Job Discussion Forums

[jwbhomer]

Tom Chambers is...or was...a teacher at Sheng Da College. He has put together an amazing collection of pictures and narrative on his website: http://shengdacollege.tomrchambers.com/ There are literally hundreds of photos, most with captions, and they give an excellent flavour of what it's like to live in and travel around China, with some glimpses of life at the college as well. From what I can see in the pictures, the facilities at Sheng Da College are about average for China, so newbies wondering what classrooms are like can have a look. This is the best online photo album I've ever seen, well worth a look.

[HunanForeignGuy]

Yes, to the previous poster, he has done that...

But what you do not know, perhaps because you were not in China at the time, was that last year,

almost at this very moment, Sheng Da College was the scene of some of the worst student riots that have happened in China in the last 50 years. The riots went on unabated for nearly three days, if not more, day and night, while Beijing hesitated on whether to call in the army or not. The rioters had cowered and burnt the local police into submission and destroyed a good part of the campus as well as the part of the city in which Sheng Da College is located. In the end, the Riot Squad was sent into control the outbreak but news as to casualties if any, etc., etc., was not made public. The devastation that the rioting students caused was widely shown on Chinese television, as well as on overseas television, and it surely shocked me as it did other persons.

Sheng Da College had tried to affiliate itself with a very prestigious university in the province and this had lasted for a while as long as, I suppose, the money flowed and it flowed enough. However, at one time, something happened and this affiliation was terminated. The students, the majority of whom come from very, very poor families and which families were paying exorbitant tuition fees for a now-worthless degree, became enraged. And so they rioted, or that was the pretext. In any case, the rioting was extremely disruptive and it quite sullied the name of Sheng Da College.

It is true that the campus is quite nicely manicured and tended to. The buildings are nice, etc., etc. It looks like a nice very private college -- which it is. When, however, the affiliation with a far more prestigious university was terminated, problems set in.

[clark.w.griswald]

[HunanForeignGuy]

[clark.w.griswald]

[HunanForeignGuy]

[TravellingAround]

[HunanForeignGuy]

Tom's "glowing" account of life at Sheng Da College came out a few weeks after all the "smoke had cleared"...literally...

And more than that...

At one point, he was advertising himself as the "recruiting agent" for Sheng Da College...

How do I know this? He picked my information up off the Internet and sent me an email, explaining his role as "foreign recruiting agent", "working directly with the College" and was attempting to engage foreign teachers for that very semester of the riot (I presumed many had run away) as well as for last semester. The pay and hours were nothing great...and when I raised the issue of the riots...I received no further emails from him.

So I simply do not believe that this is a completely disinterested posting. IMHO someone at the College sent out an appeal to him, the way they do things here, and he responded in kind.

All of this being said, his emails were kind, rather not informative, and very vague on the riot issue -- which is why I continue to bring this issue home here.

From what I understand, the issues are not in abeyance but rather are still smoldering. I would not want to be caught in a teacher's apartment at Cheng Da in the middle of a riot with crazed students on one side and a vengeful riot brigade on the other.

[clark.w.griswald]

Oh here we go again calling my motives into question

I have not stated nor suggested that Shengda is or is not a good school to work at. I have merely pointed out that the demonstrations you refer to in your earlier post were not restricted to this school and were in fact more widespread having occured at a number of schools for exactly the same reasons - a change in government policy. As such I don't see them as being an indication of the worth of the school.

If you are suggesting that they only occured at Shengda and that this is an indication that this school should be avoided then I would be happy to discuss this? If however you agree that demonstrations were had at other schools for the same reasons that they were had at Shengda then I suppose we have said enough on the subject.

[cj750]

[vikdk]

Riot or no riot - what's obvious about the website (see OP) is that this teacher is no ordinary FT - but a teaching expert who has gained through his vast experience a particular expertise of teaching EFL within Asia (his resume states he first started teaching in the USA in 1979). To put his Sheng Da experience up as a typical example of the FT and the type of learning environment that's created by the FT in the Chinese classroom is like trying to persuade someone that a Ferrari is a typical car and that you drive it at 150mph down a farm track.
So newbies when looking at this site remember that being a good China FT has something to do with knowing your trade. And even though some of the recruiters who use this forum try to tell us all that is needed to do an effective teaching job in china is a good character and a ability to talk English - I'm sure most of us will agree that the website refered to by the OP indicates a far different reality

OHHH and the Sheng Da riot - nearly forgot about that - here's an article about that from no less a publication than the Economist - which indicates its scale and importance!!!!!
http://economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7279166

[HunanForeignGuy]

To Vikdk:

Thank you for the link to the article which confirms everything that I had written previously, i.e, that it was the worst riot in a decade. The Chinese press did not portray the students as the overpriviledged but rather as the underprivileged.

To Clark:

At it again. This was not a demonstration as you so laconically wrote. See, please, the article to which Vikdk refers. Read it carefully.


To the OP:

Great guidebook, I am sure.

http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/China/index.pl?index=0?read=40102


This is the first URL that listed Tom as some kind of a promoter of the college.

And there have many, many others, including those that Tom posted directly on that site as recruiter for Sheng Da.

I am not downplaying the value of his brochure. I am just questioning whether or not it is a "soft-sell" in an attempt to counter a disastrous situation.

[TravellingAround]

[TravellingAround]