Job Discussion Forums

[william wallace]

I've been in ESL China for 13 years, and in that time, my assessment of it is that it is : first and foremost a business(as an incidental business like a manicure); it masquerades as education;as in any menial job, a front-line worker with little financial compensation. Little or no input of the curricula in the big chain schools, and haphazard on the Ma-and-pa schools.

I could list over 50-75 schools during this time that were abysmal in quality, and am honestly at a loss for A school that was reasonably and honestly represented. I'm talking private schools, public Middle-Schools,universities (heck,one course I taught was accredited-and that was such a sham;I wouldn't know where to begin.)in-house(though now, the big chains send in their employees)

Is this global ESL ? Should I just suck it up ? Not once has anyone asked to me my degrees,diplomas or certs...
I've learned a lot about the inside dealings, and they are at times criminal.

I did a bit of ESL work in Thailand in 1998( introduced by a German lush) and it seemed similar to what I've experienced in Beijing.

In 1994 I worked at a ESL school in Scotland, where I was both teacher and tour guide(I had to read up before the tour - Continental Europeans)

[miski]

I knew of a guy who taught ESL in Kuwait for years- pre invasion and a bit post invasion. had everybody fooled into believeing he was an ex army captain and Oxford grad.....turned out all to be false when one hard worker actually checked his credentials!

[Sheikh N Bake]

What's the old British movie in which retirees sit around this boarding-house drawing-room in Brighton or someplace? Major So-and-So is a fraud; was actually a supply corporal in a nonprestigious regiment, but tells everybody he's Major So-and-So who fought at El Alamain and goes around saying "Dashed odd, what! I say--I mean to say, what!"

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

When I first arrived in Japan, the English teacher of one of my JHSs (not the principal, even though the the principal had been an English teacher and had far better English) contacted my universites (or rather, he contacted one of the two universities I gradutated from) to check my credentials. The fact that the Board of Education had copies of my diplomas and that I was in JET which would have meant faking local credentials was irrelevant to him (JETs paper applications are are read by local people, and the JET interview panel consists of two local people and one Japanese person). The first time through he managed to look for the teacher training at the wrong university, so of course he was told I hadn't done their TESL Certificate (there are a number of universities with year long TESL certificates in Ontario), then he told everyone at his school and the Board of Education that my certificate was a scam. After he'd done that, he finally told me that he had 'found me out'. I directed him to the actual university where I did my certificate (the one he had checked was where I did my BA, copies of the certifcates were at the BoE, so he could have just looked at it to find out where I did the TESL certificate) so he called them up too, and then he had to formally appologize for his error to the school and the board of education (but not to me). The inital checking was done after my first self introduction class when he discovered that Iam not from the US (he had been told three times previously with me standing there to see it- I already spoke some Japanese when I arrived-, I don't know how many times he was told when I wasn't around. He simply doesn't listen to people).

His problem was that I wasn't from America, for some reason he only likes Americans (he'd never talked to a Canadian before, but Canada isn't the States and so he didn't want me in his school). He was transfered a couple of years later and totally ignored his American ALT and then refused to allow the next one to even stand in the front of the class during his classes. Both of them asked me what his deal was. It turned out that it isn't only Americans that he likes. It's only American males. The two Americans that he'd worked with were females.

[tedkarma]

Schools, countries - and even cultures - are often quite limited in how they perceive education, and I think our Western perspective often doesn't fit into those molds well.

I too have seen a fair amount of flaky education about - but have always done my best to make sure the students get what they need within the structure that I needed to follow.

There are some excellent programs out there - the one I worked for in Saudi Arabia was far and away the best I have ever seen. I've worked in others that were not so well organized, but my co-workers and I turned them into rather decent programs - often in spite of the structure provided by the school.

Certainly very few programs are ideal - but not all of them s*uck. Unfortunately - China and Thailand may not be the best representatives.

Just my opinion.

[Sonnet]

Dunno if my credentials are 'oldbie' enough, but I have a few years/countries behind me...

Ja, there's always going to be a degree of business about EFL, or indeed education anywhere; you don't get anything for free. There are some truly godawful schools & programs out there, all over the world.

There are also some centres, schools & programs which are a heck of a lot better. Places which are well-organised, supportive, take better care of their employees, students & teachers, and make their money without ripping anyone off.

These places exist everywhere, even in China. You just have to be lucky enough to find 'em - they're often pretty well-hidden, in my experience.