Bhagavan, also known as Swami Sri Atmananda, is a spiritual teacher in southern India. He has created two schools for children.
One day he visited one of the schools and one of the children looked unhappy. He asked the child why he is sad and the child said: “I don’t like to write!” Bhagavan asked him to share what happened and the child looked down in shame. Another child said that in class the teacher asked them to write 5 pages, but the child could only write one page. The teacher then punished the child by making them remain in a kneeling position on the floor for 15 minutes.
Bhagavan didn’t say any more to the child. He wanted to intervene but he believes in waiting for his environment to provide the correct opportunity to take action, which he refers to as “waiting for a signal from Prakriti.” As he was exiting the school, the teacher came up to Bhagavan and said “this child is a very bad child. He will not do his writing”, pointing at the child. The signal had come.
Bhagavan responded, “and what did you do?”
The teacher said, “I made him sit on his knees for 15 minutes.”
Bhagavan asked “and did you think this would make him a better writer? Was he able to write 5 pages after this?”
The teacher responded, “no. He is not writing 5 pages. He is a bad child.”
Bhagavan said “it is not his failure as a student. It is your failure as a teacher. Come. Let’s write. Children, bring your notebooks and two extra.”
They went and sat under a fruit tree. “Ok, we are going to have a race to see which of us can write five pages first.” Bhagavan started writing with them. After a little while, the teacher walked over to one of the students and said: “your handwriting is good.” Bhagavan asked, “what are you doing? Why aren’t you writing?” “You want me to write…?” the teacher said confused. “Yes. Why else did I ask for two extra notebooks? Did you think I was going to use one for each hand?” The teacher took the notebook and started writing.
One of the children finished first. Then the one who was punished finished second. Bhagavan finished third. And the teacher was in last place. Bhagavan said to the children, “we have all finished 5 pages. What should be your reward?”
Both of the children said “ice cream!”
“And what should be my reward?” Bhagavan asked.
“Two ice creams!” they said.
“I do not like ice cream. I want fruit from this tree.” The two boys then started climbing the tree excited to pick fruit for Bhagavan. Bhagavan said “no not now. Tomorrow morning whoever finds the first piece of fruit that has fallen on the concrete, give me that and I will eat it. I will bring your reward and you will bring me mine.”
One of the boys got up from bed at 3 am to find the first piece of fruit. The other got up at 4 am. So they did not see each other. Bhagavan came the following day with ice cream.
The two boys both went to Bhagavan, each with a piece of fruit. Bhagavan asked which one was first and they started arguing. So he said he must think of them both as first and he will eat both fruits. He put both of them in his mouth. He gave them their ice cream and told them to go eat in the dining hall. They ran off excited to the dining half then he spit out the fruit which he did not actually want to eat and threw it.
Bhagavan told me that in his school teachers need to teach by example rather than enforcing discipline and memorization. He said that if a student is not learning, it is the fault of the teacher, not the fault of the student. In his school, the teachers are tested, not the students.
