Mind set: Leading by example

 

Across all religions in the world, there is this strong and true belief that children have divinity in them and that they are God’s most beautiful creation.

There is a symbiotic connect between children and teachers. They are blessed and truly in a position to mould the lives of so many children. They are like potters and students, like the clay. Teaching is a huge responsibility and should be a calling.

Education, in my dictionary, far transcends academic excellence. It is not about running a race with your classmates and topping the list — it is about soaking in all the knowledge gained during the process, it is about translating that knowledge into wisdom and about applying that wisdom. It is about excellence. It is about running a race with yourself and emerging a winner in your own eyes.

I believe that the most critical task today is that of building character. For teachers, it entails veering teaching in a manner that you are actually engaging in character education. As we are, our children too face tremendous pressure in their own lives. They have to cope with expectations of their teachers, meet the standards of their parents, and also confirm to the peer group pressures and habits. These are virtually three different worlds and they constantly straddle between these worlds. They have to make hundreds of choices, from thousands of options in millions of areas everyday.

These pressures manifest themselves in different forms – early drug addiction, childhood pregnancies, killings on the campus, internet hacking and many such forms of self chosen stress-busters. Teachers spend a lot of time with the children. They must keep their antennas up to recognize sensitive signals of stress that children undergo. The better they are at this, the greater the good they can do for them. Teachers need to remain clued into the state of mind of children by picking up their behavioural signals.

One might argue that the parents should be the bedrock of values, but today, with both parents working and families being nuclear, unfortunately the focus is not on these softer and key aspects but rather on studies and grades. Sometimes parents feel that values are a given. But these need to be made explicit. Values give meaning to life. They give a person his identity and character. Since a child spends a large part of his time at school, the responsibility of nurturing the child holistically and building his character rests equally with his teachers who are his mentors.

Teachers should instill some values in children such as honesty and integrity, a sense of self-worth, taking responsibility, tolerance, compassion, respecting divergent opinions, humility and of course, self-discipline. Only then a child grows up to be a caring and a well balanced human-being. At the end of the day, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Character is everything”. If we have to teach values to children, we must realize that we ourselves – as educators, as teachers, have to be role models. As the old adage goes, we have to practice what we preach. So teachers have to lead by example.

Teachers are the sailors who point out the lighthouse. It is up to us to teach them to think beyond themselves. Teach them that on the contrary there is far greater joy in giving than in receiving and in caring for others. It does help to give a spiritual tenor to your teachings. Teaching children to recognize spiritual values from their infancy provides a bridge to a well balanced life as they grow up.