A jar of cookies

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A jar of cookies

“Brick by brick for a castle built, chip by chip shall it may fall.”

One bright sunny morning, a social science teacher in a senior college decided to teach his students an invaluable life lesson. So he set up his classroom before any of his students had arrived, and then locked the door and waited outside. Once all his students had assembled, he informed them his intention to teach them in the college lawn that day, and took them to the college’s front lawn.

After some time he informed his students, “Today one of my friends gave me a jar of chocolate cookies and I thought I’ll share it with you, my students. Now I don’t know how many cookies are in it, for I haven’t looked inside it yet. They feel like plenty, but even if they aren’t, we will share however many there are.” Having said that, he instructed one of his students to go back to the classroom and see if the jar is alright. The student obliged and returned after having a look.

“Was the jar alright?” the teacher asked.

“Yes Sir,” the student respectfully replied.

The teacher then continued with the job of teaching them, but at regular intervals kept on sending one student to have a look at the jar. Finally when the lecture he was delivering was over, he asked the students to follow him back to the class.

Once back in the class, as all the students made themselves comfortable in their seats, the teacher finally opened the jar and looked inside. A smile developed on his face. He called the last student he had sent to have a look at the jar, and asked him to look inside and tell him, “Is this how many cookies were in there when you looked at the jar?”

The students looked inside the jar obediently, and replied, “Yes sir.”

“Thank you,” the teacher replied to him, and then called on the very first student that he had sent to have a look at the jar, and asked him the same question, “Is this how many cookies you saw were there in the jar?”

The student looked inside the jar, and an expression of shock developed on his face. But the student stepped back and replied, “Sorry Sir, I don’t remember correctly, but that might have been it.”

The teacher smiled again, and sensing that his experiment had worked finally disclosed to the student, “OK, I was doing an experiment to teach you guys a very special lesson. So don’t be afraid, and tell me the truth.”

The student, just like others, had already realized that their teacher had been setting them up for something, finally admitted, “I’m sorry Sir, I only took one.”

“Tell us; why did you decide to take one?” the teacher asked.

“I thought no one will notice,” the student replied, “And besides, I thought you were going to give it to us anyway, so it wouldn’t make a difference if I took one. There seemed to be plenty.”

The teacher laughed a bit at first, and then asked the other students, “Is this what the rest of you also thought.” And the entire class, embarrassed as they were, nodded in acceptance of their folly. The teacher then informed them, “This jar was actually almost full, and now it is halfway down.” He then showed them the jar, before proceeding towards a closet in the room where he had set up a camera to record the students’ activity.

Having showed his students the video of their stealing the cookies thinking no one was watching and no one will know, the teacher finally exclaimed, “Think of your democracy as this jar of cookies. Each time one of our generations will take away a cookie out of it, the next generation may not realize it has lost something out of the jar, but ten-fifteen generations down the line, a lot of the goodness the democracy contains, would have already been lost. And the worst part is; those generations won’t even know what they were missing out on.”

And with that he dismissed the class for the day.

Fatal Urge Carefree Kiss “Amanpreet Singh Rai”

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