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madoka

Joined: 27 Mar 2008

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 11:04 am Post subject:

Wai Mian wrote:

madoka wrote:

Wishmaster wrote:

The market is definitely flooded. No doubt about that. Schools can be picky now whereas in the past they just accepted the next available warm body. These days they feel emboldened, which is why you see Immi demanding even more documents(and I think they'll continue to demand more in the future).

How dare the Koreans want some standards over who educates their children!?!?!? It is racism for sure!

I believe it's just supply and demand. Snark Fail.

I see you still have problems with reading comprehension. Since you're back home, see if you can get a real degree - it might help.

asc422

Joined: 23 Feb 2009

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 1:37 pm Post subject:

... ... Last edited by asc422 on Tue Nov 02, 2010 3:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

edwardcatflap

Joined: 22 Mar 2009

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 2:37 pm Post subject:

Quote:

What if you have all of those qualifications and brown skin?

The British Council in Bangkok pays around 53-63,000 baht for teachers and they fall over themselves to get non whites to fit in with their diversity policy. You do need more than a degree and experience though.

shostahoosier

Joined: 14 Apr 2009

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:08 pm Post subject:

edwardcatflap wrote:

Quote:

What if you have all of those qualifications and brown skin?

Thats good to know. I'm working my way through my 2nd year in Korea and I'm wondering if I should do one more year here or if I should try another country.

I'm leaning towards China though.

Skyblue

Joined: 02 Mar 2007

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:34 pm Post subject:

ttompatz wrote:

Even in Thailand you can easily land salaries in the 1.7 - 1.9 million won (45-50k baht) range if you have a degree, white skin, a pulse and 1 or 2 years in the classroom.

Not quite easy, as most positions are still advertised at 40k max. And once you get that 40k, your flat is not paid for, flights not paid for, and as soon as you stop eating at sidewalk stalls or food courts, and start going out at night and eating Western food, the costs are not much different from Korea. Suddenly you're saving about a third (at best) of what you could save in Korea, at least in my experience.

ttompatz

Joined: 05 Sep 2005
Location: Kwangju, South Korea

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:32 pm Post subject:

shostahoosier wrote:

ttompatz wrote:

Even in Thailand you can easily land salaries in the 1.7 - 1.9 million won (45-50k baht) range if you have a degree, white skin, a pulse and 1 or 2 years in the classroom.

.

What if you have all of those qualifications and brown skin?

I won't deny that racism is alive and well in Asia. Doesn't make it right; just true.

Brown as in Asian will make finding a decent job much harder (but not impossible). It won't be as hard to find a job but they will continually low-ball you when it comes to the salary.

An Afro-American (Canadian, Brit, etc) can get the same wages as a Caucasian but again you will have to work harder to find a decent job (because most won't be interested in you).

Wai Mian

Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Location: WE DIDNT

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:49 pm Post subject:

madoka wrote:

I see you still have problems with reading comprehension. Since you're back home, see if you can get a real degree - it might help.

No problems that I'm aware of, history and linguistics is pretty much all reading comp. Ad hominem fail too. Keep at it sport.

Somebody posts about Immigration being tighter because of economic conditions, and you bring up racism. I'm sure you were making an attempt at tongue in cheek, but failed spectacularly.

Weigookin74

Joined: 26 Oct 2009

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 6:17 pm Post subject:

Stalin84 wrote:

daboss wrote:

Stalin84 wrote:

kohmelo wrote:

I love Americans when they whine about how you should have studied for 4 years to get a degree to teach in Korea. I've met many American "Teachers" who are just clueless about the world and life in general.
And please do not forget that Bachelor degrees are thrown at Americans like confetti. So many people have them yet there are so many dummies who boast on here about spending their "4 years" studying yet they have to come all the way to Korea to earn a living, you sad, sad, sad individuals. If you don't like it here, please feel free to go home to your own land where you will not be forced to learn Korean.

I can see where you're coming from but I wouldn't limit it to Americans. It's pretty much the same in all of our home countries.

Universities are capitalizing. Years ago they weren't strictly for-profit institutions that benefited from high enrollments. Now they are. Far too many people have degrees.

