What weTEFL teachers are REALLY doing here - ESL discussion

Hey, I hate to break the news to you ol' pal, ol' buddy, but all we TEFL teachers are doing is building a labor force to fill sweatshops and Gordon's wallet.

I work in Thailand, you see. Here, the government supposedly wants Thai citizens to learn English. However, when we white faces with only TESOLs and non-education bachelor's degrees come to Thailand to teach, we are 'forced' to accept teaching at only high school jobs. If we prefer to teach at universities, we have to go get a master's degree in education or TEFL/TESOL.

This doesn't make any sense. If anyone has his head up his ass, it's the Thailand government overall. IF Thailand WERE so bent on Thai citizens learning English, they'd put us white faces front and center of UNIVERSITY classrooms everywhere here. Here we could be teaching the future Thai teachers of English who would then fan out and teach Thai secondary students.

But nope. We instead are relegated to high school classrooms filled to the brim with cheaters, miscreants, and farmers' daughters not even remotely interested in English.

If Thailand would get its act together, we'd be teaching students who WANT to learn, not a bunch of slackers who are never going to learn to speak English fluently and are not interested in learning it one iota. But Thailand knows better.

Our efforts are meant only to build a labor force just fluent enough to communicate with the masters back in the west like Gordon but not fluent enough to demand jobs, and payrates, that are far better than the sweatshops.
Gordon wouldn't like that at all.

THAT is the reality of TEFL teaching.

RT

I can't wait to get the new pair of Nikes - ESL discussion

I've already got my new pair of Nikes picked out. I can't wait to get 'em. Thanks for the great deal, Gordie!

Thank you from corporate America - ESL discussion

Ah, TEFL teaching. That thankless job some of you have undertaken to 'help' students in some of the 'misforunate' countries of the world learn English. To you, I just want to say 'Thanks!'

You see, your efforts make it easy for me and my cohorts in corporate America to establish our empirical reign over all the resources of this important region. While you brave 100+ degree heat in classrooms all over Asia in vain attempts to teach 30+ students at a time to speak this enigmatic language called English, I make a killing. And so do all my friends on Wall Street.

Yes, thanks to you, your students will someday grow up to be just what we're looking for to fill those shoemaking factories in Bangkok, or those T-shirt factories in Kunming. Your efforts will get them just fluent enough to land such jobs, but not too fluent to demand something higher on the foodchain.
We don't need thinkers. We need workers. But, we need workers who can read. No, we don't need illiterate workers cutting their own hands off in cutting machines or starting fires that burn down our sweatshops, with the workers still inside. No. We don't need this.

Thanks to our directive to the providers of TEFL programs everywhere, i.e. accreditation, we lure you, the unknowing TEFL 'teacher-to-be' to Asia with some grand idea of virtue. You think you're coming as an 'ambassador' for some noble cause such as the Peace Corps. Yes, you are ambassadors....ambassadors in a con game that will allow us to exploit the Asian for our benefit. Yes. We thank you, TEFL teachers. From the bottom of our hearts. To show our appreciation, we have decided to offer pairs of Nike sneakers valued normally at 129.99 USD to all TEFL teachers for 50 cents off! Don't pass up this incredible deal.

Again, thank you.

Gordon