Job Discussion Forums

[stillnosheep]

Bad news for you there Gimp: The free trade unions in Eastern Europe had already been smashed by the nazis before it was occupied by Soviet Russia and in Russia itself the unions had already split on ideological lines before the Revolution. Still I wouldn't have expected you to know that.

But I catch your drift. The old domino theory eh? Today free trade unions; tomorrow the Red Army marching across shinsaibashi...

Eejit!

[[email protected]]

But we digress here. None of this has any relevance to the sorry state of teachers' unions here in Japan.

[D.O.S.]

Gimp claims to have a Canadian teaching certificate and a decade of experience in Japan. I doubt both claims. But *if* they are true then he/she has dealt with two nations that have relatively strong teachers unions. No experience in places without.

I suspect 'gimp' is/was a lower level Nova management type (who perhaps tried to start his/her own school and failed).

Definately an agenda. Likely a fraud.

[wangtesol]

Okay, this might be an opportunity to address what are sometimes called "teachers unions" on this forum. This is my first attempt at collating this information, so bear with me.

Legally, a "teacher" in Japan is one who is certified under the School Education Law of Japan. Nearly all native English speaking educators in Japan do not fall under this category.

But it gets confusing since some educators are members of the Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT). This is an affiliate of the Amercian TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) organization.

However, this is just an organization calling itself a teachers organization; there are no requirements that members legally be teachers according to the laws of the land. Any person who instructs a person to learn English is deemed a "teacher" according to this organization. Their standard of what a teacher is versus the Japanese government's definition is entirely different.

Where did TESOL and JALT come from? Well, in 1966 Dr. James Alatis came out of the US Department of Education to help form TESOL (the mailing address for TESOL used to be his office address at Georgetown University). Around this time, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was created (the Cold War propaganda agency of the US government) and TESOL Departments at US universities were formed. The first one was at University of Northern Iowa (1966) which was the first institution to issue any kind of degree or certificate in TESOL.

A part of the USIA's mission was to create TESOL affiliates around the world. Alatis servied as Executive Director of TESOL for 20 years and helped to establish TESOL Greece and other affiliates. My former university supervisor, Gaies, actually helped to create JALT and TESOL Uzbekistan. He was a USIA agent who spent most of his missions in Morocco since he had some French language ability. He was quite open about it and used to have some of the information about his USIA work on his office website.

The name of the game for the USIA was to create public-diplomacy representatives, not certified teachers. If the US Department of Education tried to establish TESOL affiliates and tried to call these people "teachers" they would lose credibility, since of course, they are not legally teachers.

But if the propaganda agency USIA does it, then who cares? The USIA makes no claims of promoting certified teachers, just promoting public-diplomacy (sometimes called propaganda).

Finding information on the USIA on the web is scarce. It was folded into the US State Department in 1999 (the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs). As well, the US Smith-Mundt Act which was passed to prevent Americans from being propagandized by their own government (e.g., by USIA sub-sections such as the Voice of America) has created a grey zone in which websites which contain USIA information may or may not be illegal.

But if you look up some big names in TESOL such as past President Neil Anderson you will find their USIA English Language Specialist reports. It doesn�t take much to become a USIA agent (just an MA in TESOL and US citizenship), so, of course, not all agents know what their role is or even what the USIA is. Dr. Nancy Snow argues in Propaganda Inc. that �propaganda is as American as apple pie,� so one should not be surprised that Americans would not notice when they are propagandizing others. There is a partial list here in which you will see some big names in TESOL�
http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/e-usia/education/engteaching/specialists.htm#S

In contrast, the British government public-diplomacy efforts do not strategically use third parties like TESOL for public-diplomacy efforrts. They directly use the British Embassy and the British Council. France does the same through Alliance Francais; Germany through Goethe Institute and China via the Confucius Institute (run by the Chinese Ministry of Education). But American government deliberately uses �third party credibility� (an old marketing trick) such as universities and TESOL affiliates to spread its hegemony.

Here is what the US State Department's website says on the matter of using third parties.

[wangtesol]

double post

[wangtesol]

The teacher's strike in British Columbia had been made illegal by the government itself when it took away one of the basic rights of a union and that is to bargain collectively. (the government lost in this fight, by the way. public support for teachers was overwhelming)

I mean, if you outlaw collective bargaining, you are a piece of corporatist/fascist crap. This is the only jurisdiction in North America or Europe which has outlawed collective bargaining. The BC Teachers Union made news on Labour Start and with the International Labour Organization for being subjected to such outrageous abuse of the law.

It is great being in power in government. You can rewrite the laws willy nilly and declare anything that was legal as now being illegal. Declaring collective bargaining as illegal is just outrageous.

It is interesting that the center of the dispute in British Columbia had to do with ESL students: The government was putting more and more ESL students into a class and hiring fewer ESL teachers and assistants.

Of course, we teachers in Japan know this tactic. This is to force ESL students to go to private cram schools to learn English - to increase the private education industry market. Incidentally, Kumon is huge in Canada and another big tutoring agency, Sylvan, has the former Director of the USIA, Joseph Duffey, on its board of directors (his wife is one of the top corporate lobbyists in Washington, DC - Anne Wexler). It is kind of a loser corporation: They went bust in Asia when they opened up "Wall Street" tutoring branches. Here is at least one of the threads on Wall Street here
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewtopic.php?t=27611&highlight=

It is all about privatizing more and more of public education at the expense of the students. Corporations like Sylvan really don't care if ESL students learn and graduate - they care if their stock goes up. Whether the kid graduates is an externality - in business talk.

[eslteach555]

In a democratic society, the elected governments make the laws and the courts rule on them. The BC teachers' union were definitely the law breakers in this case and justly found to be in contempt of court.

The BC government is not my idea of a good government but people can't just break the law because they don't like it.

[wangtesol]

True. And democratic societies have sometimes been turned into to totalitarian regimes. And taking away union rights (such as the right to collective bargaining) is one of the first steps into changing a society into a more totalitarian one. Usually a more corporatist/fascist one.

[wangtesol]

Gimp/ESLteacher555 provides a good opportunity in showing newbies how to come together over a bad manager to form a union.

Regular readers can see that a small group of people (more than 3 which is all you need to form a union) have become united against the behaviour of this single person.

And that's all it takes at your workplace. If you have a manager that is pissing off a a bunch of people who know their rights, they can form a union and fight back against that manager.

http://www.nambufwc.org

[shuize]

Or you can upgrade your skills and get an even better job somewhere else without having to screw around with a union at all.

[stillnosheep]

[Glenski]

I'm surprised the moderators haven't locked or killed this thread for being so political.

Me, I'm sick that it has gone so far off topic and that nobody has answered my questions from page ONE.

I repeat...

[stillnosheep]

Kinda hard to keep politics out of a thread about a March for Migrant Workers Rights Glenski, especially when a couple of eejits (OK, 3 eejits) see the words "Workers' Rights" and immediately attempt to kick-off -perhaps goose-step-off would be more apt - a knee-jerk union bashing circle-jerk. The - errrrrh - jerks.

Why not PM Jim with your questions. He was on the March.

How's life in sunny Hokkaido. Still cold?

[angrysoba]

Stillnosheep:

Why do you keep making allusions to fascism and Nazism everytime you disagree with someone?

It is a very lazy rhetorical device to dismiss people as fascists just because they don't agree with how a union conducts itself.

[stillnosheep]

I was talking to Glenski angrynoodle. It's called humour.

And I wasn't referring to you....

but if the (jack-)boot fits......