The Jug-and-Mug Theory

The idea of school that most of us have is a place where children fo to learn things. Children
are people who don’t know very much and so they put in a classroom with people who know
more. It is then the job of the people who know more to transfer some of their knowledge to
the child. This has been called the “jug-and-mug theory of education, where the teacher is the
full mug, the child is the empty mug and the teacher’s job is to pour knowledge from the full
jug to the empty mug.
The main problem with this idea of education is that no child is an empty mug. Every child, ,o
matter how young, comes to school with ‘knowledge’, or as I would prefer to call it, culture.
The problem is that unless we ask them questions about this culture, we never find out that it
exists. Instead we spend out time initiating the children into a school-based culture.
Michael Rosen, Did I hear you write? (1989)

Questions:
Try to explain the theory (you may turn to the drawing).
What is Michael Rosen’s opinion about it?
What do you think about this theory?
Compare the Jug-and-Mug theory and progressive education.

Watch the Tate’s documentary “Black Bean Soup” and try to decide on which theories the
teacher mostly relies.
1) What activity does the teacher assign to the children?
2) Note down the children’s answers. For this, pick out the stressed words.
3) Note down the teacher’s reaction/ answers.