A teacher has to generate that energy in oneself and handle it in one’s work of educating the boys and girls who appeal to him or her. A teacher has not only to instruct but also to inspire the students; he or she has to influence the life and character of his or her students, and equip them with ideas and values which will fit them to enter the stream of national life as worthy citizens. One has to do all these things during the years they are under one’s influence in the school. You have to educate them on the need to recognize the equality of men and women in our democracy, to discard all caste exclusiveness and pride, untouchability, and communal distinctions and antagonisms, and to strengthen ‘the dignity of the individual and the unity of the nation,’ as our Constitution proclaims.
The students must be educated to become the instruments to develop an integrated nation out of our diversities. They must be made acquainted with the noble humanistic sentiments of our Constitution and impressed with the passion to translate them into socio-political realities. Your students belong to the age-group when character can be formed and national attitudes developed. You have to develop, in your students, a high character-energy a pure national awareness, a firm democratic loyalty, a dedicated social responsibility. This must be done in the context of the teaching of the other curriculum subjects. It is here that a teacher’s national responsibility finds expression. The role of a teacher is to shape the minds of younger generation. That shaping will be on positive lines; development of a scientific and humanistic attitude and temper, self-discipline, concern for other people, an ecological awareness and concern, a firm conviction that democracy thrives on tolerance, and a firm commitment ‘to break wits’ and ‘not to break heads’. To strengthen our democracy, teachers must instill into the students our ancient cultural spirit or tolerance of different opinions and viewpoints, and acquaint them with the modern wisdom expressed in the dictum of the famous French thinker, Voltaire: ‘I do not accept what you say; but I will defend with my life your right to say so.’
Whatever India will be in the next generation will depend upon what you do to your students today in the classrooms. You have to give them that sense of national loyalty and responsibility. You must help to remove from their minds whatever is negative and weakening in our past. Our past history gives us some good and some bad; we have to eliminate what is bad and strengthen what is good. Students must learn to discriminate between these two aspects of their national heritage. During education, our youth must be helped to identify and retain the positive elements and pass them on to the next generation after strengthening them with their own contributions.
[From Swamiji’s book ‘Role & Responsibility of Teachers in Building up Modern India’, A Bhavan’s Publication]

Also Read:
Sri Gurubyo Namaha
Purpose Of Education
by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan