than “filling the bucket” of a child's mind. Which basically implies that education is just facts and memorization. Grades nowadays are seen as the most important thing. If you get good grades you get into college, if you do not, you work at Mcdonalds for the rest of your life. Therefore to pass the test, and in turn get good grades, you need to memorize the given information. For a child to actually learn and get excited and interact, a teacher needs to inspire them with passion and get their creative minds flowing.
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You need to get them interested in whatever you’re teaching so they can expand their minds and figure it out themselves.Being a student myself, i agree completely with this quote. No one wants to sit through a class where information is just being thrown at you. Students want interesting, interactive activities that let them explore different things.If a student is told to sit in a classroom and learn something just because “it will be on the test”, then the student isn’t being taught to learn, they're being taught to memorize. Without the important questions of why am I learning this?” or “What will I be able to do or think about or feel or express after I have learned it?”, then learning cannot really happen. A teacher's job is to guide the students mind, not control everything they do. For a student to be interested in a subject, a teacher must create that interest and “light the fire” in a student's mind. What Yeats meant by lighting the fire is like sparking excitement and curiosity in all different types of

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