Acharya Prashant explains that a child, if troubled from within, will cry. The disconnect between their inner and outer states is not very distorted. This distortion has to be taught to them. Therefore, the question should not be what to do with the children, but what to do with the teacher so that they do not spoil the children. You will not find a child who is very shy; they express what they feel. If they want to shout, they will shout. If they feel pressure, they will urinate. In a cinema hall, if a child wants to cry, they will cry. If you hold them, they might pull your beard. They do not care if you are a good person or look like Tagore. They are naturally without shame; you have to teach them shame. The question for a teacher should be, "How can I, as a teacher, become such that I do not teach them false conduct and useless propriety?" But then, another question arises: if the improvement in them is not to come from conduct and propriety, then where will it come from? We have this idea that we have made the child cultured. A cultured child looks different from an uncultured one. If this distinction is not to be brought about by conduct, then what is the other way? As a teacher, you might say, "I won't teach them useless propriety," for example, making all children stand up when the teacher enters the class. Why should they stand? What is there in standing up? A person stands when they are going somewhere, but they are not going anywhere. A person stands to pluck something from above, but there's nothing to pluck. So why stand? The question should be in the teacher's mind, "Why did I make him stand?" You question this and say you won't make them stand. But then the next question is, how do I instill the value that knowledge is supreme? Because when the teacher came in, she was not just a person, she was a representative of knowledge. Making them stand was a symbol that knowledge is supreme, and when a representative of knowledge comes, you show respect by standing. But this symbolic meaning was never told to the child. The child only knows to stand up. So they stand up for anything. The child has no respect or reverence for knowledge inside, but they are standing. So when you say you won't impose superficial conditioning, you won't say, "When the teacher comes, stand up and say 'Good morning, ma'am'." You won't do that. Then the responsibility falls on you to establish, through dialogue or some other method, that knowledge is a very high thing. And then, the one who is knowledgeable should be given importance because they will give you knowledge. That importance can be expressed in any way. You can express it by standing up, or by listening to what they say. It's up to you. We are not imposing a restriction that sitting is forbidden, nor making it mandatory to stand. But we must convey that knowledge is respectable. The teacher should not feel bad if they enter and the children don't stand. If children don't stand, it could mean two things: either they haven't yet realized your knowledge, so why should they respect you? You haven't yet delivered your knowledge to them. Or, the children are expressing their respect in some other way. So, as a teacher, you have to be prepared that you will enter and the children won't stand. And that's perfectly fine. Because you haven't taught them anything yet. They don't stand on their own. We are the ones who tell them to stand. So they stand for everyone. For any matter, they stand. When you say, "May I come in?" you are ruining their life. You have taught them that something can be done without knowing its inner meaning. There is no relation between your action and your knowledge. You have sent them in the opposite direction of what Shri Krishna taught. Shri Krishna said that self-knowledge is the source of action, and if it comes from self-knowledge, it will be desireless action. And you have said, "Just do this." By the age of 5-7, they get into the habit of living a blind life, which means doing things without understanding. Life doesn't mean first understand, then do. Life means do what everyone else is doing. This is a value system: "Just do, don't question, don't ask, don't know." And we make them do this. The child doesn't know what "history" is. You tell them, "Now we will study history." Have you told them why they should study history? The first value is to tell them why. You tell them, "Sit down, now we will recite tables." The child wants to ask, "Why should I recite the table of 3?" If they don't, you hit them with a scale. First, tell them why the table of 3 is necessary. There is no talent in quickly saying what 13 times 7 is. The talent is in asking, "Why should I know what 13 times 7 is?" The education system has prepared a product that is fit for some factory. That factory could be government, bureaucracy, a bank, or software. These are all factories. The raw material coming out of the education system is fit for a factory, where it can fit without speaking. This place (PrashantAdvait Foundation) is outside the factory system. So we don't find people for this place. There is an acute shortage of talent. We should not even talk about creativity, which is an expression of the True Self. We should just ask how much we are conditioning them.
