Page 23 - All India Magazine Jan-2025

Sweet Mother, What do you expect of those students who are going
to leave after their studies here? Surely there must be a great differ-
ence between them and ordinary people. What is the difference?

Often, as soon as they find themselves in the midst of ordinary
life, many of them realise the difference and regret what they have
lost. Few of them have the courage to give up the comforts they
find in their ordinary surroundings, but even the others no longer
face life with the same unconsciousness as those who have never
been in contact with the Ashram.
The work we do is not done with the expectation of some-
thing in return, but simply to help the progress of humanity.
Blessings.
*
Imposing discipline
Sweet Mother, How far do you consider it the duty of a teacher or
an instructor to impose discipline on the students?

To prevent the students from being irregular, rude or negligent is
obviously indispensable; unkind and harmful mischief cannot be
tolerated.
But as a general and absolute rule, the teachers and especially
the physical education instructors must be a constant living ex-
ample of the qualities demanded from the students; discipline,
regularity, good manners, courage, endurance, patience in effort,
are taught much more by example than by words. And as an abso-
lute rule: never to do in front of a child what you forbid him to do.
For the rest, each case implies its own solution, and one must
act with tact and discernment.
That is why to be a teacher or an instructor is the best of all
disciplines, if one knows how to comply with it.
*
A child ought to stop being naughty because he learns to be

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