Male Teacher

[Qwerty80]

My daughter is 5 this year. It is my husband and my dream for our child to learn piano. We got a 2nd hand piano recently. I contacted a piano agent, we discussed about the fees and reached an agreement about the lesson. She said she will sent a piano teacher down. I did not ask about who is it.
On the lesson day, I a male Indian man knocked on my door. I thought he was a sales man, but later he introduced himself as a piano teacher. I was confused to allow him in or not, but I allowed him in as my mother in law was around.
We were taken aback, as we were expecting a Chinese female teacher.
He was alright with my daughter. He introduced himself and explained about the lessons and books needed.
My mother in law and myself were abit nervous. We were just sitting right behind my daughter. My agent just called, and asked if we want to continue with the lessons, I am not sure how to answer. I do not want to sound racist or discriminate against him. My mother in law cares for my daughter most of the time as I am at work. She is just not comfortable with him.
How can I go on ?

 

[frog]

See, your experience underscores the difficulties the "minorities" faces in most places, in this case, when looking for a job. You are likely to be less "discriminative" if you had been a minority yourself - i.e. study or worked in a foreign country. Children, however, are generally more "forgiving" as skin colour are transparent to them. A person is a person, regardless of race or gender. The same cannot be said about our parents (my own included!).

Most importantly, is your child comfortable with him? If you are worried, you can ask for more referees (i.e. from other parents, from his ex-teachers, etc) and you can make sure that someone is always at home when the teacher comes to teach. We need to play an ACTIVE ROLE to teach our children that "bad guys" comes in all shapes and sizes, gender, skin colour, or nationality. We need to find the good beyond the skin colour and gender, and we need to learn to see the bad regardless as well. It is a good opportunity for your family and to teach the little one to be INCLUSIVE. A small action like this may have a long term impact on your kid(s). Remember, everyone is someone else's precious child, regardless of background. How it would pain you if your child is discriminated against will pain others, too.

And of course, just because you get a Chinese teacher doesn't necessarily means this person is an angel - "bad" comes in various shapes and sizes these days!

Add: Gender and race diversity can actually be a very healthy part of growing up, learning, and exposure for young children. I would love to see more male teachers in Singapore, including childcare teachers. If only the society would not be so stereotyping.

 

[Jane_lim]

It's probably the gender, not the race.. I believe your mother-in-law would be more relaxed if the teacher is female regardless the race.

 

[dinky7]

It is the personal business and freedom of everyone whether they are comfortable with any race or more comfortable with any race or not. I can't stand those movements and propaganda that try to dictate our thoughts, opinions, views, our personal choices, trying to persecute anybody who does not want interracial marriage for themselves, all the subtle BS, I guess it is part of the communistic government of SG which disrespects human rights and individualism, something that was seeded by LKY.

 

[timmerin]

well i m biased against the gender too. not the race. i learnt piano and my teacher would hold my hands/teach me certain finger techniques with her touching my hands. i will not b comfortable with my daughter having a male teacher on a 1 to 1 basis. better to play extra safe.

 

[timmerin]

imagine ur daughter is now 5 yrs old but piano lessons can b long term till secondary school if she is indeed interested and wants to pursue diploma after grade 8. that male teacher could potentially be sitting beside her for 1 hr every week till her teens unsupervised. that's a scary thought for me. unless the studio has glass walls. some ppl like me are not comfortable but some are ok. depends on individual

 

[dinky7]

well i m biased against the gender too. not the race. i learnt piano and my teacher would hold my hands/teach me certain finger techniques with her touching my hands. i will not b comfortable with my daughter having a male teacher on a 1 to 1 basis. better to play extra safe.

Yes and that is my exactly point. Everyone has the rights to have our own preferences for BOTH gender, race, anything, whether for employees, marriage partners, friends, people we hire, people we want in our homes! It is OUR rights, our thoughts.
It is about individual rights and independent thought. It is only the brainwashing of the Lee propaganda in his evil dictatorship that made people forget that independent thought is a human right.

Its my ^&*$%ing rights to prefer who I want for anything.