In plain words
I hope that you will make every effort to grow in character. For this the teachers too must give due encouragement and spirit, practise it themselves, and pledge themselves to give due guidance as well.
Truly, teaching the lessons in the book is not what makes you great. From dawn to night, how their conduct is, what their manners are, what kind of study they are doing: if you put good concentration on that, that is real teaching. How they talk. How they walk. How they study, how they eat: the teachers must watch all of this. When the children eat in the hall daily, they eat the way puppies eat. Even eating is learning. That too they must teach well. You must teach them to chew well and eat, without letting any fall and without wasting the rice. They must eat as human beings eat. They must not eat as a dog eats. They must keep clean. The place where we have eaten must also be clean. Our bath rooms too must be properly clean. However clean we are outwardly, we must be just as clean inside. Only because there is no real cleanness within us is there uncleanness outside too. Reflection of inner being. Outside we put on fine, smart dresses. Inside we do not even bathe. It is very wrong; because of this, dirty thoughts all develop. Because inside it is dirty. In a healthy body healthy qualities keep being born. Our brushing of teeth too must be clean. When someone is neat and clean, we feel like talking with him ten times more. But if they go without brushing, then if he comes this way, we have to go that way. Cleanliness is the mark of health. That is why we must keep clean in every single thing. Only then does purity of citta come. If wherever you look it is filthy, can the citta stay free of filth at all? We must give the head too its due care. You must put on oil. We are students; we must be dignified, in the way one should be at that age. Not otherwise: if we go on looking at this one and that one, all imitation, we will turn out like dogs. We must not be dogs. We must be Gods. Study well. Get good marks. Worldly learning is certainly needed. But the aim must be spiritual: within that spiritual aim we must study worldly learning. Only then do we become real students. For learning, humility comes first. If there is no humility, this has nothing to do with learning. When we speak with any elders, we must speak very humbly. When there are elders about, we must walk very humbly as we walk in front of them.