The Law Enforcer

The Sunday Morning Market

This morning the locals were greeted with a surprise with the council law enforcers blocking illegal parking at the Sunday morning market venue. So as usual when you are under the scrutiny of the law enforcers, you obey rules.

Likewise in school, the students obey rules when they are under the scrutiny of the discipline board and they try to be out of trouble. That's what laws are for? Actually, the school is only trying their level best to teach them to decide what is acceptable and what is not. Hopefully when they go out of the school gates they have been groomed well to secure basic values. Perhaps this is the toughest and most challenging. Even with academically inclined students we teach them to share knowledge and not to be selfish. So, it's teaching all the way.

Having being in the school for the last 17 years and with some 10 years dealing directly with student issues; good or bad; I am glad today I saw some fruits of the effort my teachers put in on some of the delinquents. A well groomed guy came up to me and called me : Cik gu ( teacher).
Oh was I surprised to see him ! This particular guy has a thick history with the school way back in the late 90s. All his siblings went to the same school as him and they were not altogether easy to handle. Not interested in academic studies, they indulged in activities that parents cringed at. But the task of the teacher is to get him back on track.The Counselors came in, the discipline teachers came in and it's hoo haa, hoo haa... oh what strategy to use?

Well, he went through the exit public exam; did not do very well. So what next? Today, he was the guy who greeted me. Am I glad to see him in his present vocation: The Law Enforcer. Congratulations to the law enforcers of the school too! Your hard work has turned the had core into what he was never meant to be. The teachers' endless effort to coax and contain him in school has produced results. It is rewarding to see him like this today. That is sustenance. At that juncture when all seemed hopeless, he turned out to be good.

Teacher : Are you married?
Law Enforcer : I have 2 children already.

Maybe, just maybe when you have a wife and children, you have just got to find food on the table and that drove him to good behavior and the present vocation. So you see the magic question does hold water : Are you able to look after your wife and children?

So teachers, we try our level best and the rest we leave to divine powers.

The law enforcer shook my hands and said: Are you still in the same school? Have you been promoted? I winked at him and said ...hahahahahaha. How else to answer?

But the law enforcer made my day; every inch worth to be a teacher whose answers to prayers may not happen today but many, many years down the road.

The Law Enforcer.