Best Of Pedagogy

Best of Pedagogy ​

“Do you remember me?” With palms joined, he softly asked him.
The Old man - was a teacher - nodding his head from side to side says an emphatic ‘no’.
The young man humbly says that he was his student.
And the teacher lifting his gray-eye-brows questions:
- “oh! Was it? What are you doing, what do you do for a living?”
The young man responds: “Well Sir I have become a teacher.”
“ Oh, that is nice to hear. But then, why a teacher? - said the old man
“ Yes Sir. Actually, I became a teacher because you had inspired me to be like you.”
The old man, curious, asks the young man what moment inspired him to become a teacher.

And the young man narrates the incident:

“One day, a friend of mine, also a student, arrived to the class with a latest wrist-watch, and I decided to have it. All luck would have it, he had kept it in his school-bag. I wanted it for myself and so I stole it from his bag.

Soon after, my friend noticed the theft of his watch and immediately complained to our teacher.

So, he stopped the class and announced:
“Your friend's watch was stolen during class today. Whoever stole it, return it”.

I didn't return it because I didn't want to.
So the teacher closed the door and told us all to get up and he went rummaging through our pockets until he found the watch. But, then the teacher instructed the class to keep our eyes shut because he would commence search only if we all had our eyes closed.

So we did, and the teacher went from pocket to pocket, and when he got into mine, he found the watch and took it.

He continued search with left out students’ pockets and then he addressed the class:
"All of you now can open your eyes. The missing watch is found already."

He didn't tell me anything and he never mentioned the episode to the class. He never said who stole the watch. That day, he saved my dignity forever.
It was the most shameful day of my life. But it was also the day my dignity was saved from becoming a thief, a bad person, etc.

The teacher is none else but you Sir.

You never said anything to me, and even though you didn't scold me or call my attention to give me a moral lesson, I got the message clearly.

And thanks to you, I understood that this is what a true educator should do. Do you remember that episode, Sir?”

And the teacher-in-that-old-man softly answered him:
"I do remember the situation, the stolen watch, which I was looking for in everyone, but I don't remember you, because I also closed my eyes while searching into pockets."

Moral : If ever there is a need to correct some one, it should be done in such a way that it doesn’t cause humiliation to none.