To Sir, with love: how tough old ‘Pak Lau’ earned life-long respect

To Sir, with love: how tough old ‘Pak Lau’ earned life-long respect



It appears that our school teachers are also, happily or more likely unhappily, taking part in this great Covid-induced social event called the Great Resignation.

The teacher’s union recently claimed over 10,000 Malaysian teachers are taking early retirement every year. That’s similar to the number who go on mandatory retirement. That’s 20,000 teachers a year leaving the profession.

The same challenge is probably also faced by private schools. I haven’t heard anything about religious schools however. Perhaps they’re faring better during this talent shortage. Or perhaps they just don’t care about talent, or shortage.


I have some teacher friends who’re incredibly passionate and conscientious, but who’re also close to burning out with work stress. It doesn’t help that people think they only work half a day and have tons of holidays every year.

The pandemic certainly brought some new stresses to teachers. Teaching is exhausting even in the best of times, what more teaching online; given that many teachers are wives and mothers who also have to manage their families, all the stress can push some to breaking point.

But the biggest source of their stress seems to be driven by the education bureaucrats running wild.

We’ve heard of kids having to lug around heavy bags of books and study materials, but we hear less about the burden that teachers carry.

They have loads of reports, assessments, and form-filling to do, on top of setting the curriculum, tests, exams, and managing extra-curricular activities.

Much of this is unnecessary and unproductive, driven by office bureaucrats who want to look good in their KPIs and get promoted. Our hierarchical culture gives way too much power to people purely based on their position and titles, and not what they do.

We’re overdue a massive transformation driven by the belief that teachers must teach, and the system must make it easy for teachers to do that – to care, educate, nurture and impart knowledge. Everything else must be secondary.

But for their superiors at the top of the hierarchy, such changes are a scary challenge against their privileges. They’ll fight this, and they’ll likely win. The teachers are at the lowest end of these hierarchical pyramids, and nobody really cares about them.

So, chances of this changing are slim. Keep in mind that being teachers, whilst honourable, is also extremely hard for reasons mostly outside of their control.

Tough old school master ‘Pak Lau’

On a happier note, some old schoolmates related a touching story about visiting an old, retired teacher who’s not well given he’s in his eighties. I choked up a little bit reading it.

Anybody who went to the same school as I did, a boys’ residential school in Ipoh, in the 1960s to perhaps the 1980s, would know of this teacher.

He’s known simply as Pak Lau, instead of by his full name of Lau Hut Yee. In the early days “Pak” probably described the authority and the tough guy mien we saw in him very well, despite his rather small stature.

But now, we speak that name with respect and awe. We cherish him as a good person who meant so much to us when we were growing up, and who reminds us why teachers are so important.

Pak Lau taught science and even wrote the textbooks. He was specially assigned to our school by our founding principal, a true educational giant then. He never married and lived in the school quarters, and he came to mean as much to us as the school itself.

To be clear, Pak Lau was no bleeding heart namby-pamby snowflake. He was a strict disciplinarian, and we trembled when he did the Sunday morning hostel dormitory inspections.

I would usually keep until the very last minute the chore of cleaning and tidying my bed for the regular inspections. We had teachers who’d just breeze through with big smiles, but Pak Lau would inspect the dorms as if they were operating theatres.

An easy way to hide dirty laundry was to dump it onto the roof of the mosquito net. One Sunday Pak Lau caught me because my mosquito net was literally sagging and looked like a pregnant whale under its hidden load.

This sheer indiscipline (and laziness) on my part annoyed him. He asked me what would happen if the mosquito net dropped because of the heavy load. To prove his point, he grabbed one corner of the net and tugged hard.

But the corner held! He couldn’t pull it down no matter how hard he tugged. Soon we were watching his slight frame hanging from near the ceiling, unsuccessfully trying to bring down the net. It was hilarious but ended up with some typical Pak Lau punishment for our dormitory.

You can’t claim to have truly been a student of that school if you haven’t had your palms or calves wrapped with a ruler by him. While I was not a regular victim, I had the odd knock now and then, as opposed to the “Crooks” who got it all the time, while the “Bodgers”, or nerds, were generally the ones who escaped such punishment.

This amazing Chinese man, who taught for pretty much his entire career at this one school, made up of almost all Malay boys, and who was regularly a terror with the ruler, is now remembered with almost universal affection by each and every one of his former students.

We knew then, and certainly know it now, that he truly cared. He did everything within his power to help us succeed. Perhaps he saw us as his children, and perhaps that’s why we called him “Pak”.

If he were to live in KL and not in far off Taiping, I can guarantee he would have visits every day by some middle-aged Malay men coming with misty eyes to see their beloved Pak Lau.

Some of the bonds we make with our teachers last a lifetime, and get stronger as we grow older. We gloss over the unpleasant details (it hurts when you are rapped with a ruler, which is the whole point!) and remember instead their love, care and sacrifice.

In those days teachers were some of the best-educated people in society, and they certainly had many other good career options they could have chosen. It’s a sign of how things have changed that so many teachers today see their jobs as one to be taken as a last resort.

But even so, today’s teachers still make sacrifices, in a society that seems to value them less while demanding more of them, all the while conveniently blaming them for a lot of things that aren’t their fault.

I wish everyone could have a Pak Lau in their lives; such people have such an impact on how we turn out.

To Pak Lau, and to everybody else, celebrating or not, Selamat Hari Raya Maaf Zahir dan Batin, and to Pak Lau himself, many thanks and much respect and love, Sir. We will never forget you.

(P.S: At his age, it would be nice if Pak Lau becomes Atuk Lau…hint hint to some of my more celebrated and influential schoolmates…)