and then he proceeded to not teach him fire bending and just fucked of somewhere for a while even though he had succesfully evaded the fire nation soldiers that were after him.
He was teaching Aang firebending. The issue is that Aang wasn’t patient enough, which was exactly the problem. The first lesson was control, Aang ignored it and burned his friend by playing around and treating firebending like airbending.
yes, but its not like he couldnt teach that to Aang. Toph also first trained ang in the way of thinking like a earth bender before he was able to earth bend. There was no real reason not to go with these kids and help them in the quest to save the world. In my opinion atleast.
Part of what Jeong Jeong was trying to teach is "Can I trust you to be responsible without supervision? Can you be trusted to not cause harm with that which is destructive by nature, when there is no higher authority to challenge you?"
It's a very important first lesson to teach, and as much as it sucks that Katara got burned, I feel like that was important for the gravitas of the lesson to set in. We've seen what happens when a firebender is allowed free rein of their element with nobody contesting how they choose to apply it, we wouldn't have ATLA without that.
Lessons on discipline aside, he really was the best teacher that seemed at all reasonable to track down at the time. Most other firebenders, due to the militarized culture of the nation, derive their prowess from rage alone.
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u/Lower-Cancel1961 May 07 '25
"I have mastered the elements a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes. Now, I must do it once again! You WILL teach the Avatar Firebending!"