2002-02-07 - It's YOU Who's The "Dumb" One

Back....With A Vengeance

You know what really pisses me off? Prejudice and discrimination. You know what else? Parents who teach it to their children.

Background: I teach private swimming lessons to these two sisters for 30 minutes each, once a week. These two kids, aged 3 3/4 and 5 1/2 are clearly bright children but it also doesn't help that the mother is so very pushy. They get bribes for doing things and I was instructed "no games, only strokes". Now for all you non-swimming folk, a 3 year old is supposed to be learning how to get their face wet and float on their fronts/backs not doing front and back crawl. Yet they both are super swimmers mainly owing to the fact that the mother spends tons of money on their lessons, they SHOULD be good. Among their other activities such as piano and gymnastics. Anyways, moral = pushy mother.

Well, last week the two little girls and I are sitting in the hot tub at the end of the lessons and there is another instructor in there too with her student who happens to be a teenaged boy with Down's Syndrome. The older girl of the two I teach looks at him, then turns to me and says in a very serious voice:

"My mom says that some people are born stupid, and some people are born smart like me."

I didn't even know what to say. What DO you say to that? Well, we were out of that hot tub so fast and I fumed all nite. That pisses me off. And this week, the boy walked by the mother of my two girls and she very awkwardly turned her back to him and stared at the ground.

I can't even begin to imagine these kids in the future. And why she's teaching these "smart" children such "dumb" behavior.