Job Discussion Forums

[Glenski]

kirez,
I'm not sure if you are with me or not on this idea of "lowering the bar". I can see both sides of the issue in what you write. I'm not particularly pleased to see this statement:

[kirez]

Letting people in with no qualifications of any sort may raise your own personal value as perceived by employers or students, but let in enough of these people (willing to accept low salaries), and your value becomes moot. Why? If an employer is willing to hire someone without experience or certifications (or actually PREFERS to), and can get away with paying a lower salary, he will, and that simply excludes you from the equation. Your "value" may be higher, but you'll just have fewer places that will consider hiring you, and this sort of mentality escalates to dangerous proportions.

There are two issues here. The first is the correlation between quality and certification or degree or some other tag that is meant to stand for quality.

The second issue is whether a company offering an inferior product or service can succeed.

If, through regulation, you can effectively lock out everyone who doesn't satisfy your condition for inclusion in the profession (the cert or degree), you can succeed even if the quality of the service provided is poor. Because the students have no alternatives! They have to go to the schools, and the schools will only hire certified teachers... so only certified teachers can work... so the student has no choice. If you're arguing for protecting the industry from "degrading quality" and you think quality can be upheld by strictly enforced hiring of ONLY certified teachers... this is the scenario you're advocating.

In such a regulated industry, the teachers could be absolute shit, but if they've gotten their cert, they'll still be employed and the students, other teachers and schools can't do shit about it because the regulation has made it more difficult to enter the profession ("barrier to entry") and thus has limited the supply. This should also drive up the average wage for teachers.

* * * *
I think I'm belaboring this too much. Excuse me. I'll speak more directly.

I disagree with you.

If a school consistently highers a lower quality teacher over the higher quality teachers, that school's teaching should suffer, and as a result, its attendance and reputation and the price it can charge for lessons.

Have you ever taught strictly private lessons on a completely at-will basis?

If you have, you know that you have to continually satisfy your students. There's absolutely zero penalty for them dropping you like a hot potato if the quality of your lessons declines.

But your position requires you to argue that students are stupid and undiscriminating, and they'll continue to buy lessons from a school that highers poor teachers (because your argument also seems to assume that certification = quality).


But I know with absolute certainty that people are not so stupid. Now, you could, a la authoritarian dictatorship or communism, create a black market in teaching by strictly enforcing some stand-in for quality like certs or degrees or party membership, and this would have definite harm and make it more expensive and possibly risky to teach and learn. But students would still seek quality, and be willing to pay for it. That black market WOULD exist.


My position? Let your scapegoat of a school hire teachers willing to work for less. And let me be his competitor!!! I can't imagine a better position to be in, than to have teachers who are WORTH MORE being turned away from employment by my competitor.


We work in a service industry where quality really makes a big difference, and students respond accordingly. Higher quality teachers will be worth higher salaries.

One of the schools I work with hired me to replace another teacher who had been charging them, let's use a fictional amount, 300 drachmas. I told them my rate was 500 drachmas. They said, this is a problem, but we'll try you out, and we have to communicate with the students and see if they're willing to pay more money for these lessons.

The way this played out, the school tried to sell me to 3 groups of students, and raised the prices of the lessons for them. The result was, only one of the three groups accepted (and have kept me for 9 months). I stuck to my guns and demanded the higher wage, and it worked. (And through some of the other students I've picked up additional private lessons.)

In this case, the school, and very directly the students, had a choice of which teacher they wanted and whether they were willing to pay more for what they perceived to be higher quality teaching.

The results contradict your position that the market only cares about price and will always choose the lowest cost option.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

I really had thought that not replying to fuzzy's or cangringo's guffaws would have helped to put this one to bed ... but then this popped up ...

[kirez]

Sheikh, my intermediate students have better reading comprehension than you do.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

After your pages and pages of waffle ... that's it? a retort more befitting a schoolgirl?

.. oh that your first efforts had been so short ...

[Deano1979]

My Gosh

I apologise for resurrecting an older thread, but some things just needed to be raised.

We have academics wanting to make entry into EFL harder when there is such a massive shortage of teachers as it is. Globalisation means we need English teachers desperately, not failed academics and eccentrics with useless degrees trying to find their place in the world. A BA = peanuts in the west. YOU KNOW THIS BEFORE YOU ENROLL.

Its ironic that they lambaste backpackers for being selfish and exploitive yet here they are trying to reduce the influx of "summer holiday TEFLers" because it affects their own value!!! Who is the real problem here?

Bottom line? A degree has little extra to offer when compared to someone who has no degree when it comes to EFL. You are teaching language not engineering or medicine. Does a BA make you more suited to teaching? OF COURSE IT DOES. Does it make you more qualified? OF COURSE IT DOES? Does it mean you will produce better results? IT DEPENDS ON THE INDIVIDUAL. This is not rocket science. You don�t need a 7 year degree to teach someone how to speak English. You dont need a 4 year degree to teach someone to speak English. You need half a brain, a little bit of patience and some training.

Developing countries are desperate for teachers, be they entry level high school graduates with some basic business experience or English Professor�s with 20 years experience. Its not up to the individuals to regulate themselves, its up to the schools to regulate the quality of their services. If schools are so desperate for teachers that they take people without degrees and certificates, WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?

Yes, I have a degree. Yes I have a CELTA. Do I see this as a career? Nope. Im backpacking the world. I have something to offer in exchange for the rent money I need. I eat their food, drink their beer, visit their museums and art galleries, go to their nightclubs and date their women.

Get over yourselves. Bunch of bitter, whinging old losers.

[naturegirl321]

Although degrees, certs and dips are important, they aren't everything, experience, dedication, willingness to learn and contacts also help. Get some books from the library and learn something about TEFL, observe some classes and start making contacts. You can always go back and study online or get a cert if you find out that you enjoy teaching.

[GF]

A lot also depends on the local laws. I work for a private high school in Estonia and the law requires a BA/BS to be allowed to teach in any primary or secondary school. If you are a non-EU citizen, then you need a degree to even get a work permit.

[Glenski]

[Deano1979]

[Glenski]