Who's arguing? You've got your opinions, I've got mine. We're stating them. Moreover, we could discuss the merits, or lack thereof, of private training centers, all day long and in the end would have to agree that some of them are a useful adjunct to the public school system and others are not.

However, what this thread is originally about -and pardon me if I don't want to wander off on another path for the moment - is the question of ethical behavior as originally posted by druthernotsay. He said:
"It's not just schools but ANYBODY here who can break the law with impunity if they "know" the right people. Even being here for over five years it still surprises me just how audacious these politically connected folks can be. At my uni it is just ridiculous. Of the seven or eight FT's at least five are there totally illegally."

Now, since I work at a university also, and since I've seen more than my share of teachers who are there illegally, I piped in with a few comments about the absence of ethical behavior demonstrated by several of the foreign teachers. Specifically, they not only encouraged entire classes to cheat on the final exam but also showed them the answers so that they could do so. I thought it quite interesting that the six or seven teachers that took part in this were not legitimate teachers in the first place. So, okay, you want to call it systemic and I think that could be an interesting thread in and of itself. However, I think that by using that as a justification it skirts the specific issue and excuses the behavior of these teachers.

Okay, now I will wander off the path for a moment. I've spent time in several small villages in China where I've found the folks who live there and have rarely ventured out to be possessed of a strong moral base. However, in China we have been witnessing for some time now a situation where there is huge migration from the villages to the cities. Much of that migration is temporary; that is, many of the young men and women are heading to the cities to work construction jobs, or whatever kind of work they can find so that they can send or take back the bulk of their earnings to the village. Unfortunately, many of them get ripped off. Wages not paid etc. And in many cases they fall victim to the scam artists that are rampant in the city. What happens very often is that the victim, having learned the hard way about a certain scam, becomes a scammer. Would you consider that justifiable? I mean, after all, it is systemic. I would guess that their parents would be shocked and humiliated to find out that their sons or daughters had resorted to such behavior under such a justification.

Finally, yes, indeed, Western economies are faltering. It was fairly predictable. Now there will be a huge increase in crime as the number of have nots rises dramatically. Should judges simply pass off those crimes as justifiable because there root cause is systemic? Decidedly not. Perhaps, said judges will pass sentences down with a sense of reluctance; however, societies have to draw the line somewhere. We can understand the root causes and even sympathize with those who have reacted to the causes, but it would not be wise to support the results through a dismissive attitude.

Plato: Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.