Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in and

the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding line, and no way of knowing how near the harbor was. Light! Give me light! was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour - Helen Keller These soulful words of HELEN KELLER, touch the very horizons of our mind, and make us step beyond them, and then look back.. how we crossed our horizons, broadened them actually.. a little more wide, a little more encapsulating. Practically, we call this the learning process. Every time a thought reaches us, it breaks boundaries. Broadening our aptitude, our vision, our mind and our LIFE! Learning has become such a natural process for us that we have almost underestimated its importance, so much so that it has become an almost unconscious process for us, nevertheless the most important one after breathing. With every breath we take.. we learn. They teach us, guide us, correct us, lead us on the right path, push us when we go astray, punish us when we wrong and appreciate us when we do the right. Jawaharlal Nehru once said- industry and dams are the temples of modern India But I would rather disagree with him- before the industries and dams come education and learning. the institutions of education and learning are the temples of modern India What teachers do and say are being absorbed by young minds who will echo these images across the ages. Their lessons will be immortal, affecting people yet unborn, people they will never see or know. The future of the world is in thier classroom today, a future with the potential for good or bad. The pliable minds of tomorrow's leaders will be molded either artistically or grotesquely by what they do. Several future presidents are learning from them today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy. the importance of the teacher or the guru is even mentioned in our Rig-Veda, Vedas and other spiritual texts. The social fact of education is not new, its generations old. The life span in vedic India was divided in 4 parts, each of 25 years. These were called Ashrams.

These ashrams were named following:

Brahmcharya Ashram - Celebacy, Education Grihasth Ashram - Matrimony Vanprastha Ashrama - Social Sanyas Ashrama Meditation If 25 years of our life have to be devoted to education, in the companionship of our guru, we want no other proof to tell us the importance of teaching or our teachers! Our ancestors gifted us these temples, it is upon us to retain them