After all my years of reading postings (and writing a few along the way), I finally found one I agree with ENTIRELY!

Thanks Raoul Duke for stating the case so articulately!

I love teaching English to students in China, but I am also very tired of having to constantly be on guard with school "administrators" and employers here.

After three fascinating, amazing, and sometimes highly annoying years here, I understand and become more flexible with the culture each day. Sadly, as my awareness and adaptability increases, my trust in business declines.

Thanks again for a message that really resonates!

Time to walk carefully with this one; a lot of missteps are possible. The Arrogant One can definitely craft a great post when he wants to...

I do agree so far as to say that a lot of the frictions arising between teachers and schools are facilitated by the ignorance and naivete of the teacher. After all, most of us come from places where we place a minimum assumed amount of trust upon our employers, and we don't know to assume that the company will be gunning for us from day 1. We also generally come from places where contracts have some semblance of meaning. So we make pretty easy and tempting targets.

I also agree that it's stunning how little homework job seekers do in this business. There's so much info to be had out there. Not all of it is easy to evaluate, but most of it's at least worth seeing. But very, very few make use of this resource. Making things worse, more experienced teachers often do the research, find bad reviews or contrary advice, and take the job anyway. So yeah, there is a contingent among us who are alomost ASKING to be abused. I can sort of excuse the newbies who don't yet know of the need for doing the research, but if you know better, get the info, and don't listen then you simply have to blame yourself.

However...
I don't buy that the onus of dishonest behavior by the employers is in any way relieved or mitigated by the lack of knowledge or preparation by the teachers. Lying, stealing, breaking contracts...these things are just plain wrong and geography doesn't make any difference. If I didn't do my due diligence, then I must face up to some responsibility for that...but it still doesn't mean that I've thus given my employer carte blanche to rip me off for all he can steal. I just can't agree with that part.

And I certainly can't agree with the series of anal gas passages emitted in another post responding here to The Arrogant One's post. The stuff about how this part of the forum's all gone to a bunch of losers who want to criticize companies and badmouth recruiters, and therefore are just trying to evade their own responsibility. This is just such utter rubbish- nonsense of the absolute lowest, stupidest and most dangerous sort.

It proclaims an ancient refrain- that in any battle between the strong and evil against the weak and ignorant, we should get the weak and ignorant to blame themselves for the trouble. That's what the weak and ignorant are there for, right?

Perhaps even worse, it discourages people from writing about bad experiences in English schools, when we should all be writing our little finger off about bad experiences at English schools. It may not be as strong or helpful as we'd like, but I can promise you it's about the only thing standing between the current labor status and complete lawless serfdom.

Publicity is about the last weapon we have left that the schools fear. If you are in a bad experience, make a lot of noise about it. If some of the responsibiity is yours, say so. Be reasonable and honest...but be LOUD! Write yourself blue in the face, so to speak, in every venue you can find. Don't quietly move on, don't silently slink away, WRITE ABOUT IT!!!

If we don't write, where will all that research come from later?