Malacca High 1976 Optimist Editorial

This year the Malacca High School is a hundred and fifty years old. It is a time for the school to take stock of itself - a time for reviewing our eras of change and more specifically reappraisal of our triumphs and defeats. A hundred and fifty years is a long time and within that period, the school has experienced successive changes in leadership, brilliant and leaving behind indelible marks of accomplishment and pride. Today, the Malacca High School is well-known and I am sure that the mere mention of our alma mater in any civilised part of this peninsula will result in a  flicker of recognition.

Therein lies the strength of the Malacca High School. It is this nationwide recognition of our beloved school as the premier training ground for the future citizens - this awareness of the Malacca High School as the Best that makes the school turn out outstanding men and women of calibre who will make a very big dent in their respective fields of choice. But however celebrated, a product of the Malacca High School must stand humble for he must recognise that it is the school which has given him the opportunity to make his mark in the world.

Loyalty, patriotism, a sense of duty and pride. These qualities must be inherent in the High School student. Fortunately, the spirit of our school motto ensures the preservation of these qualities. It teaches us to strive for better things. It is the spirit of betterment, of change, and of progress. All in all it is the true spirit of our own Malaysian society. Admist this complex system, the 'Optimist' has its role to play. That role must not be confined to merely to the task of providing dry cold facts as some wrongfully take the painstaking reports of activities and general events to be. Ours must be to sustain that flame of patriotism so as to instil the warmth of comradeship and togetherness, not to leave that fire to die and flicker away into cold oblivion. This must be the ultimate aim of the Optimist. Always, ours must be the duty to inspire and to enrich, to satisfy and yet to leave hungry, room for improvement.

In this case, the past issues of the Optimist have succeeded. It is my hope that this 55th issue will instil even greater depths of inspiration in the hearts of the High School student. This it must be able to do or we and all High School students will have failed. For it is their magazine, their will and their dedication which ahve brought about its publication.

AO

Converting Hard Copy to Soft Copy: Page 4 Optimist 1976