it's just a teaching job in China for f..k sake!

Well thats right. Even labouring pays more than teaching in China does. It's not like it is a big deal if you lose a teaching job in China, especially given the stress and hassle involved to even get a effing visa for the place these days!!!!

I say who cares! Why would anybody care if a language mill in China goes bankrupt? I doubt the teachers will have to "galvanise" themselves in anyway, it's just a teaching job in China for f..k sake!

I have heard their training centre has gone bankrupt and left all the "teachers" unemployed.

Why bother writing when you neither like the topic nor the poster?

Excellent point.

So long as the teaching is solid and the teachers are giving their best to the students, that really is all that matters.

Ah, another Turnoi alias.

Regurgitating the same tired tripe still, I see?

Public education is not free, it is paid for by the taxpayers. Unless you work for free, which you don't, all your holier than though rhetoric is merely hypocrisy playing dress-up.

1) Most private schools do not make a lot of money. Most private schools funnel profits back in to the school. Most private schools are labours of love for their owners. Your experience with private schools is limited and biased rendering you incapable of looking at the wider world of ESL private schools. Bigger franchises may make more profit, but they also expect a high standard of teaching, which is why so many tourist teachers hate them so much.

2) If it is run "as a business" that business is education and as such the people who run these schools know that solid profits come from retaining your students year after year which means providing them with quality education. Therefore educational concerns are very much their way of thinking. You wouldn't know as you have limited experience of private schools, you simply tar them all with the same brush.

In conclusion, the problems with the ESL industry, specifically Asia, is that it is flooded with tourist teachers who don't know the first thing about real teaching and who think a few years talking at university students somehow makes them experts about the whole ESL field. It doesn't. Not by a long shot.

I shan't debate this with you any further as you aren't capable of unbiased, rational discussion. I shall leave you to your mistakes, misinformation and bitterness towards private schools.

Anyone with half a brain knows you and your sweeping generalisations aren't worth the time it takes to read your pontificating.

Private schools exist for one purpose only - making profit....- unless they are run by non-profit organizations. Making profit and providi9ng high quality education are two things that do not match for two reasons:

1. High quality education is very costly, and if a school adheres to the standards, it cannot make profit anymore.
2. If a school is run as a business all decisions made by the management/CEO will be in favor of making/increasing the profit and certainly not in favor of merely educational concerns.

In conclusion, many of the structural problems that exist in the ESL industry are a result of the fact that running a business and making profit takes priority over educational concerns. For example, private training centers employing semi-literate and poorly educated 'teachers' without a relevant degree and poor teacher training helps them cutting expenses to a minimum level and pay them peanuts. If they were required to pay salaries to real academics and professionally trained teachers with at least a M. Ed., all these small businesses would soon go bankrupt as they would have to ask tuition fees that students with an average income hardly could afford.

Finally, there is one good reason why education should be publicly funded and why it should be free to all: If you "sell" education like a car, carrots or a property, a large group of people would be deprived of it because of the costs involved. Good education is so important these days as it helps overcome poverty and ignorance and as such is a key to balanced, peaceful society. It is a democratic and basic human right of people to have a decent education that fits individual people's talents and interests, and if they are deprived of educational opportunities because o the costs involved, it is not only pretty heartless but will also result in an elitist society that nobody really wants.

[edited]

Not all private schools are bad, nobody is apologising for the things that are wrong with the industry, we are aware there are problems at some schools and those problems should be addressed, however we are also sensible enough to know that it doesn't apply to all schools

Whose values are compromised? If you are imposing western standards in a different country then of course you will be in for a hard slog. I don't go to a different country and expect everything done as it is in the UK... because I'm not in the UK any more!!

If posting this thread had been done in order to have a real, rational and objective discussion I might be inclined to agree with your last question. However it has been posted simply as yet another thread in which to mindlessly bash private education and drop in some casual racism in the process.

Boring.

Private schools and test-preparation centers in China are enormously profitable businesses. A significant percentage of these companies fail to engage in honest business practices with their foreign teachers. They have a difficult time recruiting and retaining their foreign staff.

Several contributors to this forum are apologists for the industry. I suspect that many of them are Chinese nationals that misrepresent themselves as foreign teachers in an attempt to whitewash (sic) their recruitment efforts.

My question is why does he care so much?

He doesn't even work in China.

Must have been hurt badly by a recruiter or training center. Still hurting...

Poor bast--d.

Student, parent, teacher, franchisee, stockholder. In corporate education, who profits most from the learning experience?