This incident took place at a school where I was teaching. It was the graduation ceremony for the Grade 10 students. The children had arrived dressed in their finest attire, accompanied by proud parents whose faces reflected both joy and anticipation. The ceremony began with the traditional lighting of the lamp, followed by introductory speeches by the founder and the principal.
The class teacher then invited each student onto the stage, introducing them with a few words of appreciation, often sprinkled with light-hearted humour. After all the students had assembled on stage holding lit candles, they took a pledge to become responsible citizens. Finally, three students stepped forward to deliver a speech on behalf of their graduating class, expressing their thoughts about their teachers. What happened next caught everyone by surprise.
Instead of offering the customary words of gratitude, the students began speaking with an unmistakable tone of sarcasm.
Addressing one teacher, they remarked, "You often advise us to spend less time on our phones. We wish you would follow your own advice and stop using your phone during class."
Turning to their Social Science teacher, they said, "You teach us the importance of democracy, but we wish we enjoyed some of those democratic rights in your classroom as well."
Though they had said some good things about the same teachers before that sarcastic line, the latter overshadowed those positive comments and ended up standing out more.
They then commented on how their Physics teacher had changed several times during the academic year and that they had finally received a permanent teacher only towards the end of the course.
It was at this point that the founder walked onto the stage and asked the students to stop.
The three students were taken aside and counselled. After a brief but firm conversation, they were instructed to return to the stage and complete their speech. This time, they thanked their teachers for their guidance, encouragement, and dedication.
The speech delivered by the students felt staged, and the children were visibly uncomfortable. Their expressions of gratitude towards the teachers and the words they spoke rang hollow, as everyone had seen the founder call them aside earlier to reprimand them over their behaviour. The words they spoke no longer felt authentic. They reminded me of a censored narrative—one in which the original voice had been replaced by something safer and more acceptable. The entire episode came across as a caricature—almost laughable. It reminded me of sections of the media that simply read from a government's script, much like what was happening in our country at the time.
For a long time afterwards, I found myself reflecting on the incident. I remember teachers sitting in stunned silence, a few visibly emotional. Some parents appeared shocked, while others wore faint smiles that suggested they did not quite know how to react. The Grade 9 students watched the entire episode unfold, probably wondering what exactly they had just witnessed.
At first, the management's intervention seemed justified. After all, they had a ceremony to protect, teachers to respect, and an atmosphere to preserve. But the more I thought about it, the more uncertain I became. Had they done the right thing by silencing the students midway? Was censoring their speech the best way to respond? Could this have been dealt with in a better way?
I never found a definite answer. With time, the incident faded into the background of my memory, and life moved on. About a year later, however, another incident in the classroom brought all those questions rushing back.
About a year later, I attended a Socratic seminar conducted by a Social Science teacher for a Grade 10 class. Although I taught French to only twelve of the thirty students, I was well known to the rest because I was also their co-class teacher. Curious about the session, I decided to sit in and observe.
The seminar was not going as smoothly as the teacher had hoped. A few boys seated at one corner of the classroom were engaged in side conversations and occasionally disrupted the discussion. Such behaviour was not unusual in a class of adolescents, but on that day the teacher seemed particularly uncomfortable, perhaps because another teacher was observing her class.
Looking at me with visible frustration, she asked loudly, "Sir, do they behave like this in your class as well?"
I smiled but chose not to answer.
A few moments later, one of the girls approached me. She was not a French student, but I knew her well.
"Sir," she said, "why didn't you answer ma'am? At least you could have stood up for your students. We are not so ill-mannered like it is made to sound.”
Her question caught me completely off guard.
I do not remember my exact reply, but I tried to explain that I had deliberately remained silent. The more I reflected on it, however, the less convincing my explanation sounded. Silence, after all, is often interpreted as agreement. By saying nothing, I had unintentionally allowed the teacher's remark to stand unchallenged.
Teachers complain about student behaviour all the time. Managing a classroom before one can even begin teaching is a demanding task. Controlling thirty adolescents, each with a different personality and attention span, is never easy. Side conversations are inevitable, and gently bringing students back to the lesson is a skill every teacher develops through experience. Naturally, there are moments when frustration gets the better of us.
Knowing this, I had viewed the incident entirely from the teacher's perspective. I understood that she was embarrassed by the disruptions in front of another colleague, and I did not want to make her feel even more uncomfortable by contradicting her in that moment. What I had failed to consider was the students' perspective.
The students had expected me to stand up for them. My own French classes were much smaller and generally easier to manage, so I knew that the comparison was not entirely fair. To me, the teacher's outburst had seemed insignificant—a momentary expression of frustration. But at least one student had experienced it very differently. She felt that the class had been unfairly judged in front of another teacher.
Although I thought she was reading too much into the situation, I also realised that her feelings were genuine. My silence had affected her, and I needed to address that. More importantly, I wanted both the students and the teacher to understand each other's perspectives. At the end of the seminar, the class gathered to discuss the session. It seemed like the right moment to revisit the incident.
I first narrated what had happened after the teacher's question and how one of the students had approached me about my silence. Then I turned to the teacher and said with a smile, "Let me answer your question now, ma'am. No, the students do not behave like this in my French classes." The class smiled. Before anyone could misunderstand my response, I continued.
I explained to the students that they had interpreted the teacher's remark far too personally. It was not a sweeping judgement about their character. It was simply an emotional reaction from a teacher deeply invested in the seminar she had prepared. I reminded them that we had often discussed in the staff room how passionately she taught the subject. When students appeared disengaged, her disappointment naturally surfaced.
The teacher nodded in agreement and clarified that she had never intended to insult the class. I walked out of that classroom feeling relieved.
