Aung Thin - Giver and Taker

Giver and taker

Being forced to do something

Needless to say, there is a big difference between asking someone else to do a job and doing it yourself.

If you think carefully about the way young students study, it is clear that they are doing it because others ask them to. However, whether they want to do it or not, or whether they are sick and have to take a lot of medicine, they are trying to learn because they know, even vaguely, that it is for their own life.

I have to share a personal experience. During the war, while I was living in a small village as a refugee, I read Vijaya and Yeh. I can't express how much I liked it. Vijaya was read so many times that I can still recite some of the lines at my age.

So, after the war, when I was preparing to take the tenth grade exam, I came across the “Vijayattha” prescribed. How happy I was. I was very happy. However, I remember that every time I picked up a book that I thought I would read for the exam, I would feel bored and unmotivated. I don’t remember it now, I noticed that it was happening to me at the time. I had to remind myself and practice that I was reading it out of obligation, so I was hesitant. I just wanted to say that all literature prescribed for the exam always faces such dangers.

Things to know, remember, and do

Regarding textbooks, I will only talk about the Burmese language that I studied. There is no doubt that the scholars who draw up, select, and prescribe the curriculum prescribe literature that contains knowledge and practice. Students also read and memorize things because they will face exams. They also bring the Agong Songtan. When I see young students in almost every house memorizing things day and night, I feel sorry for them. I also think that they have lost sight of “practice” because they are so focused on knowledge and practice for such exams.

Good manners

I would like to share a little bit from the selection of Burmese prose from the tenth grade. There is an excerpt from the late Pandita Saya U Maung Gyi, "Don't be ashamed when you learn." In that letter...

Nowadays, young students living in English schools pay a lot of attention to their clothes and often make imitations. It seems that they care more about their clothes than their education. These clothes are only things that their parents provide. They are not things that they earn with their own efforts.

The teacher wrote it in his own time. However, it is also a valuable lesson for today. With the open economy and the influx of clothes and accessories, we don't know what it means for adults like us. When I accidentally asked some students about the cost of their clothes, I was shocked and said, "Oh, my God, how much does it cost for our family to buy three or four or five things a month?" Just like in the teacher's time, there were also children competing with each other. However, they were not competing with each other's abilities, but with each other's parents. The teacher not only forbade competition, but also encouraged it. The competition he encouraged... If you compete with each other in knowledge, it is easy to learn. If you compete with each other in clothes, it will ruin your knowledge. Bragging about your clothes encourages pride. That pride is the danger of knowledge.

The teacher said that parents do not encourage competition in clothes, but rather in education. My favorite saying is: "All that is humbled in education is only for the sake of being educated and growing up."

Needless to say, these are things that should be considered and applied in one's life, not just for knowing or memorizing. However, I think that students are so focused on exams that they fail to realize that there are "things to practice" or not.

Let me show you another article.

This is an excerpt from Pei Moe Ning's "Free Time". After presenting in detail the preciousness of time and how we should use it wisely, Master Pei Moe Ning advises us to use our free time just as goldsmiths collect small gold pieces one by one. Look at the way the Master writes...

No one can deny that those who seize and use the priceless treasures of seconds and minutes will prosper more than those who hunt for food in the forest. A careless person makes a fool of himself when he is in need. He blames his own unworthy person for his unworthy actions, but since fate is powerless to help the unworthy, fate has to look on with sorrow.

When I read those letters, I remembered the young people who ventured to the mountains because they desperately wanted to be rich. I also loved the saying, “Fortune does not come to the unlucky.” The teacher wrote about those who work non-stop, without any free time... The minds of those great people are not idle, so they do not have time to think of petty and petty thoughts like other ordinary people. Since those bad thoughts do not have access to them, their minds become higher than high, higher than high, more mature than high, more mature than great, and they automatically receive the respect and homage of many.

There is no doubt that these are not just lessons to be read or memorized, but lessons to be practiced.

Giver and taker

If we look at the position of the writer and the reader, we can say that the writer is the giver and the reader is the taker. If he doesn't try, he won't get what he gives. Can the students who read and write get what the above-mentioned teachers U Maung Gyi and Pi Moe Ning give?

Since it is a prescribed text and is subject to exams, it can only stop at knowing and memorizing. I think it is not easy to reach the point of practice. The great writers gave it. In turn, the experts of the curriculum committee prescribed it and gave it. The next ones who will pass it on are the Burmese teachers.