Teacher only looks at the bright side!

“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.” – Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah (1976 U.S. Edition), CXXIII, p. 260.

“Whensoever a mother seeth that her child hath done well, let her praise and applaud him and cheer his heart; and if the slightest undesirable trait should manifest itself, let her counsel the child and punish him, and use means based on reason, even a slight verbal chastisement should this be necessary. It is not, however, permissible to strike a child, or to vilify him, for the child’s character will be totally perverted if he be subjected to blows or verbal abuse.” – Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha (1978 Baha’i World Center Edition), no. 115, p.139. [the bold lettering is an addition by me]

The top excerpt from Baha’u'llah’s Writings has been on my mind for sometime. Education systems these days often regard children as empty buckets to be filled up. But that is not the case: any teacher can attest that after the first few classes they can point out a child’s main character traits. If one looks closely enough, the child’s talents, may they be academic, artistic, or social, start showing up too. That’s the idea of the “mine rich in gems”. And that is a technique strongly advised for the children’s classes teacher. Let me use my personal experiences of the past few weeks to show the difference.

Week 1:

Teacher (me) enters the porch where kids sort of settle. Teacher proceeds with introductions. Children hit each other a bit. Teacher is a little shocked and reacts to the hitting. Teacher keeps trying to go on through the lesson, but children keep hitting each other for multiple reasons, and Teacher reacts every time. By the end, Teacher is flustered. Teacher comes back home and dreads the next class with those children.

Meanwhile … Teacher talks about it to friends and family and consults the Baha’i Writings about the subject. Teacher decides to take another approach.

Week 2:

Teacher enters the porch, where children slowly trickle in. Teacher does the roll call. Later, child hits other child. Teacher gently but firmly takes the hitting had away and reminds children that in this class, there will be no hitting, and ties in the comment with the lesson (”In the garden of thy heart, plant naught but the rose of love …”). Later on, teacher stuffs her fingers in her ears and sings loudly when a child starts backbiting (saying anything negative about another child)*. Children laugh, but most importantly, they start getting the point (and if not, they see I won’t listen anyway).

Because of the now more peaceful attitude in the class, Teacher starts recognizing “gems” in every child. Teacher is mostly happy to find the gem of super-fast-and-precise-at-learning-melodies-and-rhythm in the child that seemed to be hitting the most. By focusing on the child’s positive attributes, the child slowly stopped hitting others and trying to get attention through his talents (as he was obviously getting more from me by singing well).

The difference: Teacher didn’t let the hitting affect her emotions, and showed the children she really WAS interested in them, what they can do, who they are, and that she’s not just a rule monger.

Yep.

If some of you were trying to figure out what in the world I was doing with children’s classes.

*In the Baha’i laws, backbiting is up there with murder and stealing.