Everyone seems to agree that William Butler Yeats said something along the lines of "Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." If Google's any guide, it's become a staple of education-based speeches. But nothing I've found yet confirms it as Yeats. This page has apparently not been able to find a source, but then that seems to be the norm there for some reason. Most suspiciously, it's not in Bartlett's 16th Edition. Can anyone either say where this is from (whether Yeats or not) or point to something that debunks it?

posted by soyjoy on Dec 19, 2003 - 6 answers