After teaching for many years, I often thought of myself as a modern and up-to-date person. Never did I realize how this insidious thought would cause me to fall into the trap of mistaking a rope for a snake and running away, thinking that it would certainly bite. This kind of thinking—a syndrome of megalomania, selfishness, and foolish attachment to wealth, power, and fame—makes me tense and paranoid all day long. In everything I do, especially when it comes to grading students, I analyze and calculate to see if the process is reasonable and the result is logical. My ego and ambition were behind all of this. When I filled out students’ report cards, I would see the number of A plusses they had received in their workbooks, the number of compositions they’d written, and their average scores on tests and quizzes. I would write my remarks in the last column: if the student’s grade was 91 or above, I would write “intelligent and fond of study” or “good behavior and excellent work.” For those with grades around 70, I would write “needs to work harder” or “intelligent but does not apply himself.” For those with grades around 60, I would write “slow learner—hope parents will pay more attention,” and so on.

The worst thing was the sense of self-righteousness concealed beneath my solemn exterior: “I’m certainly a conscientious teacher. I’ve done a good job.” I always considered myself very fair and just. Several students would be grief-stricken or elated over their report cards (their “account sheets”) every year. The grades on the report cards were calculated using a system designed by experts and based on IQ tests (like patterns in a garment factory). That system has been used for many years and is supposed to be a very reliable gauge of student achievement. Actually, the traditional evaluation method was like a poisonous tumor consuming me in my mental weakness. I went along with the harmful trend; I was deluded in thinking that I was doing the right thing, that I was working for “education.” I considered myself an “experienced” teacher. How absurd!

My horrible and unfortunate ignorance harmed other people as well as myself. The report cards I handed out caused endless harm. Instead of guiding children in a good direction, it killed their interest in learning and forced them to compete for “excellence,” a word which stood for fame, position, and power. Seeing their young and innocent hearts being cut by those grades as if by a knife, my heart, which could otherwise have been soft and pure, was also wounded, especially after I heard the Master’s talks.

The world is vast and wide; all things speak the Dharma, and all dharmas are equal. Things are naturally separate, but they come together under certain conditions. The beauty of the peony is brought out only by the green leaves that surround it. Despite their prickly thorns, roses are loved by all for their dazzling beauty. Although the jasmine is not strikingly beautiful, its fragrance lingers for a long time. Each kind of flower found in Nature has its own characteristics, and none can be said to be better than the others. They bloom in different seasons, but one cannot say that they are noble or lowly, good or bad. We cannot grade the peony as “excellent” or say that the jasmine “must work harder.” When students and teachers interact, they learn from one another and exchange roles—sometimes you are the teacher, at other times the student.

The teacher-student relationship is one of mutual equality, benefit, and support. It’s a myth to think that teachers are in the position to grade students as “excellent” or “unsatisfactory.” To this day, the educational system in which grades are used to evaluate students’ achievements has produced many students with high grades but low achievement. Although such students know how to compete for good grades, their social skills and understanding of human relationships are quite poor. They don’t know how to get along well with others. Why should grades ruin the relationship between a teacher and the students? Why should students and teachers have to resort to exploitation and flattering?

The students can be regarded as mountains and the teacher as a miner or gardener. Both parties must agree before the mine can be excavated or the soil can be loosened to plant trees. It takes time, and it won’t work if only one party is willing. Instead of ordering the students to follow fixed patterns, the teacher ought to encourage them and assist them from the sidelines to become the best that they can be. “Casting out a brick and hoping to attract jade,” the teacher should cooperate with the students to help them accomplish their studies. In the educational process the teacher provides the spades, shovels, rakes, and other tools, but he or she need not give students too many instructions on how to dig, where to start, and what to dig for. The discussions that teachers and students engage in as they dig together offer the most suitable material for teaching. If a teaching activity is evaluated by letter grades or scores, it becomes no different from a business transaction. Can three kilograms of “teaching” be bought for fifty cents? Does a child’s pure, innocent wisdom cost eight dollars a pound?

How foolish I was to think of education in terms of prices! When I give a child an “A,” that “A” was actually his to begin with. When I give someone a “C” or “D,” it simply means that I myself am a slow learner and need to apply myself. The grades that I write on the report cards are just indications of my own credibility. No matter how scientifically precise the regular pattern is, can it be as natural and humane as when teacher and students learn from and help each other, advancing hand-in-hand?

Heaven creates all things, and it has its own Way. If one overemphasizes the nobility of the Way and virtue, it may backfire. The ancients taught, “When you do not value the worthy, people will not contend; when you do not treasure what is rare, people will not steal; when you do not display what is tempting, people will not become distracted.” All value judgments—good or bad, beautiful or ugly, lofty or lowly, progress or decline—arise from comparison. As the Venerable Master said, “Purity is the source of turbidity; at the extreme of stillness there is movement. The concept of good arises from the description of bad things; the concept of bad comes from comparison with good things.”

Helping others to succeed is helping oneself succeed. What makes teaching difficult is that if one goes overboard in teaching, one may say something wrong; if one does not teach a student sufficiently, one may lose him or her. If we become attached to goodness and try to get rid of evil, failing to understand that good and evil are not fixed, we may end up wondering, “Why is little Annie totally different from the way she was last week?”

The contrasting manifestations of good and evil provide us an opportunity to reflect on our cultivation; they reveal the measure of our mind—is our mind so vast and all-encompassing that it unites with the virtue of the heavens, with the brightness of the sun and moon, with the rhythm of the four seasons, and with the fortunes and misfortunes overseen by ghosts and spirits? There ought to be no difference between self and others. We ought to regard students as our teachers and friends, and humbly receive instruction from them, like a new student in kindergarten. Then a sudden change in little Annie won’t worry us; impermanence is natural, and teachers and students may exchange roles at any time.