Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Steve Schertzer]

Solutions to the EFL teacher problem.

www.ajarn.com/Contris/schertzeraugust2007.htm

[Unposter]

Steve,

Let me be the first to congratulate you on a fine read. You are still arrogant as heck and a better read would have asked the Koreans to take some responsiblity for themselves but otherwise a damm fine read.

Let's hope people learn to say no when they want to.

[laogaiguk]

Funny, I was going to say the exact same thing as Unposter. There are a lot of good ideas in there, but both sides must take responsibility, not just in this situation, but any situation! Plus, like he said, your writing comes off as arrogant and smug, and might turn away the people you really want to read it before they do.

[cubanlord]

[Paji eh Wong]

Solutions. A word even Adolph Hitler couldn't sully.

[tigerbluekitty]

Nice article. I'm also tired of teachers who settle for less and allow themselves to be exploited.

[bosintang]

All I can say, is thank god I'm out of this mess in a few weeks. I really like my job, I really like teaching. But I hate being part of this money-sucking nonsense and working for people who begrudge hiring us.

I wish I had a looking glass to look in the future in about 2015 to see what's changed.

My co-teacher confided in me that the school is worried about who they're going to get for the next teacher and listed off a bunch of anedoctes about stupid native speaker tricks being passed down through the grapevine.

My question: If you're so worried, and your only hope is that the teacher doesn't rock the boat too much, why bother hiring one at all? Will it be a great failing of Korean education if a white face isn't available once a week for the 40 student classes to entertain in English?

Management at all levels of this is terrible. The people hiring don't care about anything as long as they fill their quotas. The English teachers who actually have to supervise and work with the native speakers don't want anything to do with it. The co-teaching paradigm is just a fiasco to give the appearance of control ("English instructors") when reality is that there is none. As for the supervisors in government offices, they just plug their ears and say make it happen.

Put simply, it's retarded.

[Steve Schertzer]

[The_Eyeball_Kid]

[SPINOZA]

Steve Schertzer is over 40 years old and still EFLing, for EPIK of all things. This automatically disqualifies him from any respect whatsoever.

[milkweedma]

A damn good read that perhaps is cleverly designed to provoke controversy and debate. Lots of interesting points that are delivered in an arrogant and belittling way. It's also unbalanced, rude and delivered in an insultingly personal way.
It automatically sets up a them vs us scenario which is adverserial rather than co-operatively based.
The question lacking out of the rambling is why is there not legally enforcable labour standards and strong unions here in s.k. for us as foreign teachers whether in hogwans or P.S. Until this happens the power that we do or don't have (according to personality) will always be exploited because that is the nature of Korean culture not human nature. Work standards, terms and conditions are usually legally binding and enforcable once the negotiation process has completed (for example in Aus, UK, NZ). Instead here we have a mickey mouse situation where 'interpretation and gullibility' become the important buzz words where contract and integrity were formally. Add a dash of brown nosing for remuneration increases and promotion and hierarchy structures that demand respect (dictionary meaning is admiration) and you have a bunch of nasty maipulating drunks educating the future of Korea??
Add the personal added extras of isolation, boredom, poor textbooks etc and the only reason left to be here doing this is the dosh. Grin and bear it and imagine the dosh in the bank and where i can flee to next.

[koon_taung_daeng]

[Mix1]

[Unposter]

Well, actually, there are a lot of reasons why Koreans should take responsibility for English-education in Korea.

1. It is obviously important to them so why not be responsible?
2. If you are going to actively recruit people of any degree, and then say no experience is required, it would be criminal if you did not provide a ready set curriculum and teacher training. CRIMINAL.
3. How many years of teaching experience and advanced degrees in the West do you need before you are allowed to create a curriculum?
4. If you are going to uproot young people and transport them half-way around the world to a culture that is considerably different than the one they were born in, you better provide some kind of cultural orientation. Even the U.S. Army does a better job of this than the Republic of Korea!
5. While following rules and regulations does not seem to be the Korean way, it would make their relationship and their investment in FTs better, so why not try it?

The reality is as Bosintang eluded to is that English-education in Korea is a mess. It has become mess precisely becacause Koreans have not regulated it.

In the West, we have tried to create "systems" where we can controll relative degrees of quality. You plug in the people in the system and everything should run smoothely. This is one of the purposes of a curriculum. If you have a good curriculum, you put in basically qualified people and the outcomes should be relatively the same.

But, in Korea, everything is about the cult of personality. The public school system is a failure not because the schools are bad but because they don't teach you everything you need to succeed. You need to go to the hakwon and study more. You need to have the one great teacher that will be your secret ticket to Seoul National University. It is all up to the individual. There are no systems in place to guarantee relative quality controll.

FTs come here and they are like wha...what is going on here? Either they develop ways to cope (just like Koreans) or they go home.

What is the way out of this morass? Koreans need to develop systems of quality controll? Maybe. Job training? A set of fixed rules and regulations? I don't know the answer but if I were the Korean government I would certainly be investigating ways.

[indytrucks]