In plain words
Test, a rest:
Today, in many institutions, there are some reasons why students draw back from studying. From the 1st up to the 10th standard there are no examinations at all. Then, when the 10th standard exam comes, these children do not get through the examinations. What is the reason? For these ten years they have not even looked at a book. Whether they study or not, they send them on to the next class. Then how will children come to take any interest in their studies? Test, a rest. We must set every student a test. Only when he passes it will he too feel the enthusiasm to go forward. So we must wipe out all such crazy methods. We must give little children enthusiasm and encouragement.
Lowering the pass marks is the road to ruin:
Then, while that stands on one side, on the other side, if you get thirty marks out of a hundred, it is a pass. The government itself has given a licence for this. This is very wrong. The reason is this: if you tell a boy to do a hundred tasks and he does not do seventy of them, how can you pass him? If he makes one or two mistakes, you can forgive him. To pass someone who makes seventy mistakes and does thirty well is not the right method. It is then that a kind of discouragement sets in among students. And within those thirty marks, too, there are so many more. The Chief minister's grace marks, some; the education minister's grace marks, some; the head master's grace marks, some. Then there is no need to study at all. It is because of doing all such things that educational institutions are simply collapsing. How can students who pass like this uplift the country? You must come forward as leaders of the country. That is why we must develop a kind of enthusiasm and encouragement in such children, set proper tests, and raise the standard within the system of education to the proper level. In anything else you may show kindness and leniency, but in the matter of education you must not show kindness and leniency.
Discipline is needed.
That itself is called training. Training, training, means that one must keep on correcting. Training does not mean beating. We must tell them their faults, teach them purity, and give them due encouragement to develop in the days to come. The one who teaches what is good is the guru. Not the one who brings about what is good. Only one who has Bhakti for the guru is the true disciple. How does the disciple of today behave before the guru? Not content with smoking cigarettes himself, he offers them to the teacher, saying, 'Take one, sir.'