Abstract
Shanghai teachers judiciously combine student-centred and teacher-dominated approaches to support curriculum reform initiatives within an exam-centric environment.
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It is unclear whether Yeats was really the author of the quote. This debate is not important here since my point is on the meaning of this well-known quote rather than its authorship.
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Lai and Lo (2007) claim that ‘In general, the officers of the Shanghai Education Bureau would make three to five supervisory visits to each school every year. Under this system, teachers are moulded to work as technicians, strictly following the directives of defined evaluation systems’ (p. 62). However, this claim ignores the ability of the teachers to assemble their own tactics, measures and countermeasures to circumvent and resist official policies. As I have argued in this chapter, Shanghai teachers are adept at juggling the dual demands of carrying out curriculum reform with improving exam scores.
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The value of classroom discipline does not mean that there are no disciplinary problems in Shanghai schools. Some principals and teachers told me that there are also instances of students who lack learning motivation and play truant. One Shanghai principal observed that the more disciplined students tend to be those who come from better-performing schools and vice versa. But it is fair to say that Shanghai/Chinese students as well as East Asian students are generally more disciplined and motivated to study compared to their counterparts in other countries. This is due to the cultural scripts on teaching and learning. See Stigler and Hiebert (1999) for their case study of Japan.
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It is interesting to note that an American teacher Caitlin Moore who teaches social studies at Excel Academy Charter School in East Boston, Massachusetts, also uses the same saying for an American context. She argues for the need to give students new knowledge (filling a bucket) while continuing to draw upon the wisdom students already possess (lighting a fire) (Moore, 2010).
References
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Tan, C. (2013). ‘Education Is Filling a Bucket and Lighting a Fire’: The Shanghai Teacher. In: Learning from Shanghai. Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 21. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4021-87-6_4
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