33 years later

I was invited by one of my students to attend a reunion dinner and gathering on Sat 7th Dec. and was told he belonged to the 1980 batch of students.33 years ago I was the principal and they were my students.Something to really look forward to as I have not seen them since they left school . The whole class almost turned up , from Australia , Hong Kong and all over Malaysia though there was a good number from KL itself.The boys did a great job organising the function and I was pleasantly pleased to see how well most of them turned out.There were engineers, lawyers, businessmen and professionals. I told them though there are successful in their respective fields they have to look at themselves deeply and ask if they are successful as individuals or as a person. I was amazed at how good their memory is and one boy said " Sir, you caned me twice, and I felt no resentment as I knew you were doing your job and I was really naughty ".Then he said something which touched me " I must thank you because after the second caning I told myself I would change , and I did exactly that.And that is one of the reasons I'm here today.He is a successful garment manufacturer with factories in Vietnam, Cambodia and he even set up factories in parts of Africa. That is our reward for being teachers and seeing the kids you taught turning out to be real good products really makes us teachers happy.In school I always drummed into my students heads that they must be " academically sound and morally strong " and throughout my teaching career I have held on to this objective and I wanted my boys to turn out to be that and seeing some of them I realize that we have in a certain way achieved this objective.Our students are doing well in their careers and above all have the moralistic training which we gave them instilled into them.It was well manifested that night as they remember us , their teachers and rally went the extra mile to bring us there.As one of them put it " Sir we want to show the teachers how much we value what they gave us ... an education which has made us what we are today. I wonder how many of today's teachers know how important their work is !