The art
of cheating
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When
Gandhi was giving his first year high school examination. Mr Giles,
an Education Inspector came on an inspection to his school.
He gave the students five words to write as a spelling exercise. One
of the words was 'Kettle'. Gandhi misspelt it. A teacher who was
present in the class tried to prompt him with the point of his boot,
but Gandhi ignored him. He just couldn't imagine that the teacher
wanted him to copy the spelling from his neighbour's slate.
The
result was that all the boys, except Mohandas spelt every word
correctly. The teacher later tried to bring this stupidity home to
Gandhi but as he recalls in his autobiography, 'I never could learn
the art of copying'. |
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One
would expect the incident would diminish Gandhi's respect for the
teacher. But nothing of the sort happened. Gandhi said, 'I was by
nature, blind to the faults of elders. Later I came to know of many
other failings of this teacher, but my regard for him remained the
same. For I had learnt to carry out the orders of elders, not to
scan their actions.' |
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