BE HONEST - STAND ON YOUR OWN FEET
One day, the children of Standard Four were to have a test in English. The teacher asked the children to write a few lines about their school picnic. She told the students that she would put up the best essay on the notice board. She then went out of the class.
Some of the children ran up to Sugi, the student who always stood first in English and quickly copied her essay. Seeing this, the other children did the same. One little boy Satya, decided he would not copy from Sugi. Satya's English was not very good, but he wrote a few simple sentences about the school picnic. There were many mistakes in his essay but he had done his best.
When the teacher came back, the children gave their books to her for correction. Satya did not tell the teacher about what the other children had done, because he did not want his friends to get into trouble. However, when the teacher was correcting the books that evening, she noticed that almost all the essays were the same. Guessing what had happened, she carefully went through all the books.
The next day, she came to class and gave out the books to the kids. They eagerly looked into their books to see what marks they had got. To their surprise, they found that the teacher had not given them any marks! The teacher informed the class calmly that she had selected Satya's essay as the best. It would be put up on the notice board.
Sugi and the other children were surprised. Satya was equally surprised because he was weak in English and the whole class knew it. When they asked the teacher why she had selected Satya's essay as the best one, she sternly told them that she knew that all of them had copied from Sugi.
Sugi had written the essay by himself, but he had let the other children copy from her. This was as bad as copying. Though Satya's essay had mistakes in it, it was his own independent work. So his essay would be put up on the notice board, while the others would have to do the essay again. The kids learned an important lesson that day - that one's own honest effort is worth much more than copied work however good it may be.
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