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by Malini Govinnage

Ask a parent what the most beautiful thing for him/her in this world is. She/he would perhaps say, it is "the smile on my child's face". Without stopping there, if you further asked them what the most precious thing for them is, the answer would be 'my child or children'.

So, parents try to give their children the best in everything possible, nurture them the best way they can, give them the best education by sending them to the best school they can find. This is the time of year, the parents of school going age children do their utmost to find a "good school" for their child.

In this effort, some of them may resort to any mean tactic, manoeuvring, entreating, lying or bribing. Without stopping at that they would teach the little child to lie about her/his parents, the residential address etc to prove the child's claim to the school of the parent's choice. Because, a 'good school' for a child is a partial guarantee of a secure future for him. Good education for many parents mean discipline to live in conformity with the success story, acquiring an accepted behaviour pattern, capability to move at ease in highly urbanised, society, plus a horde of certificates - educational - sports - extra curricular activities including music, painting, and dancing which are today considered more or less as status symbols rather than life skills.

They are the protective armour of one's ego, in the battle of tomorrow, when she/he is plunged into society, which is becoming more and more competitive. Parents too are in competition, preparing this outward armour for their children.

School has become a factory processing children for exams - inanimate objects going through an inanimate process, producing mechanised humans. Should this be the objective of the school?

School is the second home of a child. It is the place where a child spends most of his time during the day. Teachers are like foster parents in this second home where the child learns many things needed for his life. It is at this home he really begins to understand what life is, how it is to live in a society, to live among persons of variedstemperaments and behaviours, tolerance of persons and things which he is not in favour of, or doesn't like at all. Playing and sharing, enjoying oneself with the other children around - learning to live in a civilized society and growing into a good, sensitive human being.

It is more a moral responsibility of a teacher to nurture the growing child with right ingredients needed to be a sensitive human being - giving the child the opportunity to flower in goodness, so that he is correctly related to the people, things and ideas, and to the whole of life.

This takes place very poorly in our schools today. This inadequacy of moral guidance on the part of the teacher is partly responsible for two very obvious disastrous traits in the young school-going generations. One is, the culture of violence among school children. Schools are becoming mini-battle fields. Fights between neighbouring schools, strikes or demonstrations by children, boycotting classes and fasting have become common occurrences among urban schools and gradually spreading to suburbs and faraway places.

The other trait - fragile personalities - persons unable to take up or face challenges in life. Failure in an exam, a petty squabble with a sibling or a parent may be a good enough reason to end one's life by taking poison, jumping into a moving train or some similar drastic, hasty action or else, they become mental wrecks, very often depressed, schizophrenic and with strong suicidal tendencies they carry with them throughout their lives.

Life a parent, a teacher too has a responsibility to rescue the child from these perils and help him to blossom into a full, capable and sensitive human.

Not that there are many such teachers in society. But there may be a few.

Recently, I came across such a teacher and a wonderful school which he ran for some fifty children. In today's context, it is impossible to believe that such a school existed.

But it did. So did this wonderful teacher. Not eons ago, but in pre World War II Japan.

Of course, I met this teacher and the school in a book written by a woman who was a student at that school when she was a child. English translation of this Japanese book, 'Madogiva no Tottoichan' is 'Totto Chan - The little girl at the window'. The story in the book is about a little girl and the wonderful school she attended. This little girl is the writer herself.

Totto Chan was rejected and sent away from the first school she attended, barely one month since her entry; the class teacher could not tolerate her mischief. The teacher was of the view that Totto disturbed the other students in class. During the lessons, she would run to the class window to watch a band of musicians who used to walk past the school; she would call the other children in the class also to join her. Another day, she would call her friends to watch a couple of swallows building a nest under the eaves of the school roof. Her deeds of mischief would not end there. Once, when she was assigned to draw the Japanese flag, she drew the naval flag instead, the drawing spilling onto the surface of the desk she worked at. Anyway, she would not stop till she finished her drawing! She had spoiled the desk surface!

When the teachers could not take any more of her mischief, Totto's mother was asked to take her away. The worried mother finds another school for her. Quite different from any other school in Japan at the time the school was housed inside six old train compartments; the students in the school are the ones who were rejected from a school for some reason or the other. They were either mischief makers due to their overactive nature, or they were disabled or disfigured.

When the mother takes the child to this wonderful school, she didn't get a chance to speak to the head master first. Totto leaps forward and starts a long conversation with the head master. Greeting his new student, the head master offers her a seat and asks her to go ahead with her long, winding self introduction! She tells him, from the time they set off for the school - how they came in the train, how she asked the tickets back from the ticket collector, because she wanted to collect them, but how he refused, how beautiful her teacher in the previous school was and about the swallows' nest in the class roof, her pet dog Rocky's pranks.

