The piano teacher’s dilemma

A Malaysian friend, whom I got to know from a yoga class, asked me out for dinner last week. She is a piano teacher by profession, and has been teaching privately in Singapore for the last five years. Both of us got along quite well together, and shared a few common interests like yoga, organic diet and music. I noticed that she was carrying a huge case when we met. Sensing my curiosity, she told me it was a viola inside and she had just attended a lesson.

Over our organic vegetarian dinner, she revealed that she had actually stopped learning the viola for many years, and only decided to “pull it out of the closet” last week. Her reason for picking up viola again is quite interesting – she wants to find out if she should continue to “do music as a career”. She shared that she had volunteered to another friend to perform with their orchestra for an upcoming concert in August, and immediately looked up a viola tutor to fine-tune her rusty skills. Her idea seems that if she is able to stay committed to the weekly practices with the orchestra, then she would know her “direction is still in the music arena”. She is also seriously considering if she should continue to teach piano, or if she should go into a different field, like counseling or nursing, which are areas she is always keen on.

My friend’s dilemma brings to mind the principles of self-attribution, especially Bem’s self-perception theory. Social psychologists have pointed out that sometimes our own emotions, attitudes, or abilities are unclear and ambiguous to us. Rather than figuring out what we like or want by introspection, Bem argued that we receive only minimal internal cues to our attitudes. If this is the case, we must infer our own attitudes by observing our own overt behaviour. This seems to be precisely what my friend is doing. She wishes to know whether she still has a passion for music, by seeing how well she plays the viola, and how much perseverance and focus she has during her practice sessions with the orchestra.

I could also sense this principle at work in diminishing the intrinsic interest she used to have for teaching piano. She is paid quite substantially for her job, but this does not seem to give her much satisfaction lately. She complained about students who either learn too slowly, or who do not have much passion, but learn the instrument in order to attain the various grades at the behest of their parents. She said she sometimes wonders how much benefit to society she contributes as a piano teacher.

I think she could be falling victim to over-justification, which occurs when people attribute their liking for a task to the (material) rewards they obtain, rather than to their own intrinsic interest in the job. Her motivation as a piano teacher appears to have been undermined by the material gains she has made, and also by her perceived lack of aptitude in her students. I wonder if she would still feel motivated to continue her career teaching piano if her students show a great deal of interest and improvements in their skills.

I hope my friend won’t need to take too long to find the answer she is looking for.

When truth came to light

A 73-year old Austrian man had admitted to imprisoning and sexually abusing his daughter Elizabeth for 24 years in a dungeon that he built underneath his house. During the period, the daughter even gave birth to 7 of his children, 3 of whom stayed with the mother in the cellar and never saw daylight. Even his own wife is unaware of his deeds.

The truth only came to light when one of the children fell seriously ill and was admitted to hospital, but the hospital could not trace the birth record of the child. Thus the police had to appeal for the mother to come forward. It was only then that the father released his daughter and her other 2 children from the dungeon. When news of the incestuous tragedy broke, the whole country was shocked and plunged in disbelief.

The local people in the town Amstetten where the family has been living found it hard to come to terms with the horror. According to the BBC, “The town of Amstetten looks prosperous and respectable. It is full of comfortable looking cream and yellow painted houses. At this time of year their well kept gardens are full of blossoming trees and tulips. It is hard to reconcile the prettiness of the place with the cruelties which are said to have been inflicted on Elisabeth Fritzl and her family over the last quarter of a century. The police revelations have thrown this well-ordered community into confusion.”

The main questions that prick the Austrians’ conscience are probably: How could this happen in a neighbourhood where people do know each other, maybe for years, and say hello? How is such a thing still possible today and how can the authorities be duped so easily into believing the father’s story that Elizabeth disappeared 24 years ago to join a cult group and never returned home?

I personally find this news very unsettling. No doubt that the Austrian man has some underlying psychopathology (his relatives said that he ruled his household with tyranny), but it just makes me wonder how the social context and environment actually facilitated him to perpetrate his acts of terror against his daughter for so many years. I’m sure some people’s suspicion or curiosity had been aroused when he started his construction of the dungeon, or when he purchased huge loads of groceries at night, or when 3 babies started appearing on his door-step over the years, supposedly abandoned by Elizabeth. What about the technicians who helped him with the dungeon construction; what about the tenant who had been noticing strange sounds coming from below his room for 12 years; what about the neighbours, the man’s wife and other relatives? Why didn’t anyone pick up signs of peculiarity for the last 24 years?

I’m not sure if this can be termed the bystander effect or even social apathy. A simplistic answer is residents of the neighbourhood are probably too polite to be willing to meddle in other people’s business. But I find it hard to believe that nobody bothered to investigate the strange disappearance of Elizabeth and the happenings in the man’s household. How could responsibilities be so diffused in this small provincial town?