A PARABLE FOR TEACHER’S DAY

A child was traveling on a path from Kindergarten to Grade 12. The way was often lonely and unfamiliar. Along the way, the student was beaten up emotionally by the demands of the curriculum, the pressure to succeed and her own deficiencies in learning. She felt that her abilities did not match demands. She felt defeated. 

The student lay on the path, unsure of herself, afraid to fail and with nowhere to turn. Who could understand how she felt? She felt that she wanted to give up. The wounds from her school experiences were deep. She did not want to read, it gave her no joy. Numbers and instructions made her nervous. There was no joy to her learning. She felt that her skills were not recognized. And so, there she lay afraid, hurting and in need of help.

QUESTIONS

Á young scholar approached the Teacher and said, “I agree that staying within the confines of my own community and tradition is stifling, but where do I begin?”

“By asking questions,” the Teacher replied.

“What kind of questions?”

“If human beings have discovered anything new, it was always by breaking boundaries and daring to ask two necessary questions,” the Teacher replied.

“The first is – Why? And the second – Why not? When you ask these, the How follows.”

FOCUS

One day some visitors talked about a common friend who was given six months to live and four years later was still alive but a very changed man.

The Teacher noted that contemplation of one’s death can give one a radically new perspective on life. “A driver’s mind gets very focused when he realizes he is being followed by a police car!”

MANNER OF CRITICISM

There was a professor who could be quite critical when he thought that criticism was in order.

But to everyone’s surprise he was never resented for his reprimands. When asked about this once, he said, “It depends on how one does it. Human beings are like flowers: open and receptive to softly falling dew, closed to violent rain.”