Romantic Ideas in Teaching - Part 2

“lighting a fire”

Romantic Idea 4:
"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire"

(Nepali: शिक्षा भनेको भाँडो भर्ने होइन, आगो बाल्नु हो।)

I am a big fan of metaphors. They work is a very interesting way. Metaphor is a process of “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another"¹.

Eg: Time is money. Here we compare two unrelated concepts “time” and “money” and try to understand abstract concept of saving/spending time by comparing to concrete concept of spending/saving money.

But here’s another fact about metaphors. They lie, distort, and over-simplify complex ideas. In reality, time is not money.

Under a careful scrutiny, metaphors easily fall apart.

The idea that “education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire” is a cute metaphor but this one too crumbles under scrutiny.

It presents a false comparison and oversimplification that uglily distorts the nature of learning.

It claims that learning must be either passive transfer of knowledge from a teacher to the students (filling the pail) or pure inspiration (lighting of a fire). In reality, learning is a process of accumulating knowledge. And the development of curiosity and independent thought. The more you know, the more you can know.

The quote is a clever word play that wrongly compares learning as a process and learning as an outcome.

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There’s even a sinister undertone around this metaphor. It’s the anti-education rhetoric hidden inside it.

The message is, when teachers teach, they are essentially filling the brains of students with their “old” knowledge. And, in that process, the teachers are killing students’ natural potential, inherent curiosity and limitless creativity.

The message is to not force knowledge but to let the students explore, discover, and create their “own knowledge” through their own curiosity and creativity.

The message is to make teachers actively step aside, be the guide on the side, and watch how students, through their own intrinsic motivation and interest, flourish into creative beings.

Well, good luck with that.

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Romantic Idea 5:
My job is not to teach ‘what’, my job is to teach ‘how’. You can easily find ‘what’ on google.

(Nepali: शिक्षकहरुले "के" पढाउनु पर्दैन, "कसरी" सिकाउनुपर्छ। “के” त गुगलमा छ दै छ नि।)

Another way to look at this idea is through this belief “I’m not a teacher, I’m just a facilitator” which many teachers have adopted. They believe, since the content or knowledge is easy accessible on the internet, their job has suddenly changed. Their job is not to teach what is already available, their job is to teach skills through facilitation. Their job is to make students think critically and creatively.

This belief is a recipe for learning disaster. Especially for novice learners.

Sure, students can ‘Google’ facts. Now we also have Chatgpt and Deepseek where we can even externalize our thought process. But that does not mean students actually understand the stuff they get from Google or Chatgpt.

Quick access to information does not mean quick formation of conceptual understanding and meaning.

Have you ever seen students copy-paste from the internet without actually knowing what they’re saying? That’s what happens when we pretend ‘what’ doesn’t matter.

Without thinking (and thinking hard), meaningful learning is next to impossible.

The importance of Prior Knowledge:

For thinking to happen, we need the content of the thought as prior knowledge in our long term memory. We need “what” embedded in our memory to think “how”.

Without that enough relevant prior knowledge, students risk forming weak, misinformed, or disconnected conclusions.

If a teacher is not teaching to embed “what” in the students’ memory, the teacher is making students dumb. Period.

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Romantic Idea 6:
I am not here to teach you, I am here to learn from you.

(Nepali: “म यहाँ तिमीहरुलाई पढाउँन आएको होइन। म यहाँ तिमीहरुबाट सिक्न आएको हुँ।")

First, I want to give a benefit of doubt to well intentioned teachers when they say this statement in their class. Especially in the adult education level. They want to respect students as individuals. They also want to acknowledge that students bring in different types of knowledge, experience, and culture into the class. And that’s great.

A teacher’s credibility is a major factor that affects student learning, behavior and motivation². It’s about creating the first impression among students that you are a competent, trustworthy, and caring teacher.

If you have been invited to give a guest lecture, you might say this to sound respectful and humble.

If you are starting a new class and you are going to say this in your first class, don’t. Because if your students do not perceive you to be credible, they will likely listen less and learn less from you³.

Demonstrate your credibility. Establish rules, norms, and expectations. And, give a sense of hope to the students that they are in expert hands.

(This is especially true in Asian cultural context than in the West. Students respect and learn from the teachers who look and sound credible⁴. And it’s true in Nepali culture too.)

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What romantic ideas have you come across? Let me know.

1. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

2. Kianinezhad, N. (2023). A Theoretical Exploration of Teacher Credibility and Immediacy as Influential Factors in Learning and Teaching. Journal of Translation and Language Studies, 4(3), 47-56.

3. Banfield, S. R., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2006). The effect of teacher misbehaviors on teacher credibility and affect for the teacher. Communication Education, 55(1), 63-72

4. Jin Li. (2012). Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West.