Islamic teachers

I was having dinner at a Turkish place for a friends birthday and got into an interesting conversation with the owners about Islamic views of teachers.

Back home they view teachers as holy people, they are astonished at how some little brats in Hong Kong can scold teachers or treat them with limited respect. They said there is a saying in Islamic that "If a teacher can teach me one alphabet, I should be his slave for 40 years." Although this is of course an intended exaggeration but the moral of it is pretty clear: we should respect our teachers. The most interesting part of the conversation is that one guy said, despite one of his elementary school teacher being ridiculously strict and used a ruler to hit their hands when they did something wrong, he is still very thankful for him up to this day for that teacher to help him become the man he is today. Even now, whenever he goes back to Turkey, he will visit this teacher and have tea with him.

Its interesting getting to know a different culture. Thought i'd share that =)