LETTER | The people should not make a big fuss over the latest decision taken by the Ministry of Education in allowing our pupils in school to wear black shoes to class.

According to the minister, Maszlee Malik, starting from next year (2019) onwards, all students are not required to wear white shoes to school anymore.

For anyone who has been through Malaysia’s education system, you will definitely remember those white school shoes that were notoriously hard to keep clean. Sadly, a few people in the country have chosen to make a big deal out of this small matter without having any concrete and justifiable reasons at all.

According to these critics, the minister should only focus on the big issues concerning our education system such as pupil disciplinary problems, teacher’s welfare and others.

With due respect of these critics, though this step taken by the ministry is small, but the implication is very big in our country especially to the pupils in the schools themselves as well as for their parents.

As mentioned earlier, it is hard to maintain the cleanliness of the currently used white shoes due to the active lifestyle of our pupils both in academic and extra co-curricular activities.

To maintain its white beauty will also cost money as the parents need to buy shoe polish accessories to maintain the white colour or buy new ones every year thus causing an extra financial burden to the parent especially to those from poor and medium income backgrounds.

Wearing white shoes has got nothing to do with disciplining our pupils. Whatever the colour of the shoe, pupils are still obliged to be responsible and take good care of their shoes as the shoes are their property.

Why should anybody despise the colour black in the first place? Black is beautiful, the colour represents professionalism, elegance and style all which are commonly used in the world of fashion.

If those critics worry about the safety of our pupils wearing black shoes at night, then with all the technology we have today, we can add reflective stripes on these shoes for safety reasons and they will glow clearly so that everyone can see.

Thus the latest decision taken by the education ministry on this issue should be seen from the positive angle and with an open mind and not just from the political view or with narrow-mindedness for the sake of our pupils and the younger generation.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.