Sad day

Today was a day of mixed blessings for my kids. Princess Sleepyhead got her mug (very briefly) on TV as part of the massed choir in "Thank God you're here". You had to really know where she was standing to see her though. But as a counterpoint to her excitement, today was the day her singing teacher had to leave Australia because the good people at the Immigration Department wouldn't give her permanent residency. She's been teaching here for years, has a house and car and a thriving business, but because she's in her late 50s and doesn't have much cash behind her they refused. Now this is someone with a thriving business that she operates at home (giving singing, piano and violin lessons) and that she could potentially run for years, not someone who's out of a job and on the dole.

It's particularly sad for us because singing is Princess Sleepyhead's real talent, and this teacher was making an enormous difference to her singing. This teacher came from Eastern Europe and had run an opera company in South Africa (where she has now been forced to return) but the good people in Immigration said you don't need such experience and qualifications to teach singing to the general public. Let them come and try to organise lessons in the western suburbs. There is diddly squat out here in the way of teachers able to teach this style -- or at least diddly squat that we've been able to find. At one stage, before we found this teacher, we tried one of the popular singing schools and found it was just about that: pop, and much as PS loves this kind of music, she doesn't sing it well. And the teacher there knew nothing about classical techniques, how to breathe, all of that kind of stuff.

As it happens, PS does have a very good singing teacher at her school, but, because PS has ADD, she can't really afford to miss out on other classes to have private singing lessons, especially when she's already missing classes for literacy support, and when she's not good at catching up on the work she's missed.

When we heard what was happening to PS's singing teacher, we wrote a letter of support -- a very strongly worded letter of support, I thought -- to the said dept, but didn't even score a reply. Not even a thank-you-for-your-letter-and-we'll-take-it-under-consideration. Don't you love bureacrats? At the moment two of my friends have been tied up fighting bureacracy over things they shouldn't have to fight for. People end up paying thousands of dollars more than they should to get past all this red tape. Sometimes you wonder how much humanity these depts/councils show -- do they think about the spill-on effects on other people's lives? My daughter is disappointed and sad and doesn't understand why such a great teacher has been sent away. We've spoken to other parents, and both they and their children feel the same way. What the dept may not realise is that you might not need such experience and skill to teach singing to the general public, but by God you can see the difference that such experience makes. Today we are sad, and Australia is just a little bit poorer.