The School Without a Bell
Story Two
Shariq Ali
Valueversity
When I arrived there for the first time, I immediately felt that something was missing.
There was silence.
There was peace.
After a few moments, I realised what it was.
There was no school bell.
Every school has a bell.
This one did not.
I stood there for a long time, looking around.
No one was running to a classroom.
No teacher was carrying a register while scolding students.
No one looked hurried.
Yet everyone was busy doing something meaningful.
A girl was baking bread in the kitchen.
Two boys were on the roof cleaning the solar panels.
Some students were watering the vegetable garden.
In one corner, a small group of students sat discussing a problem.
I wondered…
Where were the classrooms in this school?
Just then, a voice came from behind me.
“Julley, Stanzin!”
I turned around.
Sonam Wangchuk was standing there, smiling.
He had already read the surprise on my face.
“Looking for a classroom, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
He laughed.
“First, look at life. The classroom will reveal itself.”
I began walking beside him.
Along the way, he did not give a single order to anyone.
He simply asked questions.
“How much water have we stored today?”
“Are the solar batteries fully charged?”
“Is the guest room ready?”
And every answer came—not from a teacher—but from a student.
I found it remarkable.
Here, children did not simply study.
They were trusted.
At lunchtime, I picked up my plate and ate my meal.
When I finished, I left the plate where it was and started to walk away.
A boy smiled and said,
“Stanzin… everyone washes their own plate here.”
I quietly turned back.
It probably took me no more than two minutes to wash it.
But somehow, it felt as though I had learned an entirely new lesson in those two minutes.
As evening descended, golden light spread across the mountains.
I noticed that the same students I had seen cleaning the solar panels in the morning were now teaching mathematics to a small group of younger children.
I asked in surprise,
“Are they teachers?”
Sonam Wangchuk looked at me.
“No.”
“Then who are they?”
“Today, they are teaching.
Tomorrow, they will be learning.”
I kept thinking about those words for a long time.
In my old school, teachers were always teachers.
And students were always students.
Here, the wall between them seemed to have disappeared.
That night, I stood by the hostel window, looking outside.
The air was cold.
Yet inside me, I felt a strange warmth.
For the first time, I realised that education is not only what is written on the pages of a book.
Perhaps education is also…
When someone trusts you enough to place the responsibility of the kitchen in your hands one day…
The responsibility for the electrical system the next…
And the responsibility of teaching another human being the day after.
I looked up at the sky.
The stars were exactly the same.
Only I had begun to change.
And perhaps…
That was the real lesson this school had been trying to teach me all along.