Chunping Alex Wu
- 2004-08-03
> Western society is almost the same in this denial of aging, this cult
> of youth. Western women are more likely to dye their hair than men
> but it's on the rise. I think with the aging populations in 1st World
> countries things may change or maybe they will not as all these
> expensive medical treatments are really catching on to reverse aging.
From all the posts, we have heard alot of your opinions, but where is the answer? All the schools hired white Caucasian Native Speakers to raise the enrollment and income. Foreigners came to See the World, and let others pay their bills. Enjoying the respect from the people in another land, otherwise not many would have anything to be mentioned in their eulogy. Lots of parents never had the chance of going to have a higher learning, now they want to have their dreams be realized by their children. Then, what's lacking? The motives of the children!
I was born in an ordinary family. My parents were office workers. They were busy most of the time. They never pushed me. When the Japs slaughter my people by the millions, I wanted to be a soldier. But I was too young. I ended up to be a cadet in the air force. We learn all kinds of new stuffs. I remembered the ways my Chinese English teacher taught us with a heavy accent. I was very happy that I had learnt something interesting. Being interested, I just paid a little attention, and found one day that what my teacher taught was not correct from the ones I heard from a foreign drunken soldier. We didn't have record player, recorder, TV, and "Native speakers" then, but we, once in a long while, went to a remote town to see movies, where, at the beginning of the show, news reels were shown. I imitate the voices. From the imitation, I improved my voice, the pronunciation, the tone and intonation of the sentences. Before I got my first degree, I had taught English for more than 10 years in a private English school. The society, all the world around, pays to mucn attention to that piece of paper, a diploma. through learning and teaching, I got qualified and certified in five teaching courses. My students loved me. To this date, they still send me email with greetings and problems in learning. Now I am retired and come back to pass my surer experience to the people who brought me up, I feel like being discriminated, yet I still want to tell everybody that: Motivation and Imitation are the two most important factors in learning anything! You can't force to horse to drink if it doesn't want to. Teachers might be great scholars themselves, without proper sills to motivate the learner, the success is only half way, even the kids want to. Without imitation, a learner might accumulate enough knowledge, but not to articulate them eloquently.
Alex Wu
Chunping Alex Wu
- 2004-08-03
> I think the parents of the kids know - since they are the ones making
> the demands that the foreign teacher look foreign (ie white) and they
> want them young (under the mistaken assumption that anyone over a
> certain age ceases to be "in touch" with the "real
> world") Whether the students know, I am not sure and whether it
> would make a difference -well, the students in most cases are not
> paying the bills-the parents are - and thus the bosses cater to them.
> My experience is based on China and South Korea - of Taiwan and Japan
> I know nothing and thus say nothing :)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> My [adult] Chinese students agree that there is, as you say, a
> decided preference amongst Chinese parents for English schools that
> "feature" Caucasian teachers. None of them however would
> agree that the age of the teacher was particularly important to
> parents when they chose a school for their young children.
> To the question of how important it was to them that the school
> provide competent teachers for their children, there was unanimous
> agreement that this was paramount, but it was pointed out that they
> really have no way to tell how competent the school's teachers are.
> I don't think your assumption that the age restrictions ESL teachers
> face in that part of the world are based on the demands of fee-paying
> parents is correct. If that were so, ESL schools that cater to young
> and middle-aged adults who, even if they are not paying the bills are
> unlikely to entrust the choice of school to their parents, would have
> no reason to exclude potential teachers on the bases of race, sex or
> age which, it is clear, they do.
> May I suggest the real reason is something like the following::
> Many English schools are not particularly interested in improving
> their students' English. Indeed if the students English improves,
> they stand to lose a paying customer. Their real product is
> association with a young, attractive, English-speaking foreigner.
> From the adult students' point of view this association is often much
> more interesting than learning a foreign language. The sad part is
> that most of them probably really do believe the young, energetic
> good-looking foreigner is going to teach them good English and are
> very disappointed when they show up in an English-speaking part of
> the world to discover how little they've really accomplished.
> Examples of this show up in my ESL classes with disturbing regularity
This is also true in Hong Kong. Since 1998, in order to uplift the Engllish proficiency level, the Hong Kong government started hiring Native Speaker to teach ALL the courses. No long ago, this year, I heard the New broadcaster said that students scores not only went down in English but also in other courses. Judging from my experience in China, I found most of the students were not satisfied in their actual learning from the Experts. The main reason might not because of the foreign teachers, but also for the limited time and big classes, students didn't have enough association with the native speakers. Besides, passive learning will never work well. Young kids under the pressure from the parents. Adults learn for the passing of certain exams. Middle school students have too much to cope with.
