Why Did You Bring Him?

Yes, how well I taught children! When a child came to me, I would say to his father, "Why did you bring him? Out of anguish at his memorizing and weariness at watching over him?"
If he said, "Yes, he plays in the streets, and it would be better for him to sit with the children," then I would seize child's feet, beat him in front of his father, and expel them both from the school.
If he said, "I've brought him so that you may teach him," I would say, "It will be necessary for me to beat him. I f he comes to with a cracked head or broken foot, will you say to him, "Why did he beat you?"
If he said, "Yes," I would say, "Go away. God be with you and take the boy." And if he said, "The command is yours, strike and kill as you want," and the boy heard that and saw that he had no escape and no place of refuge other than obeying the teacher that he woold not be sitting with the poor or eating hashish, nor doing anything else. - Then, if he were a boy of eight or nine years, whose eyes had not yet been opened and who knew no way of escape, and who had no thought of flight or travel or discord, he would learn whatever I said to him. I taught a child the whole of the Koran in three months in Erzerum.


Shams

"Me & Rumi" William C. Chittick - My Teaching Career