By acknowledging the students' feelings, I corrected my earlier silence. At the same time, I helped them understand the teacher's perspective instead of allowing resentment to grow. Looking back, I realised that I had learnt something important that day: whenever conflict arises between adults and children, understanding rarely comes from choosing one side over the other. It comes from helping each side see the other's point of view.
That experience immediately brought back the memories of the graduation ceremony from the previous year. I began wondering whether that situation, too, could have been handled in a way that encouraged understanding instead of merely enforcing authority. The incident at the seminar made me revisit the events of the graduation ceremony.
When the students criticised the first few teachers, the management remained silent. It was only after they commented on the repeated change of Physics teachers that the founder intervened and stopped the speech. Several teachers later pointed out this sequence of events to me. By then, however, much of the damage had already been done.
That made me wonder whether interrupting the students halfway had achieved anything meaningful. Had we prevented them from learning from their own mistake?
Children today belong to a generation that has grown up with unprecedented access to information. They are exposed to a diversity of opinions, cultures, and ideas that previous generations could scarcely imagine. Whether we call them Generation Z or Generation Alpha, they are far more likely to question authority than simply accept it.
They do not learn merely from the speeches we deliver or the values we proclaim. They learn by observing how we behave. They notice inconsistencies. They recognise hypocrisy with surprising ease. Consequently, teachers can no longer rely solely on the authority that their position commands. Respect has to be earned through authenticity.
A teacher need not know everything. Nor is a teacher expected to be perfect. Students are remarkably forgiving of genuine human imperfections. What they find difficult to accept is hypocrisy—when adults preach one set of values but practise another. Trust between a teacher and a student is built slowly but can be damaged by seemingly insignificant actions.
Sometimes that loss of trust is not dramatic. There are no arguments or confrontations. Students simply disengage. Once that happens, rebuilding the relationship becomes far more difficult.
That is why I believe mistakes should not be hidden or defended. If a teacher has made an error, acknowledging it often becomes a more powerful lesson than pretending it never happened. Likewise, when students make mistakes, they too should be allowed to recognise and understand the consequences of their actions.
Looking back, I think the graduation ceremony presented exactly such an opportunity.
Ideally, the management could have reviewed the students' speech beforehand. But once the speech had already begun, the situation had changed. Interrupting it midway shifted the focus away from what the students had said and towards the authority that had silenced them. Perhaps a better approach would have been to let them finish.
The management could then have addressed the audience, acknowledged the students' concerns, and also explained where their criticism had been unfair or immature. They could have reminded the graduating class that gratitude and criticism are not mutually exclusive, and that expressing disappointment carries with it a responsibility to be fair and respectful. Moreover, sharing personal feedback in a public forum is rarely the most effective approach.
Such a response would undoubtedly have been uncomfortable. Some teachers might have felt embarrassed, and the institution's reputation may have taken a temporary dent. Yet it would also have demonstrated confidence—the confidence to engage with criticism rather than suppress it.
More importantly, it would have allowed the students to experience something invaluable: self-realisation. Lessons imposed through authority are often forgotten. Lessons discovered through reflection tend to stay with us for life. While reflecting on the graduation ceremony, I was reminded of an incident from my corporate days.
On the day our division was spun off from the parent company, a town hall meeting was organised. A few employees who were leaving the company were invited to share their thoughts. One of my close friends took the stage. None of us knew what he was about to say. Instead of delivering the customary farewell speech, he spoke candidly about the company's policies, making several sarcastic remarks about the organisation and some of its senior leaders. At first, everyone laughed. His observations were witty, and many of us found them amusing. But as the speech continued, the atmosphere gradually became uncomfortable. What had begun as humour slowly turned into ridicule. When he finished, the Vice President walked onto the stage.
He did not interrupt the speech. He did not ask my friend to leave the podium, nor did he attempt to silence him. Instead, he calmly addressed many of the points that had been raised. He explained the rationale behind certain company policies and respectfully disagreed with several criticisms. By the end of his response, many of us had begun to view my friend's speech differently. We realised that while some of his concerns were valid, others had overlooked important realities. No authority had been imposed. No censorship had taken place. Learning had happened. That incident stayed with me because it demonstrated a quiet confidence. The organisation trusted that ideas could be challenged through reason rather than through power. Perhaps that is what we should aspire to as educators as well.
Children need boundaries, but they also need opportunities to think, question, make mistakes, and sometimes even embarrass themselves. If adults intervene every time a mistake is about to unfold, we may preserve order, but we also deny children the chance to understand the consequences of their own actions. Real learning often begins where authority ends.
The role of a teacher is therefore not merely to correct behaviour but to cultivate judgement. Sometimes that means stepping in firmly. At other times, it means resisting the temptation to intervene too quickly and allowing experience itself to become the teacher.
Looking back, I still do not know whether allowing the graduation speech to continue would have been the perfect decision. Perhaps it would have created greater discomfort. Perhaps it would have hurt more teachers. There is no way of knowing. What I do know is that stopping the students midway prevented something equally valuable—the possibility that they might have recognised the limitations of their own criticism when it was answered with patience instead of authority.
Education is not about winning an argument. It is about nurturing the ability to examine one's own beliefs. The older I grow, the more convinced I become that young people do not expect adults to be flawless. They expect us to be honest. They can forgive mistakes far more readily than they can forgive pretence. Our responsibility, therefore, is not to stand above the next generation but beside them—to offer experience without arrogance, guidance without domination, and correction without humiliation.
Every generation inherits the wisdom of those who came before it, but it also sees the world through new eyes. Progress happens when experience and youthful energy work together, not when one seeks to silence the other.
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