Degrees aren't worthless. If you ask me, it's unfair that you have to spend $40,000+ and go to school for four years just to be at the bottom rung doing jobs that high school graduates likely wouldn't have any problems with. It's a shame things are the way they are. We have our home countries to blame for huge mess that has become post-secondary education and the collapse of our economies among many other things that make "teaching English in Korea" the actual sensible option over trying to make it back home.

Teaching English is a good option for all of us for the reasons I've stated above. The percentage of clueless losers is exactly the same as it always has been and there are no shortage of bright English teachers in Korea who would have a chance in their own country had their home country not screwed this generation over so royally. I'm not saying that there aren't trashy English teachers but I am saying that I know the same proportions of normal, well-balanced people teaching English overseas that I know back home. Who are you guys hanging around with?

Interesting point. But how is anyone with an unrelated, 4 year college degree better at teaching English in Korea than someone with say, a high school diploma? You are doing a job that didn't require you to go to university and that everybody else could do - a college degree only gets you the visa.

And:

Wouldn't it make much more sense if people with university degrees would go into entrepreneurship and - despite tough economic times - try to succeed by being innovative and applying what they spent their money on? You should not blame the government, the political economic system or whatsoever for the fact that the business cycle turned out the way it did and life got harder. You should blame the individuals for subscribing to these circumstances and backing down by going the easy way, wasting their potential by doing a minimum wage job in another country like migrant workers who are dependent on it for their mere survival. There's really no pride in this, especially not in industrialized countries.

Were the sitation different and ESL in Korea were actually a professional field with higher wages, then there might be some pride in being here for ESL. And then you would not have to complain about having spent 40.000 / year on your college education Smile

A lot has to change

I don't think the people can start getting out of a recession back home by simply changing their attitudes and being more "innovative" in their business ventures. You could essentially say that to every third world country on the planet. Both Canada and the US are extremely tough on start-ups and small businesses, especially the US. Not everyone should have to invent the next whatever then hire all their friends in order to succeed. Innovation is important, yes but what is even more important are free markets and regulations that create a positive environment for entrepreneurship. We need more large, innovative employers that themselves require the expertise of university graduates. Right now everyone is not only refusing to hire but they're slashing jobs left and right. When they do hire graduates they hire them as contractors or as entry-level employees earning half what they deserve, then they make it impossible to move up the chain.

The US has witnessed the systematic destruction of a lot of the things that made it a thriving and innovative economy. It has been made clear that there is to be a poor class and a rich class and nothing in between. I feel bad for Americans. It's going to be a rough decade and today's 20-somethings are going to be 30-somethings when they finally move out of entry-level positions. Many simply won't. All over the Western world, this generation of 20-somethings will become what is known in Japan as "a lost generation". Might as well teach ESL.

As for the unrelated university degree / teaching ESL business, at least the degree is a standard. You might get some idiots if you only require degrees but if you lowered the bar any further you'd get much worse than educated idiots. Educated idiots from any decent university should, at the very least, speak and write English well and be versed in the rudimentaries of critical thinking. If you set the bar to just High School, you'll start getting illiterate people and the sort that simply don't belong near a place of education for XYZ reasons.

A degree is a low standard but it's a standard, nonetheless. Besides, your Korean co-teachers only have marginally more education than the average NSET and their post secondary education was of a much, much, much lower quality than that of the average Western graduate. Trust me on that one. They're also poorly socialized and lacking in the life skills department on account of everything from public school education to Korean style-parenting. These aren't valid metrics but we all know it's true.

<rant>

If you even half-ass your way through a public school job you're probably still, at the heart of it, more of a "teacher" than half the paper-certified teaching drones in your building, regardless of what their piece of paper might say. I know this sounds mean but it is true. Especially in the secondary school levels. Some just read the textbook and most are afraid to move even an inch from the curriculum because it requires independent thought. I knew veteran teachers in Korea who did nothing but hand out worksheets and whack desks with a yardstick screaming "YA!" every time the students started nodding off.

