On school shoes and more: My mum’s advice for Maszlee

Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik recently announced that students will wear black school shoes instead of white ones, beginning next year. According to him, this was one of many requests received by his ministry.

Reading the news, I was reminded of my own white Pallas school shoes back when I was a primary school student in the 80s.

At the time, I had only one pair of school shoes which I had to scrub, dry and whiten over the weekend. And even then, my mum would inspect them to make sure I had done a good job.

You see, my mum had her own idea of how the school shoes should be cleaned. First, I had to rub leftover pieces of used bars of soap all over my shoes. Then, I had to leave the shoes inside a bucket for a while to allow the soap to work its magic.

And then, I’d use a plastic brush on the shoes to remove the dirt – this was the most annoying process as the stubborn dirt on my shoes used to hurt my arms so badly. After washing and drying the shoes, I’d finally apply some shoe whitener on them.

I remember asking my mum why I couldn’t throw my dirty school shoes into the washing machine like most of my friends, clearly explaining to her that technology was meant to make our lives easier.

However, Mum warned me never to do so as it could damage my canvas school shoes – and if that happened, Dad would be forced to spend money to get me a new pair.

Disliking scrubbing my school shoes, I tried my level best to keep them clean at school. However, it wasn’t easy to keep other students’ shoes away from mine. During assembly, recess and sports, there was always someone who would accidentally step over my shoes, turning them from dirty to dirtier. And then there were also some crazy friends of mine who just could not stand the sight of clean shoes. Sigh.

Not wanting to end up scrubbing my school shoes every weekend when I could be spending the time fishing with my brothers in our kampung, I began to "clean" my shoes with chalk that I took from my classroom, making sure they’d cover up the dirt pretty well. And then I’d lie to Mum that my school shoes had already been washed and whitened.

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.

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FA ABDUL is a passionate storyteller, a growing media trainer, an aspiring playwright, a regular director, a struggling producer, a self-acclaimed photographer, an expert Facebooker, a lazy blogger, a part-time queen and a full-time vainpot. - Mkini