Sriram Mohan’s Blog

Challenging the Teacher

A young man was at the end of his training, soon he would go on to be a teacher. Like all good pupils, he needed to challenge his teacher in order to develop his own way of thinking. He caught a small bird, placed it in one hand and went to see his teacher.

‘Teacher, is this bird alive or dead?’ asked the student.

The student’s plan was the following: If his teacher said ‘dead’, he would open his hand and the bird would fly away and if the answer was ‘alive’, he would crush the bird between his fingers; that way the teacher would be wrong whichever answer he gave, and the student thought he could outplay his master.

‘Teacher, is the bird alive or dead?’ he asked again.

‘My dear student, that depends on you,’ was the teacher’s reply….