Pointless to argue over colour of school shoes

WE are in a silly season – or rather a mad season. The Education Minister announced last week that schoolchildren would be required to wear black shoes starting next year.

Does it matter whether children wear white shoes or black shoes as long as they have shoes to wear? In some very poor nations, children have no shoes at all and they go barefoot.

Go and tell these poor people that we are quarrelling over what colour of shoes our children should wear and they will definitely say, “Give us your shoes, whatever colour they may be!”

Going deeper into the subject of colour, I would like to quote Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader from 1978 until 1989 when he retired, who once said: “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.” With this mindset, Deng developed China to become the second largest economy in the world today!

With the same mindset, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew developed his country from third world to first world status. So was it surprising that the United States and North Korea held their presidents’ conference in Singapore recently?

What does this tell everyone? It tells plainly that colour does not matter. Get on with the more serious issues in education like recognising the United Examination Certificate (UEC) rather than quarrelling over the colour of shoes! Get real, Pakatan Harapan leaders. Solve important issues like the national debt, 1MDB and corruption. And, most importantly, use pragmatism to make Malaysia great.

S.H. HUANG Kuala Lumpur