Ditching the Pail to Light the Fire

The problem that I have always had with my education and with school is that it feels like I am just a vessel being filled with knowledge. When I first read the quote by W. B. Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but rather the lighting of a fire,” I connected with it because I feel like school has always been “the filling of a pail” for me. There have been times when I have really cherished what I learned and there have been times when I did not enjoy what I was learning at all. Education for me has always felt like mindless memorizing of useless information. Truth be told, I do enjoy learning new things and taking in new information, if it is on my own agenda, but there have only been a few instances in school where I can distinctly remember being excited to learn. I think it is very important that students have experiences where they are genuinely excited to learn. For me, there is nothing like a school assignment where you really get to do your own thing. One of the few assignments I’ve ever had where I was able to do this was sophomore speech.

When I first learned about what we were required to do for sophomore speech, I was not particularly excited. As I learned more about it, I grew interested and excited because I discovered we would be able to research a subject that we desired. I quickly got to work researching professional video game players and developed a paper on why they should be considered real athletes. I have always been in love with video games, so when I found out that I could research what I wanted, I decided to defend my fellow gamers. Although I faced some criticism from friends and even my teacher at the time, I put together a conclusive paper that seemed to be well received by my class. When it came time to decide the order in which we would present our speeches, I was eager to go first.

For me, sophomore speech really lit my flame for learning because it gave me an opportunity to present research on something that I was truly interested in. I really do enjoy learning new things, doing research and putting together constructed reports, but school has always had too many rules and required subjects to study. I think that by giving students options, and letting them learn things they wish to learn, schools will see that students really do understand how to do research and write conclusive papers. Many people tend to lose focus and motivation when they have to write about things that they do not have interest in. Unfortunately, that is just the case for myself and many other high school students. Although this blog post was supposed to address a time that a “flame was lit” for myself in my learning. I also wanted to use it as an opportunity to discuss that any student can achieve greatness if they are presented with the opportunity to do so. Although sophomore speech was a lot of work, I heard some of the best speeches I have ever heard from my classmates, not only that, but I also heard speeches on a whole wide range of topics. I am a firm believer that we can all be excited about learning, it just takes a little bit of time and discovery to find what lights your fire.

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