Student stabs teacher over holiday homework” — Recently, this strange headline in a newspaper was most disturbing and shocking, and made me worried. I started thinking about the problem: What made the 16-year-old boy do this? This student in a private school stabbed his teacher in some village near Sonepat when she asked him for his homework. The teacher told the police that the student had not done his homework and when she asked him for it, he took out a kitchen knife from his bag and attacked her. She was stabbed at least three times in her stomach.
This is not the only case of violence between a student and a teacher. Such cases are happening in many schools and colleges where the students come to learn to transform themselves into educated and evolved human beings — that is naturally the main purpose of these institutes. But we need to understand that the atmo-sphere in most of these institutions is not very loving. A certain atmosphere of sacredness is required, and that is missing. What is encouraged in the name of education is competitiveness and ambitiousness, something very unhealthy for the human heart, though good for the mind and ego. Because of too much emphasis on competitiveness and ambitiousness, the whole world has become very violent and unliveable.
Educational institutions are mainly responsible for this sad state of affairs. A young student is not being taught the necessary ways of love and compassion. He or she feels inferior to other students who are brighter. And the brighter students become the chosen few and many other students live with a heavy feeling of not being worthy. The feeling of unworthiness creates hatred towards oneself, jealousy and anger towards others.
This important aspect of education is missing in all schools, colleges and various institutions of learning. The solution to this problem is simple: Let teachers learn something that creates a sacred atmosphere in which the teachers are loving and compassionate and the students have reverence for their teachers. It could happen if both the teachers and students learn the art of meditation — meditating together should become a priority. If in ancient gurukuls, meditation did create this sacred atmosphere, it can create it today as well.
