It seems obvious that you have no desire to discuss or communicate in an even-handed way and, as such, this is going to be my only post on the matter; I do not want to get drawn into your childish game and start a slanging match. I have other, more pressing, work to be getting on with. What I will say is this:

First and foremost, you seem to have drawn conclusions about our school, which makes me wonder about your conclusions about other schools, based on precisely nothing. You have never worked for our branch, let-alone any other Shane in China; nor, you admit, have you ever known anyone who has either - Yet you have decided, that I must back up my claims to legitimacy with evidence - Is this a double standard? Yes. Is this an example of lazy blogging where, with enough mud thrown, some might stick - regardless of of the facts (of which you have gleaned precisely none)? Yes.

If you have a legitimate complaint about our school, one based on actual experience and not on conjecture, then I am happy to take it up and discuss it. I consider our teacher welfare to be among the best that I have seen and heard of and I think that our excellent teacher return rate validates my claim. We always advise prospective new teachers and interviewees to talk on the phone to a current teacher at our school, a practice I would advise anyone coming to work in China to do. Of course, I can already predict Silverboy's response to this:

"But how do we know that the teachers aren't just you on a different email address? How do we know that the teachers aren't being threatened with fines if they say anything negative about our school? Whare is your proof?"

Well, the simple answer is that, short of you coming over here and witnessing them do it without any guns jabbed in the small of their backs, I can't. Who can? However, if I was that underhanded, I'm sure there would be many more negative blogs about us than your solitary rant.

The simple truth here is that we are not a bad school, we are a good one; you wishing us to be does not make it so.

With regard to the "questions" that you demanded that I answer:

I hope you are not seriously suggesting that teachers should NOT have their work evaluated? Perhaps you think that you are already the complete teacher (actually, I don't find this hard to believe) and that no-one has the authority to question anything you do, but back here on Earth, most teachers welcome contstructive feedback on their lessons; that is how they IMPROVE. I'll conceed that it needs to be carried out by someone who actually knows what they are looking for, but it seems to me as if you are implying that any evaluation is bad and I could not disagree with you more.

Where to start with securing a teacher's "intellectual property rights"? Again, I hardly think that lesson plans constitute intellectual property rights. Perhaps if a teacher were to CREATE a syllabus, then that would be a different story - perhaps.

No teachers at our school have EVER been threatened with fines if they don't 'do as they are told'. Christ, you'd think we were the Gestapo or something.

As for the "Shane Way", again, I hardly think that PPP and Task-based teaching are the "Shane Way". We do want our teachers to conform to a syllabus that we provide. No, we don't allow teachers to just teach any-old-thing whenever they choose.

I hope that none of this reponse makes you think that your opinion matters to me; I don't believe for one minute that I can change your mind - I do however hope that other readers of this thread will read this and come to see, as I have, that you are talking nonsense.

As a final note, I would be interested to know where you teach, if you do actually teach (given the childish rant, immature name calling, and immunity to logic, there are moments when I could believe that I am talking to a five-year-old). It might shed some light as to why you seem to have such a superiority complex (albeit incredibly misjudged).

Regards,

Adam.