Alex Wu
Mike
- 2004-05-23
Sorry Jack, but I do not believe there are any vacancies there at this time. Maybe something will come up later.
Michael Joseph Beauchot
- 2004-05-22
Help! Mike help another Mike who also has a bunch of experience 27 years and a couple of masters - and much more importantly, a wonderful wife who happens to be Asian and who wants a teacher- any more jobs at your school? :)
Seriously, do tell!
Mike
- 2004-05-22
I applied for a number of jobs in Korea and received a number of responses saying the school was looking for a teacher under 30. Since I am 60 years old with a Masters Degree in Education and 34 years of teaching experience I was rather disgusted as being written off on the basis of my age. I did eventually find a teaching position in Korea and was happy teaching there for fourteen months.
I am back in Korea again after a break back in Canada but now find the school will not allow my Asian wife to stay here. Back to the racial discrimination thing again. Happily I have now found a new position where my age is not a problem and it is not a problem with the school for my wife to stay there as well. The point is, while there is a lot of discrimination relating to age, skin colour etc. in many schools in Korea, there are still a few who are more open minded, so if you are in the same category as I am, do not give up hope of finding a decent job in Korea.
Budda
- 2004-05-17
Western society is almost the same in this denial of aging, this cult of youth. Western women are more likely to dye their hair than men but it's on the rise. I think with the aging populations in 1st World countries things may change or maybe they will not as all these expensive medical treatments are really catching on to reverse aging.
Jack
- 2004-05-17
Michael,
I want to thank you for your patience in putting up with my tirade
against what I can see now, from reading other notes on this and
other websites, is a generally recognized problem among the ESL- teacher community and one that goes far beyond individual parent's and student's preference for a stereotypical teacher.
Clearly you and many other teachers are as indignant as I am at the
blatant prejeudice that allows what should be the most important consideration in the selection by an English School of a new teacher:
"How competent is the person as a teacher?" to be regarded often as a minor, if not irrelevant, issue. Perhaps you and other veterans of the system are wise to simply roll with the punches and accept the status quo. I don't know.
I want to add at this point that I am a fair-skinned, blue-eyed Caucasian, Native English-speaking male although slightly, I suspect, past the age where I could meet the maximum age specifications many of these schools would apparently impose. I have an ESL teaching position I love and wouldn't dream of leaving, in a country where no one could get away with this kind of racist, sexist advertising.
I therefore have no personal axe to grind.
My personal concern stems from the fact that, as best I can tell,
most of the people enrolling in English schools in any country
do so because they WANT TO LEARN ENGLISH. And they believe that is
the service the school of their choice is offering.
It seems many schools have neither interest in nor demonstrated abilty to significantly improve the level of English for their "customers" I hesistate to call them students. I'm no lawyer but as a layman that certainly smacks of misrepresentation/fraud to me.
Unfortunately, language abilty is, for these purposes, probably not
measureable, at least in any absolute sense, so I can't imagine any
way in which offenders could be called to account, even in countries where such practices would be considered legally or morally wrong.
The only road I can think of is Consumer Education. How difficult can it be, given the will and the means, to convince people seeking
to improve their English language ability that they are wasting their money unless they spend as much time and effort selecting
an English language school and ensuring that it supplies competent teachers as they would to hire an employee for their company or to
buy an expensive durable good?
If my hypothesis that most people who enrol in English Language training are there to learn English is wrong then I would accept
that any attempts at consumer education would be futile and perhaps people who are simply being entertained are getting exacly what they paid for.
Jack
Budda
- 2004-05-16
I agree. The older Koreans dye their hair to look young to keep their jobs. They are not truly respected for their age/experience and apparently do not respect their own grey hair. Wonder when this started exactly?
In Korea it is the mother who approves or disapproves of the foreign teacher. They never speak to us directly. They just look us over in the lobby or peer through the window of the classroom. Then they discuss our merits with the school owner. It is all rubbish. What children really desire is a tolerant teacher who makes an emotional connection with them and stimulates their mind. The learning is a by-product.
Michael Joseph Beauchot
- 2004-05-16
I think your reason is valid Jack. My experience was that many parents at the hagwon I worked at did indeed want younger teachers for their children. But, as you say, that would not apply to adults -at leaast not to the same extent.
There is a feeling that younger americans are more in tune with the business world - this, of course, is a generalization that would be hard to back with facts- because it isn't true in every or , I suspect, most cases.
I have noticed a difference between koreans and Chinese regarding age. Both say it is impoortant to have the wisdom of age- only the Chinese actually mean it.