Every Korean knows this. The kids start figuring it out around Junior High. Education in Korea is all a big joke from start to finish. The kids learn by the brute force of cramming and simply being in school all the time. Their education is of a massive quantity and of a very low quality. They're incidentally very good at the maths and sciences because it just so happens that this method of education is best suited to those subjects. It inversely sucks for learning languages or any of the humanities which is why they fall so far behind in those.

</rant>

At the end of the day, we need to stop being so hard on ourselves. ESL in Korea is a joke in a lot of ways but so is the education system as a whole. Just try to get through to your students, earn that paycheque and screw everything else.

In the 1800's, America was the land of opportunity because of the freedom to go where one pleased. One could build their own home from the land, start a business easily, etc. Today state and local governments pile you with paperwork, zoning requirements, and taxes that makes it cumbersome if not impossible. It means funding issues and other problems. Though not impossible, it's definately not easy. Too many bleeding hearts, I guess.

If all three governments in the USA (federal, state, local) would just simplify things, not have so many rules, keep taxes low, things would really take off.

What Obama's time has proven is that Keyseyan economics don't work. No one has ever borrowed themselves to prosperity. Didn't work for FDR in ending "the great depression" and it isn't working now. WWII and private sector spending pulled America out of depression, by the way.

SKinPRC

Joined: 29 Apr 2010
Location: China

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2010 10:19 pm Post subject:

This year it just took a long time for people to reply. I sent out resumes and thought I'd been rejected, but eventually got calls. Though now that I'm in a crappy job, which looked deceptively better, I wish I was unemployed. That would force me to get into a better career anyway. I'm sick of the poor conditions for EFL teachers.

Hotwire

Joined: 29 Aug 2010
Location: Multiverse

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:39 am Post subject:

I took a hakwan job after 6 yrs here as I got only 1 reply in 9 weeks this year (used to get 9 in one day previously!) I kind of panic grabbed... I knew I should ave waited for my usual bread and butter to turn up - the Public school where the teacher a. Didn't turn up. b. Left after a few weeks c. Got fired for being a maroon. d. So out in the sticks, no-one wanted it and they couldn;t get soemone they WANTED to start in SEPT so then they go for your's truly They rock as they are so nervous about the previous situation that it's hard for you to do wrong! They always come up at end of damned sept and wouldn't you know I got 4 of them in my inbox the other day. Ripe for the plucking. Not bothered though as I'm liking the 2.30pm starts and the 6.5 hours a day even if I do get less vacay time and salary....

Gwangjuboy

Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 4:35 am Post subject:

Weigookin74 wrote:

What Obama's time has proven is that Keyseyan economics don't work. No one has ever borrowed themselves to prosperity. Didn't work for FDR in ending "the great depression" and it isn't working now.

So low taxes and a chassis state do work? Look at Chile and New Zealand in the 1980s if you want evidence of what state-shrinking experiments can do. Suicides sky rocket, foreign debt piles up, real wages often fall, unemployment leaps, and a polarized society ensues. The US is not Hong Kong.

Obama has been in office for just two years, yet amongst the laissez faire advocates he gets a hugely disproportionate amount of the blame for the US's economic troubles. Why does Bush Jnr get a free pass? After all, state spending jumped under his stewardship, and the corporate capitalist model flourished, only to come crashing down around him just as he was getting out of dodge. Where were the Tea Party activists then? Obama gets shafted because his state spending is geared toward social projects; Bush and Reagan got free passes because their state spending was lavished on protectionist policies and military hardware - great if you work in the agro-business or defence. The card was not wiped clean when Obama took the oath.

We know that neo-liberalism hurt the US. It left a large segment of your population without healthcare, and wages have been stagnant since the early 70s. Now the libertarians are clamoring for change, often in league with religious zealots who would see to it that state spending on science is crushed. I genuinely believe that Gingrich and Ron Paul are to capitalism what Pol Pot was to communism. The whole notion of businesses creating a business environment where no one takes short cuts is nuts � it is fantasy developed by men with ulterior motives. This idea that you could create a utopian business environment where the market polices rent seeking, cost externalization and other short cuts is just whacky. I recall my younger days for example, when as teenagers we used to play soccer without a referee. There was a direct correlation between toughness and the likelihood of being able to commit a foul or cheat with impunity. I think that a self-policing market would work out pretty much the same way.

