With unforgiving harshness, Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto attacked teachers and educators who, as he put it, are controlling of their students and cause them irreversible damage. Rabbi Pinto said that teachers have no reason to be upset with their students. Rather than educate them in the right way, they give them pills like Ritalin to sedate them.
"Rabbis, teachers and educators who do not know how to deal with their pupils, who come to school angry and disgruntled, and let out their frustration on the students - are committing the crime of murdering their students’ souls. There is nothing as devastating," he said in a talk in front of thousands of his students. "Anyone who misbehaves gets Ritalin. They freely hand out Ritalin hoping it will give them an obedient class. It's destructive and dangerous."
Rabbi Pinto warned that, "These teachers will afterwards suffer with their own children and won’t understand why they are being punished. They must be extremely careful. There is a difference between being controlling and educating."
"A teacher should be a person that people look up to. He should be the children’s advisor leading them in the way of God. An educator who wounds the child’s soul by inflicting unkind words - has killed his soul from childhood," said Rabbi Pinto. "This breaks the child and prevents him from having a normal life. He carries mental scars into adulthood which originated from the hurt inflicted on him by teachers who didn't know how to teach. Those teachers took out on their pupils their frustrations from fights with their wives and struggles over a livelihood. It’s terrible."
"Parents need to be vigilant and probe what the teachers are doing. Education is like 'material in the hands of the creator.' If it is used wrong, it will break the children's souls. The teachers will have to answer for these souls. How many people are walking among us today who are emotionally crippled, sad, depressed, unable to get married or can’t find themselves? And it all started from the person’s childhood," he concluded.
This article was written in cooperation with Shuva Israel