Jack
- 2004-05-16
I think the parents of the kids know - since they are the ones making the demands that the foreign teacher look foreign (ie white) and they want them young (under the mistaken assumption that anyone over a certain age ceases to be "in touch" with the "real world") Whether the students know, I am not sure and whether it would make a difference -well, the students in most cases are not paying the bills-the parents are - and thus the bosses cater to them. My experience is based on China and South Korea - of Taiwan and Japan I know nothing and thus say nothing :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My [adult] Chinese students agree that there is, as you say, a decided preference amongst Chinese parents for English schools that "feature" Caucasian teachers. None of them however would agree that the age of the teacher was particularly important to parents when they chose a school for their young children.
To the question of how important it was to them that the school provide competent teachers for their children, there was unanimous agreement that this was paramount, but it was pointed out that they really have no way to tell how competent the school's teachers are.
I don't think your assumption that the age restrictions ESL teachers face in that part of the world are based on the demands of fee-paying parents is correct. If that were so, ESL schools that cater to young and middle-aged adults who, even if they are not paying the bills are unlikely to entrust the choice of school to their parents, would have no reason to exclude potential teachers on the bases of race, sex or age which, it is clear, they do.
May I suggest the real reason is something like the following::
Many English schools are not particularly interested in improving their students' English. Indeed if the students English improves, they stand to lose a paying customer. Their real product is association with a young, attractive, English-speaking foreigner.
From the adult students' point of view this association is often much more interesting than learning a foreign language. The sad part is that most of them probably really do believe the young, energetic good-looking foreigner is going to teach them good English and are very disappointed when they show up in an English-speaking part of the world to discover how little they've really accomplished.
Examples of this show up in my ESL classes with disturbing regularity
Michael Joseph Beauchot
- 2004-05-16
I think the PARENTS of the kids know- since they are the ones making the demands that the foreign teacher LOOK foreign (ie white) and they want them young (under the mistaken assumption that anyone over a certain age ceases to be "in touch" wtith the "real world") Wheter the students know, Ia m not sure and whether it would make a difference -well, the students in mostcases are not paying the bills-the aprents are - and thus the bosses cater to them. My experience is based oN China and south korea- of Taiwan and Japan I knwo nothing and thus say nothing :)
Jack
- 2004-05-15
His age and race have NOTHING to do with his teaching ability. However, unfortunately, not all countries and schools agree. I am 50 -in South Korea, that eliminates me from some jobs. My wife is Asian - despite her very good English and teaching ability, that eliminates her from some jobs.
The reason that question was asked was so that the responder could help Ryan get a job. Jack, I agree that Ryan's age and race should have NOTHING to do with his getting a job, but, unfortunately, there are schools and countries that use those as exclusive categories.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you, Mr. Beauchot, for your speedy response to my question
directed to Mr. Li.
May I infer from your response that Mr. Li will likely only be willing/able to assist the person who originally raised the question to find a job if said person is of a "marketable" age and race ie. under 40 and Caucasian? (a job, which, I understand, would violate the laws of most Asian countries since most require foreign teachers of English to hold a university degree as condition of entry into their country. This is, to my knowledge, the case in Japan and Taiwan.)
I'm surprised he wasn't asked the colour of his eyes and hair and how tall he is as well.
To paraphrase your response, I suggest it is likely that, for many. ESL schools in Eastern Asia, a person's teaching ability, present or potential, has NOTHING to do with his/her likelihood of being offered a decent job.
I have two questions. Do you think the students in these countries, who often lay out large sums of money in an attempt to learn English, are aware of the fact that their teachers are often hired based on their physcial appearance rather than their demonstrated teaching abilities?
Do you think they would care if they were aware of it?
Michael Joseph Beauchot
- 2004-05-15
His age and race have NOTHING to do with his teaching ability. However, unfortunately, not all countries and schools agree. I am 50 - in South Korea, that eliminates me from some jobs. My wife is Asian - despite her very good English and teaching ability, that eliminates her from some jobs.
The reason that question was asked was so that the responder could help Ryan get a job. Jack, I agree that Ryan's age and race should have NOTHING to do with his getting a job, but, unfortunately, there are schools and countries that use those as exclusive categories.
Jack
- 2004-05-15
What does Ryan Sak's age and race have to do with his teaching ability?
Barry
- 2004-05-14
China is a great place to start to teach. Most schools advertise for people with a degree but that is part of their dream list. China is crying for teachers. You won't make a lot of money but it is a good place to get experience.
Hi I want to teach overseas, I have a Certificate in Computer Accounting Technician and a Certificate in Tesol, but all I have been hearing is you need at lease a BA in something. Where could I teach without having a BA/MA?