To be a teacher is a great thing. What is the meaning of being a teacher? Do we ever think about it?
You may be teaching the children, as is taught all over the world, that they should love others. But have you ever thought that the whole structure of your education is built not on love but on competition? You claim to teach love, but the whole arrangement is to teach competition. Where there is competition there can be no love. Competition is a form of envy, a sort of burning sensation, jealousy. What are you teaching?
When one child comes first in a class, the other child is told that he is lagging behind and this fellow has come first. You are teaching him to flatter, to compete and get ahead. You are teaching ego, telling them that one who has come first is higher, and one who is behind is lower. In books you tell them to be humble and loving, whereas your whole arrangement teaches them to hate, to envy and come first. One who comes first is being awarded gold medals and merit certificates; he is being garlanded and photographed, and others, who are behind, are insulted by the system.
forefront? When the one who has come first is being honored, are you not boosting his ego? So when the children are thus trained in ego, jealousy and competition, how can they love? Love is that which allows the loved ones to go ahead. Love always means to remain always last.
I will tell you a small anecdote to make this clearer. There were three Sufi saints who were to be hanged until dead. So-called religious people are always against real saints. While they were waiting to be hanged, they were sitting in a row. The hangman would call out the names, one after the other, and would hang them.
The hangman cried out the name, ”Nuri,” that he should come forward.
The hangman said, ”Your name is not Nuri. Why are you in a hurry to die?”
The one who had come forward replied, ”I have loved Nuri and I have understood that when it is a question of dying, to come forward, and when it is a question of living, to remain behind. I would like to die before my friend dies. If it is a question of living, my friend should live longer than me.”
Love speaks like this. What does competition say? Competition tells you to stay behind while dying and go on ahead when it is a question of living. Can the world be a better place to live in when the poison of competition and ambition is being poured into the minds of children? When a child is keen to go ahead of others and others are wanting to leave him behind, then, after being educated for twenty years, what will he do in life? He will do what he has been taught.
Every person is pulling the other down. From the peon to the president, everyone is pulling the others down. In this process, if a peon somehow becomes a president, we tell him it is a matter of great pride and dignity for him. Actually there is no greater violence than that of pushing oneself ahead by pulling others back. But we are teaching this violence and calling it education.
on this education, when palaces are being built near huts, what is the wonder if people living in a
palace are pleased at seeing people living in huts die? So there are poor people and there are others who have so much more and still do not know what to do with it. This is all due to the present education, and the teacher is also responsible for this. For this world which is created by such education the teacher is responsible. He has become an instrument for exploitation. In the name of giving education to the children, the teacher has become an instrument in the hands of the vested interests.
If this is education, then it will be better to stop educating completely. Perhaps that way a man will be better off. An uneducated man living in a forest will be a better man because he has more love and less competition, more heart and less mind.
