In plain words
If the parents ask why one should do so: “We must first offer to God the food God has given, and then eat. When it is offered to God, the faults in the food go and it turns into prasāda”: so they must explain it well. Then the parents too will begin to pray. When any elders come to the house, our children must speak to them with humility and obedience. In this way, when children put into practice in daily life the good things they learnt at school, a change comes in their parents too. So first bring about a change in the children. Those very children will bring about a change in the parents.
A small example: in one house they ate meat every week. Their boy studied in our educational institution. When he went home for the holidays, his mother: “O my dear son! All year you sat in Puttaparthi and ate no meat or fish at all”, she said, and served him meat with ‘love’. Then the boy said: “Mother! I cannot do this bad thing. It is not good to kill other living beings to keep our life going. Our body is made of flesh; we should not feed it flesh in turn. We must eat pure food. We should not eat animal flesh, which breeds bad qualities and bad ways”, he said. Hearing the boy's words, the parents too gave up eating meat. I have seen many: because of the children who joined our college, their parents too gave up eating meat. In this way it is very easy to bring about a change through the students.
Question: What should we do so that parents too take an active part in the ‘Educare’ programme?
It is not possible to bring parents into this ‘Educare’ programme. Many do not know even what ‘education’ is. Then what will they understand of ‘Educare’?