Korean Job Discussion Forums

[withnail]

Check this out from today's Korea Times:

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/12/117_58147.html

[Goon-Yang]

Check this out!

We already did this

[MHS]

I actually think it was worth a second mention. I love that this country thinks it wants to place limits on the people actually willing to teach it english.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Sadebugo1]

[nomad-ish]

i've said it before and i'll say it again, if korea wants to mandate stricter hiring practices for native english teachers they have to be prepared for 1 of 2 things to happen: (1) a significant decrease in the amount of native english teachers in korea, or (2) a need to improve the hiring package to attract more native english speakers.

i'm all for making stricter requirements for native teachers working with children or young adults in korea, but korea needs to use more foresight if they're planning on implementing this. the economy may be bad, but imo, i still think they will be strapped to find a sufficient amount of native english teachers.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Recently one of my co-workers got bounced at the end of his trial period. Why you ask? Lack of 'passion'. What could that mean? It means he was supposed to be teaching one-on-one and managed to fall asleep in class. Not the student. The teacher.

He has since moved on to his third job this calendar year.

[conbon78]

Ahhhh...the joys of education. Funny how the US has the same problems with their teachers. I agree with Korea not hiring people to teach that are either not qualified or they should provide real training. Part of their problem is their interview process. That doesn't tell if people can teach, it just tells them to come to Korea.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[ytuque]

Who will decide and by what metrics will the Koreans decide whether a foreign teacher is qualified? I have met enough Konglish speaking Korean teachers to be very suspicious that if they have input into this decision, it will be very biased. Any English test developed in Korea will also be a disaster

If I were the suspicious type, I would notice that this is occuring at the same time that there are discussions about what salary will be offered to Indian teachers coming to teach here.

http://www.[url]koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/12/117_58110.html[/url]

[BoholDiver]

Agreed 100%. Like that other poster who said he/she got 0 on a teacher's evaluation simply because he/she was leaving the school and didn't get along with the co-teacher very well. Is that person now blacklisted and unable to work anywhere else? This is straight idiocity.

What I may approve of is blacklisting people who have multiple visa violations. One of my old friends has done 2 midnight runners, and was able to get approved for his 3rd visa.

[ThingsComeAround]

[TheUrbanMyth]

Anyway it's illegal according to the Korean labor laws, so any court challenge along with a complaint to the labor board should end this nonsense.


Article 40 (Prohibition of Interference with Employment)

No one shall prepare and use secret signs or LISTS, or have communication for the purpose of interfering with employment of a worker.

(CAPITALS are mine)

And before anybody says "But TUM, it says "secret" what if they make it public?"

Then you sue them for libel. And yes it can and HAS been done by foreigners to Koreans before. Besides which it doesn't say anything about the communication being secret.

[Agent 13]

The KT article, which is both poorly organized and atrociously written (as usual), does little, if anything, to shed any light on what's actually cooking here. Perhaps one of the "incompetent" "foreigners" who may or may not end up getting the shaft from the pathetically useless educational bureaucrats should be picked up by the Korea Times to school their "reporters" on how to write in basic, idiomatic English, for starters.

By the way, has anyone noticed that not a single actual person is quoted in the "article"? Not a soul. It's as if this "reporter" got a phone call from one of his buddies over at the Ministry of Education who had overheard some other guys talking about "the new policy" while they were all standing outside the building smoking thin cigs and sipping from little cups of instant coffee. That's about it, or at least it doesn't appear the "article" contains any information beyond that which could have been gleaned from such a scenario.

In any event, it appears that this guy who's playing "reporter" as a means of practicing his English didn't actually interview anyone beyond the most cursory level - he just jotted down some notes from a quick conversation, went back through some other articles he himself had written previously on the subject of "English teachers", and cobbled together a steaming pile of crap just in time to meet his deadline. And what he submitted, as usual, was something he had written up in Korean and then hastily translated into the usual wooden, unidiomatic English that is standard fare for this joke of a "newspaper."

Regarding the "blacklist" itself, the proposal might get some traction within the public school system; it might not. However, when we're talking about effecting significant modifications to both nationwide educational standards and work visa requirements, concomitantly, that's a whole different ball of wax. First of all, two entirely separate agencies of the Central Government (The Ministry of Education and the Immigration Service) would have to coordinate their efforts and resources to make this happen. It may seem like all they have to do is flip a switch and call it good, but there are a host of legal and administrative issues they'd have to wade through to craft and implement this kind of policy. And as anyone who's ever held an official position in a major government bureaucracy can attest, things like that don't happen overnight.

My guess is that while some changes are definitely in the offing, I don't see how they're going to bar people from getting E-2 visas based solely on some "assessment" of their "performance" that's conducted by some person or group of people at a particular public school somewhere in Korea. Any such "assessment" would be entirely subjective and would inherently constitute an invitation by management to intimidate and abuse any NET whom they deem to be a "problem" for any reason whatsoever. That should be fairly obvious to anyone with even a modicum of work experience and common sense. Not that any of that would bother anyone in the Korean government - of course it would not. Nevertheless, as far as immigration law is concerned, any E-2 visa applicant who can verify to the satisfaction of the Korean government that he or she has graduated from a university, is not a criminal, and is free of AIDS is eligible for the visa. Period. If these imbecilic educational bureaucrats want to try to change immigration law just so they can mask their own incompetence by blaming "foreigners" for the failure of their woefully ineffective English educational system, good luck stirring up the hornet's nest.

Perhaps these bureaucrats should try focusing on drastically reforming and revamping their atrocious English language educational system instead of targeting "foreigners." Just an idea. They might want to start by ensuring that Korean English teachers can actually speak at least intermediate-level English and are aware of teaching methods other than Grammar Translation, which predates even the behaviorist models that were largely discredited by the early 1980s; has no theoretical basis whatsoever; and is demonstrably ineffective. They might wish to ask themselves why they're forcing Korean students to memorize and translate isolated words like "presage", which 99% of them will never actually understand or be able to (or ever have to) use in a coherent sentence, instead of focusing on getting them up to speed so they can understand, ask and and answer simple, functional questions like "Where does she live?" in real time and in a real situation, in real English. But these bureaucrats are not interested in helping students - if they were, they'd have to do some actual work.

That's what it's all about, really. And everyone knows that most of these bureaucrats are a bunch of lazy, incompetent leeches - including legions of Korean parents whose kids are being victimized by the absurd system that these same bureaucrats selfishly refuse to change.

[calicoe]