<B>By Shyama SOONDUR</B>

The teacher, brethren, should regard the pupil as his son/daughter. The pupil should regard the teacher as his father. Thus these two, by mutual reverence and deference joined, will achieve growth and progress... Thus reads one of the precepts bequeathed to us centuries ago by the Buddha. The teacher is assigned the highest status amongst man in almost all religions. The Vedas, among the most ancient texts of philosophy on earth, equals the teacher or guru to God himself.

By these standards, the man of Espérance-Trébuchet, currently accused of having had sex with his teenage student, would be guilty of incest. The kid, he says, was willing. But then, a kid is willing to jump from a cliff too? to see if he can fly. Do we indulge him? The teacher is worthy of reverence when he is the guarantor for ethics, virtue and morality, all of which are values that determine the overall quality of society. He is God when, like the scout, he enlightens the path of the pupil with the flame of his wisdom and experience and moulds him into a worthy human being.

Certainly, the first level of responsibility a teacher is invested with is to impart knowledge about worldly matters to his student. He thus equips the latter to fend for himself in adult life. However, neither the Buddha nor the sages who wrote the Vedas, the Torah, the Bible or the Quran, meant for teachers to stretch their sense of duty to the couch where the senses, and not the intellect, are played on.

The schoolteacher?s lap is a place to learn of values, maths and grammar. Not sex.

There is a reason to this decorum too. Children are not meant to play the games of adults. Time will come for them to learn about the pleasures of the senses and the needs of the body. Life will provide for other teachers to take them down those lanes in due time. When teachers cross the line of ethics to wrong their pupils, society takes a step backwards. Role models are shattered. Personal points of reference get blurred. A noble profession is smeared.

When teachers give in to their basic instincts, be it greed or lust, the contract of trust that binds society to them when it puts its future in their keep, is broken. Is it any wonder, then, that modern man often seems to be at a loss, chasing illusions and wreaking havoc as he moves ahead?

The man from Espérance-Trébuchet should be charged for crime against humanity. Having sex with a minor somehow seems too light an accusation for his misdeeds.