To honestly judge FTs', it is necessary to know what they teach, since an engineering degree from UCLA may be as good as a diploma from the Canisius High School in Buffalo NY given that the person is an "Oral English Teacher" somewhere in Taiyuan China.

It's normal that people (have to) learn at school and uni first and later reflect what they have learnt in later life after school and uni when they make hands-on experience in practical life and in their job. I therefore would not play life experience against a good, solid and profound formal education or vice versa. Both are equallly essential.

You are signing to the choir. Some of us truly learn some great stuff in our schools; however, we don't get to use it well enough in practice. THEREFORE, I wonder how handy is the usual FTs' education in their Chinese classroom is.

I would also highly question such "success stories" of a person without much of formal training and without a degree who became a brilliant teacher. What are the objective criteria to measure such a person's abilities and to compare wih those that have uindergone all the formal training? Next, even when such persons really exist, they are an exception to the rule, and no interference should be made in any way that decent teachers would not require formal academic and additional practical training for many years because of such "exceptional" people. That is, I wouldn't therefore rather not have Bill Gates for example as an ESOL or other subject teacher at the school where I work.

What I get from your anxious follow-up paragraph is that YOU don't believe in the success stories of people who are/may be natural teachers without education. Your false premise in this paragraph and a bunch of other posts I have read from you is amusing to say the least. THEREFORE, I would like to know successful your story is.

Finally, I also question the notion of "success" that I can find between the lines in your post. Success is not only becoming as rich as Bill Gates is or Donald Trump. Folks like Trump in their lives must sometimes be complete assholes to become "successful" in terms of money and public fame, for example in Scotland where he took possession of other peoples' land without even asking for their consent for a company project there. I won't call such a thing "success", and for reasons of moral I would prefer to call such a behaviour what it actually is - ruthlessly enriching himself on the back of others, a parasite of society! On the other hand, serving students and seeing them mature or grow due to a decent teacher's hard and honest work is also a type of success. It just depends on one's personal perspective.

Repeated questioning and inferences, not "interference" it seems, are your indisputable facts to support your arguments. With a slight touch of incoherent rambling, you have ways to come to fussy conclusions. Anyhow, Trump isn't Gates; and, both may do well in classrooms depending on what they'd be teaching.

So, in case you don't claim I "insulted" when I add LOL to the end of this post, I may have been "successful" in terms of how I would view it.......LOL

Closing the door while screaming that you are right but others are wrong and that your messages are justifiable but other posters' aren't is pretty much your continuous power to command the eslteachersboard for years. THEREFORE, I QUESTION YOUR SUCCESS.

In my conclusion, it is hard to tell what kind of qualification is satisfactory for the varieties of opportunities that are offered to FTs either in China or around the world. Whether disgracing unqualified FTs is warranted or not is debatable as much as it is whether such people can help the locals to learn what they want/need to learn.