It's good to know other teachers have run into the same problems I have and also post on sites like this.

I'm actually seriously considering chucking ESL for the reasons both I and you mentioned, Ying. I see clearly now what we're doing here in Asian. Our roles are not to be educators, but to be mere babysitters and billboards. Yeah, my students, just like yours, don't study and the directors of our schools don't care. Those same directors use our cute white faces, and especially pictures of our cute white faces, to sell their schools. Yeap, in Asia, education takes a far back seat to business.

No, ESL isn't even close to what I thought it would be. Instead of helping young people have access to better lives, I'm helping greedy school owners get more tuition money and helping bored teens and young adults kill some time between now and graduation.

That's not all.

I also suspect that all I'm really doing in ESL is giving my students just enough fluency to be able to work in sweatshops and communicate with the masters of those sweatshops, masters who live the life of Reilley back in the west. This is the exact opposite of what I got into this to do. And to think I actually paid good money for a TESOL just to be a babysitter/billboard.