Quote:

WWII and private sector spending pulled America out of depression, by the way

I would posit that state spending increased exponentially during the war years. Which entity actually buys military hardware and fronts up the costs for research and development? That's right; the dreaded state. The US has never adopted truly laissez faire economic policies. Indeed, the US economy was built on market inefficiencies such as protectionism. Now I agree that governments can be hugely profligate, but it is striking that this call for micro government has become so much louder since government committed more funds to social projects. I mean, let�s put this into context here; during two hundred years of protectionism and state coordinated economic policies the call for small government has rarely been as loud as it is now. Could this have anything to do with the socially oriented nature of spending?

Last edited by Gwangjuboy on Wed Sep 29, 2010 4:26 pm; edited 1 time in total

bucheon bum

Joined: 16 Jan 2003

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 5:14 am Post subject:

Gwangjuboy wrote:

And look at them in the end. Chile is the most stable, economically healthy country in Latin America. Yikes, what a bad outcome! And New Zealand seems to be doing quite nicely as well.

Yes, at the beginning things were rough but the eventual outcome for both countries would indicate the right-wing* might know a thing or two about economics.

*GOP does NOT believe in liberal (right wing) economics. Well it might believe it, but certainly doesn't practice it as you noted in your own post.

Gwangjuboy

Joined: 08 Jul 2003
Location: England

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 5:53 am Post subject:

bucheon bum wrote:

In the mid-eighties some of the ultra neo-liberal policies were jettisoned. Since then, especially in the last decade, successive goverments committed more funding to social welfare and education. Nonetheless Chile still boasts one of the most unequal societies in the world, an undoubted legacy of its recent past.

With respect to New Zealand, the economic shocks of the neo-liberal experiement resulted in significant rises in unemployment, low income households became even poorer than they were in 1984, and there is some evidence that productivity actually declined (Have a look at Paul Dalziel's peer reveiwed work on the subject). Also, from 1999 to 2008 Helen Clark strengthened labour market regulation and commited more expenditure to welfare.

Quote:

*GOP does NOT believe in liberal (right wing) economics. Well it might believe it, but certainly doesn't practice it as you noted in your own post.

Well, here we are evidently in some agreement. The GOP now reminds me of the Democrats during the late 60s and it is in danger of being hurt by factionalism in much the same way. You have the religious element, the corporate element (in the ascendency), and the laissez faire advocates like Ron Paul. How these different factions will put togther a coherent policy platform for 2012 I don't know because the GOP gets bankrolled by corporate interests, and these corporate interests do not want a smaller government; they want those state welfare cheques to continue. It will be interesting watching the whole thing unfold.

Still, can I pose the same question to you? Where were the Tea Party activists when Reagan and Bush Jnr were committing the state to extravagant spending? National debt actually soared under the former's stewardship, yet he is often held up as a poster child for the cause by small government advocates. On Bush, well, we all know what went wrong there, whether you are on the left or the right.

Wai Mian

Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Location: WE DIDNT

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 8:25 am Post subject:

Gwangjuboy wrote:

Still, can I pose the same question to you? Where were the Tea Party activists when Reagan and Bush Jnr were committing the state to extravagant spending? National debt actually soared under the former's stewardship, yet he is often held up as a poster child for the cause by small government advocates. On Bush, well, we all know what went wrong there, whether you are on the left or the right.

This. Medicare D was 700 billion in entitlements, but it went to the retiree classes, who happen to make up most of the older, whiter Tea Party.

Health care, however, goes to everyone, but helps the poor (which these wingnuts assume to be black, Latino) disproportionately. The Tea Party hates what Civil Rights did to the US and still can't get over it. It's a social movement, not an economic one.

Wai Mian

Joined: 03 Sep 2010
Location: WE DIDNT

Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 8:34 am Post subject:

Gwangjuboy wrote:

Also, THIS. The entire microchip/semi-conductor/computer industry is b/c of state directed investment. It is probably the most important sector of the 20th century, and it was the state, not the market, that picked it to 'win'.

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