White or Black shoes for school students?

Malaysiakini - On school shoes and more: My mum’s advice for Maszlee (extracts):

by FA Abdul

However, the chalk did not manage to keep my school shoes white for long. So I came up with a better plan. Instead of washing my shoes over the weekend, I began to paint shoe whitener all over my dirty school shoes and placed them under the sun together with the school shoes of my brothers (which they had scrubbed clean).

Recognising responsibility

A few weeks passed and I continued the ritual, almost getting away with it. And then, on one weekend, mum caught me red-handed while I was in the act of whitening my dirty shoes.

As punishment, I not only had to wash my own school shoes, but also those belonging to my brothers for the following few weeks.

According to Mum, the punishment wasn’t for lying, nor was it for tricking her. Instead, Mum claimed the punishment should serve as a lesson that there is no shortcut when it comes to carrying out my responsibilities.

“To solve a problem, you must recognise your share of responsibility. If you keep diverting it, you will never solve anything.”

I still remember my mum’s words clearly. They have served me as a good reminder to always prioritise my tasks and responsibilities for some 30 years.

I suppose Maszlee could benefit from my mum’s advice. While he finds his way to the hearts of a few by changing the colour of school shoes, Maszlee has not done anything substantial towards improving the standard of the education system in Malaysia.

Perhaps a punishment is due to remind him to prioritise his responsibilities and not to keep diverting attention to small matters.

Perhaps my mum needs to have a word with Maszlee.

Fatimah 

Fatimah's mum was correct, that there shouldn't be any shortcut when it comes to carrying out one's responsibilities.

I have heard on several occasions the rather so-called "clever" saying that "one should work smart, not hard". That's bullshit only for lazy people who exploit such excuses, because if one is dedicated, one should then work smart as well as hard (or diligently).

But quite frankly I am not sure of the real problem in this white-black shoes issue. It's just a longkang matter which shouldn't even reach the Minister of Education. The school headmasters should have handled it according to their discretion - they are paid to handle such small matters.

Yes, I am aware that white shoes won't stay white very long when highly agile and energetic school pupils are involved.

In my days I wore both, black and white shoes each and every week. On PT (or PE) days, which were at least 3 times a week, we wore white canvas shoes which naturally won't stay pristine white after a few minutes. They became especially grotty after a few sessions of PT including football games (soccer), softball, hockey, basketball and gymnastics. But the school expected and allowed for that and only checked on the cleanliness-whiteness of such shoes on Monday morning.

On non-PT days we wore black shoes which should be polished at least once a week, but which kaytee only did once a month, wakakaka.

We had to devote a weekend morning (every week) to cleaning our canvas shoes, usually washing, brushing and blanco-ing them white, and then drying them in the blazing Malaysian sun.

Initially I did not realise the applied whiteness would NOT appear until the canvas shoes were dried. If still wet, one could blanco and blanco non-stop but there won't appear any favourable results, until the shoes dried, wakakaka. Yes, I had an extremely WHITE pair of canvas shoes the first time - my late mum was mightily impressed, wakakaka again.

On rainy weekend mornings, well, you had bad luck, but if you washed the shoes on Saturday mornings and left them to dry indoors, they should dry out by Sunday afternoons or evenings. Moe-man-th'ai.

The white canvas shoes in my days were so cheap and simple that today's spoilt brats wouldn't be seen dead in them, wakakaka.