TESOL is a racket, absolutely. But it's not just a racket from our standpoint. A racket as in all the non-teaching roles we play and the abuse some schools dish out.

TESOL is a racket from the students' standpoint as well, especially if those students attend private international schools, colleges, and universities. These students don't know it yet, they are getting ripped HARD on their educations. But this is their own damn faults, and all the while their own apathy is playing into the hands of these institutions. Slacker students mean no student must work hard, and those with little or no ability are allowed in. Entrance requirements are a farce and entrance exams are unheard of where I teach. As long as a student has the mulla, he or she can enroll and be called a college student at my digs. Some can't speak more than two words of English, but I see them in my advanced English classes nevertheless. Think this is a crock of shit? It gets better.

These hopeless illiterates will actually bitch and moan when I fail their asses. Not to me will they scream, but to the administrators at this school that's really a business in disguise. Naturally, I then play the scapegoat role. It is my fault these illiterates ARE illiterate. It is my fault they dicked around the last ten years when they were supposed to be teaching. It's my fault the school chooses to allow illiterates in my classes in the first place.

I have GOT to get on an airplane. The shit I see here is making me angrier and angrier. Remembering I actually dropped 1500 on my TESOL training and paid for my plane flight only increases that anger.