Do we need schools to develop children who are strong in academics, who are good learners, who can achieve good jobs, who can be in public positions but do not have good character? This is widely seen in our public life. Many people, qualified or unqualified, who have leadership skills, who have abilities, rise up to responsible positions, may be politically, or in administrative positions or in any other walk of life. But as they work there, we find that their ways, methods, have become non-transparent, and then they challenge the very integrity of a community and society.
If you ask me where these characters are built, where such characters bud, it is in schools. If there is a school that can build strong values, that can build strong characteristic features in a child along with good learning, then those schools are doing a great service to the community and a service for the future of a society.
If classrooms have become places of unhappiness, we should not ignore it thinking that ‘Oh, that’s okay. A child will develop in his future influenced by his changed environment, improved demands and desires he will develop.’ No. If the basement is weak, how do we expect a good building to be constructed on it. Whatever may be the facilities in the building, even a small earthquake, or heavy rain or a strong wind will lead to the collapse of the building.
That’s exactly what happens in a classroom. The foundations of a person’s character and career are built there. Each ingredient matters a lot in the integrity of a person along with his skills. We need to be extremely careful in creating happy classrooms. How did classrooms become unhappy? Why do classrooms breed fear and doubts? It is beyond the academic achievements. It goes a long way beyond marks in a classroom and performance. To what extent do the masons, who are the teachers in this context, know that? If they don’t know how to build each child, that building will not be good to occupy at a later date.
So what are the fundamental problems of a classroom? What brings anxiety, unhappiness, tension and fear in the mind of a child?
The most important thing to do is to build a happy classroom. Whether a child is learning or not is a secondary thing. Whether a child in achieving high scores or not is a tertiary thing. What is most important is to build a happy classroom that does not resort to any sort discrimination.
In a home, if the mother has five children, and she has five different ways of loving them, directing the children and caring for them, what will happen in that home? The five children will fight with each other. The children will burn that home down. The five will become violent. And each one will find ways to cheat the other. What brought imbalance to that home, what made the children fight with each other in that home? The single element is the mother and her care.
The word discrimination should be very clearly understood. If in a society people are discriminated against by a government, that state or country will become divided. Look at the whole world, including India. If there is discrimination against a group of people, if they are treated differently, treated as less important, with less favours, or unequally, they will get united in no time and fight against the system.
If you take any incident, right after the exit of the British from India till today, you will find that it got germinated because of discrimination that is followed in a country, in a school and in a home.
So what should be a teacher’s first quality? Needless to say, the first quality of a teacher should be – do not discriminate against a child. The child may have poor habits; he/she may bring it from home; may have poor friends, may not have enough money to support his education, he/she may lack parental care, sometimes even lack books, or no clean character. But when a child comes into the classroom, all that a teacher should be aware of is the fact that all are her children; all are her students. Everyone deserves to be loved, to be guided, to be directed and to be challenged, uniformly.
This can be easily said, but very difficult to implement unless the teacher has that ability to mentally consider everyone the same, love them the same way, behave with them the same way, motivate each of them the same way as well as challenge them equally. It is under such circumstances that the teacher gets elevated. In another words, many people go and fall at the feet of a mother like Mata Amritanandamayi. What makes people come to her is nothing but how she treats everyone.
A big issue in the world is not treating people equally, or not considering people equally. It is called love without discrimination, unconditional love, directing without any discrimination.
This quality of the teacher should not be lost. In a school, the owners, the management, the principals and the heads of departments constitute a community of people who work with a teacher. If those people do not take care of the mental health of a teacher and the teacher’s confidence to be non-discriminatory in directing children is not well-protected and maintained, that teacher will fall down. And if that teacher falls down, it will end up in creating criminal minded future citizens of the world.
All the evil that happens in the world today is the result of the poor foundations laid in the classrooms. There could be many other reasons you can point out, but I consider this as the fundamental reason for the modern problems in the modern communities, modern societies where most of you will be thinking, ‘Oh god, why is this happening? Why are there are there people with private agendas? Why do people with dual minds run our societies? And, why do discrimination happens?’ You will also decide, ‘I will do everything in such a way that I don’t care, I will build in my own way, because the fundamental problem is not treated’. If you trace the origin of the problem, it will go back to the classrooms where education has gone wrong.
So what makes classrooms unhappy? What makes classrooms fearsome? What makes a naughty child? What prompts children to misbehave? Everything happens due to one factor. It is not the depth of teaching. It is the character building that went wrong. Teaching the child moral science, or teaching him/her the old stories of good behaviour won’t contribute to character building. The teacher should follow the non-discriminatory way of treating children and bring them into a collaborative mood.
Have you ever wondered how the collaborative way of learning has been lost which later damages a society? And, how the natural talents of a child are killed in a classroom? How most people working in modern jobs are not the right fit there but land up in such positions? It happens because in their school days, their talents were not identified and they were driven by the need of a job, the need of prestige or parents’ need of prestige. They have been educated in different directions and they are working as misfits in that positions. Like, trying to fit square nuts into round holes. Again, the source goes back to schools.
