Teaching "is" brainwashing.

Every form of schooling shapes the mind. Whether it is a madrasa, Sunday school, university lecture hall, or nursery classroom, education always influences how a person thinks. In that sense, all teaching risks becoming brainwashing — not always intentionally, but naturally. Information comes with framing, and framing slowly becomes belief.

Because of this, the responsibility of a teacher is heavier than simply passing information. A good teacher does three things:

• They present the available knowledge.
• They expose learners to the range of ideas surrounding it.
• They give their own understanding honestly.

Then they step back and allow the listener to decide.

This is difficult. Most teachers want agreement. We feel successful when students echo us. Silence feels like failure, disagreement feels like rebellion, and departure feels like rejection. So we subtly pressure decisions — through authority, emotion, or belonging.

Yet there exists a model of teaching that worked in the opposite direction. Jesus consistently released people from pressure.

• He never forced commitment.
• He never pleaded for followers.
• He allowed people to walk away without chasing them.

Sometimes he even seemed to push people away.

• He told his own family that spiritual kinship mattered more than blood.
• He asked his disciples whether they also wanted to leave.
• He stopped feeding crowds when they followed only for bread.
• He confronted religious authorities instead of impressing them.

Nothing about his approach resembled someone trying to build numbers, and yet people still followed. Even more surprising, the narratives sometimes portray him responding to faith with amazement — as though belief was meaningful precisely because it was freely chosen.

That reveals something profound: persuasion is strongest where compulsion is absent. A person convinced under pressure may conform, but a person who decides freely believes. One produces followers; the other produces conviction.

This has forced me to rethink teaching itself. Perhaps the role of a teacher is not to manufacture agreement but to create space where truth can be encountered honestly. Not to secure loyalty, but to make understanding possible. Maybe real teaching succeeds not when people repeat what they were told, but when they walk away having genuinely chosen what they believe.

Strangely though, that kind of teaching requires the courage to let people leave.