A quote by William Butler Yeats

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

This quote creates an interesting conversation about the current state of our education system.  The metaphor that is created states that education should be explosive, exciting and passionate like the lighting of a fire, not the monotonous task of filling a bucket.  I would definitely agree with this quote, and in the context of our current system, this really exposes the current problems within it. With the expansion of things like standardized testing, and teachers being forced to "teach to the test" instead of inspiring their students, the passion in education, in both students and teachers, seems to be quickly evaporating. Without the passion that needs to be a part of education, school just becomes monotonous, witch leads to students not paying attention to class, and focusing of their technology instead of class.
To fix this epidemic, the government should scale down the amount of testing by a lot, and give the teachers more freedom in the ways that they want to teach.  This might not be the full answer to curb this problem, but it would be a stride in the right direction.