The head master, would listen to her attentively, looking very much interested in her talk. No one else had taken so much interest in her talk as this headmaster. "Surely he must be a very kind person, she thinks. And, when she finds there is nothing more for her to tell him, she starts rattling on about her dress ...how mother has bought this dress for her at the last moment, because she didn't have time to sew a new dress. Though she was a good dress maker......the conversation goes on for four hours.

Making sure that the child has nothing more to say the head master gets up from his chair and extends his hand to the child. Taking her little hand he tells "from now on, you are a student of this school" and, sends mother home, consoling her not to worry about another dismissal.

Patiently listening to the child, the headmaster would show his interest in her, and make her feel that she is of some importance. "This is the headmaster in school. Of all people, she had known, he was the only person who would have the patience to listen to her to listen so attentively. He stood up before her to greet her, as she entered the room, offered her a seat, and introduced her to the new class room!

From the very first day, the school becomes the most interesting place for Totto. The head master knew each child of the school like different kinds of books he has read. Totto was mischievous, no doubt. Often, she got her clothes torn, because she loved to creep under barbed-wire fences.

Once she fell into a cess-pit in the school garden, next day, she would get buried up to the neck in a pile of mud which had been covered with sand. Totto, who had a habit of jumping onto things, just to check what it was by the feel, jumped on to the mud pile mistaking it for a mound of sand. The head master never punished or warned her for these acts. Instead, he would ask her to correct or undo what she did and say, "Totto, how good a child you are".

This is how Totto had to fill the toilet pit she emptied to look for her purse. While in the toilet she was peeping into the pit with her purse in hand. In the end, she could not find the purse. But, she was not bitter about it, or about having to fill the pit. The headmaster appreciated her tasks of refilling the pit.

"Our headmaster, Koboyashi, was a wonderful teacher. Now, as a grown-up person I realize that the activities he had planned for us in school were well thought out plans for a strong foundation of each of ours lives" writes Tetyuko Kuroyanagi in her introduction to the English translation of her book. "More, I realize that all these plans were born in his mind, more my heart is filled with gratitude for him".

The writer relates how the head master made use of methods found out by himself to make children understand certain things.

For instance, environment:

"He would take all of us under a big tree. Let us be there for a while and shows us the leaves and little branches swaying in the wind. Then, he would explain to us the relationship between the big trunk and the small twigs, would show us how the rhythm of the wind changes the movement of the branches".

At a sportsmeet in school, where all the children, including the disabled took part, Thakahashi, a disabled child wins most of the events to the amazement of every child. Very much later, as a grown up, the writer realized the secret behind 'Thakahashi's victory. The headmaster had introduced many new games, in which Thakahashi could take part and win. The teacher wanted to make Thakahashi confident and happy.

Moreover, the teacher knew that Thakahashi would not live long. The headmaster of this wonderful school, Koboyashi, was a renowned educationist in pre World War II Japan. His most profound advice to his teachers was, "Just leave the children to be with Nature. Do not interrupt their dreams. Their dreams are much longer than yours".

Once when Koboyashi came to know that a teacher had teased Thakahashi over his crooked spine, the headmaster calls the teacher alone to the school kitchen and reprimands her. (No one except two little mischief makers prying into the headmaster's activities overhear him). The headmaster saw to it that Thakahashi or any other disabled child would not be discriminated against and ensured that they too enjoyed the same benefits like other children in school. And, he wanted to protect the self-respect of the teacher as well.

Every activity for children - the simplest things like the mid-day meal or more elaborate activities such as camping, cooking, bathing in hot-water springs in the sea or creative work like, singing, writing poetry or reading in a library were planned out so meticulously by this teacher that the children took to them so easily and eagerly like fish to water.

In this little school, Koboyashi created an atmosphere for children to enjoy and be in their childhood. He gave them enough love through which they learnt to respect and to have empathy for others. He provided them an excellent education - a little in the classroom and from books, much of it he allowed them to imbibe from nature. He taught them to think and act fearlessly, and confidently.

The school lasted only eight years. It was destroyed during World War II bombing. Bombs fell in the night. So no one was at the school. The headmaster watched the school burning from afar.

The book "Madogiva no Tottoichan" was written in 1981 and translated into English in 1982. The Japanese book as well as the English translation became so popular that within sixteen months of publication, five million copies of the book were sold out. The writer, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, the mischievous Kotto chan in school, became a popular television artist in Japan.

This book conveys a message to the teachers of our time. It says: A teacher should be a human being a person full of love, compassion and creativity. She/he should be a person who is mindful not to destroy the beautiful dreams of little hearts.

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