Poems with Educational Insights

I often wonder whether books and/or technology are the only tools for learning. Certainly not. There are many other resources, experiences, instances, which teach us life’s greatest lessons. True. Not denied. But here, I would like to throw some light on a few English poems (there could be many more. Obviously of course.) that deal in a great way with the purpose of education. Though each poem deals with one/few experience(s) but put them all together we (at least I) got the purpose of education (not exhaustive though).

The order of the poems is just random. It does not in any way show their order of importance as all are gems for me as they are quite distinct but unique in the message that they convey.

I’ll start with my favourite poem ‘Where the mind is without fear’ by Sri Rabindranath Tagore. This poem speaks about the quality of the mind that we all need to cultivate or bring about. Unfortunately, many schools, teachers resort to ‘Fear’ as the chief method to bring about discipline in school. Can we free our minds from fear and give true freedom to it. Can we allow the clear stream of reason to flow without any obstacle? Why are we destroying ourselves with narrow domestic walls?

Next poem is ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. The title of the poem is very short – just two letters. But the message it gives will be enough to last a life time. The poem tells us about the qualities that we need to instill in children and how to make them become strong ‘Men’ (applies to females as well). 

Next poem is ‘I wonder’ by Jeannie Kirby. This poem talks about the quality of questioning or enquiry that we need to inculcate in children. Unfortunately, many teachers do not like their students ask questions. They either shun them or snub them.

Poem ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost is another poem which tells us to enjoy the life but yet not stop the journey of life ….and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.

‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost is yet another powerful poem with good educational insight. We all agree that education is a creative and innovative process but still we hesitate to take risks, try something new, explore the uncharted waters and encourage the children to follow the beaten track. But the poet here shares his joy, excitement when he took the road less traveled instead of following the beaten down track.

I will conclude this short write-up with an interesting poem ‘Leisure’ by William H Davis. This poem is nearly a century old but still as aptly applicable today as it was then. The poet literally criticizes the busy life and goes on to state that the sheep or cows are far better than us. We do not have time for trees, birds, rivers, sun shine, rain and so on. What are we busy for?

I have not given the complete meaning of the poems intentionally for that might inspire you to go and enjoy the poems word to word.

My Communique to Parents - 2014-15

Paramount Academy, Kasrawad

My Communique to parents - 2013-14

Paramount Academy,Kasrawad

Communication of feelings

We have different feelings towards people we meet, work with or live with. We love a few, like a few and hate a few of them. But have we ever thought that these feelings are communicated. In fact, they are communicated at a much faster pace than the spoken words. It is also true with respect, loyalty, sincerity if you closely and seriously observe for these are all the feelings one has towards others. It can easily be observed as to whether one is confident, bold or scared with the way one talks, behaves and/or with the habits one has. It can also be observed whether the feeling is genuine or fake if one is aware and watch closely. There is a small story that I read in a book recently which to a great extent supports my belief.

There lived a saint who used to go for meditation in the mountains regularly. As he meditated, many birds would gather around him playing, chirping, singing and flying. A boy used to observe the scene everyday and approached the saint one day and said, “Swamiji, there are so many beautiful birds around you when you are meditating. In fact some of them are sitting on your shoulder and many are playing just at an arm’s length from you. Why don’t you get me a bird to play?!” The saint agreed and told the boy that he would do it the next day. As the saint sat for meditation the next day, hours passed but there was no trace of a single bird in the vicinity.

Isn’t it amazing?!

But it’s true and very true in the schools particularly. If we teach, love or care for the children overtly or superficially without deep feeling, children understand the same and the results will be mediocre.

Quotes and Thoughts on Education by Great Thinkers

The following are my favourite quotes on education which I gathered from different books, places including internet. I like them because they convey the purpose and significance of education. Hope you like them.


• Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. -Will Durant

• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. -William Butler Yeats

• The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war – Written on the board outside Military Contonment in Ranikhet

• Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character for it will become your destiny. -Frank Outlaw

• Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. -Abraham Lincoln

• The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. -Alvin Toffler

• Nine tenths of education is encouragement -Anatole France

• A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. -George Santayana

• The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. -Gloria Steinem

• A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. -Henry B. Adams

• Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. -John Dewey

• Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. -Lord Brougham

• Theories and goals of education don't matter a whit if you don't consider your students to be human beings. -Lou Ann Walker

• Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war. -Maria Montessori

• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. -Nelson Mandela

• Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. -Rabbinical saying

• Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

• It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. -Robert Green Ingersoll

• Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. -Roger Lewin

• Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach. -Rosabeth Moss Kantor

• These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future. -Vernon Cooper


• A child miseducated is a child lost. -John F. Kennedy

• The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher illustrates. The great teacher inspires. -William Arthur Ward

• It must be the aim of education to teach the citizen that he must first of all rule himself. -Winthrop A. Aldrich

• Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. -Edward M. Forster

• An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life. -Source Unknown

• I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. -Thomas Alva Edison


• Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. – Jimi Hendrix

• It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one’s doubts. - G.B.Burgin

• There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going -Thomas Edison

• A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on -John F Kennedy

• Anger is one letter away from danger -Eleanor Roosevelt

• I hear and I forget, I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius

• The greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it – Moilere

• We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are – The Talmud

• Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun – Mary Lou Cook

• No failures but low aim is criminal. -James Russell Lowell

• When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. -Lao-Tzu

• A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. -Anonymous

• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Gandhi

• Where speech will not succeed, It is better to be silent. -Guru Granth Sahib

• I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. -Bill Cosby

• To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life. -William Londen

• The impossible is often the untried. -Jim Goodwin

• He who binds himself to a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise. -William Blake

• I am realistic. I expect miracles. -Wayne Dyer

• Fearless, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more and all good things will be yours. -Swedish Proverb

• There is no greatness where there is no simplicity. -Leo Tolstoy

• After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. -Italian Proverb

• While I can run, I’ll run. While I can walk, I’ll walk. When I can only crawl, I’ll crawl. But I’ll always be moving forward. -Cavett Robert

• I’m great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. -Thomas Jefferson

• A life spent making mistakes in not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing. -George Bernard Shaw

• You do not drown by falling in the water, you drown by staying there. –Lindsay

• Son, always tell the truth. Then you will never have to remember what you said the last time. -Sam Rayburn

• If a person is constantly engaged in good actions then after sometime it becomes his habit and no amount of allurements and temptations can make him shun the virtuous path. He develops a strong character and firm belief in his convictions. -Sama Veda

• Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts.
This is the secret of success. -Swami Sivananda

A Peaceful Approach to Ensuring Discipline

We are in a dynamic world and things are changing very fast. Not only things but the way we look at things also is undergoing change. New ideas are emerging; some genuine old ideas are also being rediscovered. One such rediscovered idea is banning corporal punishment. But there is a lot of debate over this issue. Some (parents, teachers, society) are of the view that children are becoming unruly and indisciplined due to this rule as they believe in ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ philosophy. Others take a sigh of relief saying ‘My Goodness, at last we recognized it and made it a rule’.

There are a good number of parents and teachers who get really concerned at the entire gamut of reward and punishment and seek a way out of this tricky dilemma. They want a proper way of having discipline in the class and the campus without having to resort to corporal punishment.

What is discipline? Discipline for me means doing the right thing in the right way and at the right time. For this, one has to watch oneself as to what one is doing which is self discipline and thereby we understand whether we are disciplined or not.

Can discipline be ensured with harsh words and punishment? The answer is a categorical ‘No’. Then how can we achieve it? The following few points I believe will go in a long way in bringing about discipline.

Be disciplined first: Whether we are parents or teachers, let us be disciplined first. If we are punctual, honest, sincere the same can be expected from the students. Be aware of the hidden curriculum that we transact through our attitude, behavior and our personality. Let me narrate an incident from the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Once a woman came to him with her child who would not stop eating jaggery in spite of her best efforts to stop him from doing so. The Mahatma told her to come after a week. When she called on him after a week, Gandhiji told the child not to eat too much of jaggery as it would harm his digestion. Surprised, the woman asked the Mahatma why he waited for the whole week to tell this simple thing. Gandhiji replied ‘I my self was eating jaggery at that time. If I had told him not to do so, it would have had no effect on the child.’Let us stand as role models to the students.

Have caring eyes: Look at children always with love and affection. Remember looks can kill at times. Feelings are communicated much faster than the words through our body language. Whatever sweet or kind words we speak, if our feelings convey ignorance, hate, not love and care, mockery etc. it will be a futile exercise.

