1981: Children yield to affectionate advice
Teachings to treasure, teachings that transform.
In this auspicious year 2015 commemorating the 90th birthday of Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, we offer a compilation of key messages from the over 140 discourses in the month of July, including Guru Poornima Days between the years 1958 and 2009.
1981: Children yield to affectionate
advice
Parents entrust their dearly beloved children to the teachers
in schools, believing that they are
capable and willing to guide the kids and instill into them skills and
habits that can later help them to stand
up against the hardships and temptations of the world. Teachers are
therefore burdened with a great
responsibility. When a child needs help, it rushes to the mother; when the mother needs help to equip the child with
knowledge and strength of character, she rushes to the teacher. Therefore, the teacher has to be
more than a mother for the kids. Her anxiety about the child's physical, mental and moral health and
her vigilant attention and care have to be more
constant and knowledgeable than the mother's.
The teachers must speak to one another only in loving terms.
They should not indulge in mutual
recrimination, for the tender minds of children will be tarnished by the
slightest tinge of hatred that pollutes
the atmosphere of love. No harsh word can be uttered in their hearing against
the Ayah (maid) who brings
them from their homes with loving care. The children will develop negative reaction towards the teacher who
slights the maid or any other employee or worker, like the cook or the gardener. Do not parade
before the children as a hierarchy or a bureaucracy. Each one has a distinct duty assigned according to
the talent possessed by the one; no duty is superior or inferior. Let this lesson soak into the
consciousness of the kids.
When you have to reprimand a child for some misdemeanour or
delinquency, do not pounce all of a
sudden or terrorise by shouting. Tell them politely: "If another kid did
the same to you, or took away for use
your article or hit you, won't you feel hurt? Now, is it not wrong to hurt
the other kid? When you do not like a
kid to do you any harm you too should refrain from inflicting harm." Kids will understand, soon feel
sorry and resolve not to repeat the act or word. They yield to affectionate advice.
The Primary School where teachers accept children aged five is
the very foundation, not only for all
higher grades of education, but even for advancement and the progress of
mankind. Therefore, teachers engaged in
this task are doing the highest saadhana, which
benefits themselves, the children and
society. It is a saadhana that can
certainly win the Grace of God.
Points to Ponder:
How teachers should handle children?
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