Respect is mutual: Often we expect that children should respect us. However, it is a two way process and more so now-a-days. Let us realize this and move. A few ways to command respect could be by giving the children academic help, playing team games with them, accompanying them on trips, understanding their emotional problems etc.

Liberal use of golden words: We all learnt in our childhood the three golden words through rhyme but unfortunately either we don’t use them or use them sparingly. Really these words ‘please’, ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ are golden and they work wonders.

Acknowledge and appreciate positive traits: Each child wants to be recognized. The urge to be recognized is universal. Don’t miss the opportunity to appreciate the good deeds or desirable behaviour of the students. Instead of nagging on the undesirable behaviour or indisciplined acts, search for the positive aspects of the child’s personality and start from there.

Make a list of consequences for acts of indiscipline: If a student is aware of the consequences of his indiscipline acts, he will think twice before indulging in such acts. It will be better if the student body is made to participate in framing the rules and consequences.

Let me quote Maulana Wahiddudin Khan from ‘The Speaking Tree’, he explains why violent methods do not work. According to him these methods give a valid reason for the other person to react or retaliate. Moreover, the attention shifts to the punisher and the punishment rather than the act committed.

The punished keeps this hurt and carries it for long and shows it in many different violent or irritating ways. That eventually increases violence thereby indiscipline. Mr. Khan also explains why the peaceful method so effective. The reason is that the peaceful method hits the conscience of a person. And when the conscience is hit, the person concerned has no option but to surrender to you.

He gives a classic example of our independence struggle which started in 1857 with a violent approach. We could not achieve it even till 1919, however from 1919 onwards the approach was different led by Gandhiji which brought us freedom in less than 30 years.

Let me compare these two approaches -peaceful as well as punishment- with two types of treatments. Peaceful approach is like ayurvedic or homoeopathy approach which brings changes without any side effects whereas punishment like allopathy shows momentary results and mostly with lot of side effects. The side effects will only increase with the increase in the dose of medicine.

Dear teaching fraternity, when Gandhiji could bring freedom without violence, can’t we bring discipline amongst students without punishment?!

Comparison, Competition and Fear - Three Misfits in Schooling.

It may sound strange and unreasonable but isn’t it true? Most of you may not accept it immediately. But pause a while and think, you will say “yes”. As an educationist, I feel that Comparison, Competition and Fear should be kept away from schooling and allow children grow in a free and friendly (but with mutually accepted rules and consequences) atmosphere where they are learning, exploring various things asking lot of questions, playing games happily without worrying for who is going to be the winner but just play their best and try to become much better at the game.

1st Misfit-Comparison: Comparison is irrelevant in schooling as there is no point of comparing the fragrance of one flower with that of another. Both are unique and both are beautiful and both have their own importance. One flower may not smell good but it may have tremendous ability to cure chronic diseases. Similarly children are talented in very many ways one may be good at singing, one may be in dance and yet another in logical ability. Swami Vivekananda said ‘Education is unfolding what is enfolded in the genes’. Let us recognize the talents in each child and nurture those talents and guide them in that direction.

2nd Misfit-Competition: Competition is to perform better than somebody or everybody. Trying to beat the other, which means you are not yourself. Education should help the children to enjoy what they are doing. If you love football play it with your heart and enjoy the game. Winning and loosing should not be the reasons for your playing. Enjoy whatever you do and the results will be astonishing. This is said beautifully in a sloka from the ‘Bhagavadgita’ to quote:
‘Karmanye Vadhikaraste, Ma phaleshou kada chana, Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani’
Most of the popular figures in various fields have not competed with anybody else but with their own self. Whatever they do its their passion and they constantly improvise their performance.

3rd Misfit-Fear: Fear should have no place in education for I feel one should be afraid only when one does something wrong. Fear of teacher, punishment only blocks the free thinking. Children are scared to ask questions. They follow the rules and norms mechanically without the knowledge of the relevance of the same. But unfortunately to get things settle quickly 'fear' as a method is resorted to but the long term consequences will be devastating. Children should have respect for the elders and teachers but they should never be scared of them. Let us remember ‘the more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war’ as said by Vijaya Laxmi Pandit in the UNO.