Yes, ManChuQueue, there are many blind kings in China. But, the question begs to be asked: Who APPOINTS those blind kings. Those who are foolish enough to inflict havoc on their people by appointing blind kings must surely take ultimate responsibility for the inevitable chaos that ensues.

I dont argue that students should not be able to prosecute their teachers if they believe that the final product is seriously faulty. I believe that in such circumstances the first investigation of blame should be directed at the school who knowingly and WILLINGLY employed the teacher.

Here's a statement for you:-

"A teacher is not responsible for his students!"

What!... I can hear thousands of dedicated teachers all over the world cry out: "What blasphemy! What is Yingwen talking about? How can someone who claims to be a teacher, say such a thing...It's heresy!" So I'll repeat it once more for emphasis, but this time with a qualifier:-

"Generally teachers are NOT responsible for their students: they are responsible toward their EMPLOYERS. In turn EMPLOYERS are responsible for the students."

For instance if a third tier college in China employed you as a foreign teacher in their college to teach English to English-major sophomores, and you worked out that what they really needed was plenty of opportunity to build up their confidence and conversational skills in the form of role-play activities, discussions, and presentations etc. but your employer INSISTED that you go into every class and sing songs, play hangman, show movies and tell jokes to the students, what would you do?

Obviously, if you wanted to carry on teaching at the school, you would have two basic choices:-

1. Follow the instructions of your employers who have authority over you and pay you your salary.

or,

2. Do what you believe to be better for your students, and give them the lessons that you personally believe will REALLY help them improve their English skills.

So again, what would you DO?

If you choose number two your students would clearly benefit more, and at the same time you would probably feel more satisfied, feeling that you were doing your job well.

But, would you be?

I mean would you be doing your job well?

Well you may have forgotten one important "little" detail:-

As the school is your employer, who is paying your wages, you SHOULD listen to what it says...

Right?

I mean, your students are not paying your salary, are they...?

If our employers told us to turn cartwheels (some of them actually ask that in a figurative sense), and stand on our heads while playing the bugle out of our backsides, or dress up like Bozo the clown for every class, and wrote it into the contract, should we do those things?

In a previous post, you mentioned the final product being the most important thing. Yet, can we separate the rest of the process from the final product? For instance if you bought a shirt from a shop and later found a stain on it, you might find that the fault could have originated at one of many different points during the process of manufacture. Before it arrived at the shop it might have got stained somehow while being delivered. Instead, maybe a machinist may have spilt something on it as she was sewing the shirt, or it could have received the stain prior to that before the cloth left the factory that it was manufactured in. All these different processes can affect the final product.

If we apply the above analogy to schools we should begin to understand that there are a lot of factors and processes involved before a school is able to dispense the final product through the teacher, of a good education package. First of all a school needs to have sufficient resources in place, including a good curriculum. It needs to be a legal entity, and it must be able to legally employ foreign teachers. It also should have leaders, managers, education leaders, and administrators etc. who are qualified to do their jobs, and certainly in the case of education leaders, be qualified in education. Next the school should make sure that it tries it's best to choose the best qualified teachers that they can find in order to be able to adequately fulfill the promises it makes to it's customers. Once the best teachers are selected, the school should abide by it's contract with the teacher and provide the teacher with reasonably comfortable living accommodation, and a salary that matches whatever duties are required. If training is needed or promised it should be provided, and the teacher should be given proper objectives, support, resources, and textbooks etc. Need I go on?

The point is that there are 101 things (probably more) that can have such an effect on the teacher that the student may feel cheated because the final product is not up to scratch. If a student thought that they had a legal case because the "product" was faulty, then shouldn't the institution that took their money on the promise of providing a good product, so being ultimately responsible for the student's education, be the first to be investigated, before the teacher is hauled over the coals? Shouldn't all the stages of the process that go towards the final product be inspected?

Concentrating on penalizing the teacher rather than the student is like trying to cure a symptom rather than the cause of the disease. The state of EFL in China runs deep. If FTs started getting prosecuted in China the industry may fold very quickly because who would want to come and teach here, then? There's little motive at the moment for many because of the poor salaries. Chinese schools can hardly fill the demand NOW. If we really care about the well-being of our students and the future of EFL, we would support moves to make the schools more accountable for their standards. This would include proper curriculums, employment of fully qualified staff in ALL departments (not just teachers but more importantly school and education leaders), eradicating greed and the desire for position that blinds school leaders to the needs of the students, providing better resources and salaries and giving clearer objectives to teachers. There should also be serious changes in the way that EFL is taught in China by Chinese teachers too. The classes of foreign teachers should have equal importance to the students regular classes, and FTs should be able to have a fair say in how EFL is taught. Once all these conditions are fully established, THEN if the final product is not up to scratch there, might be more of a justification for suing individual teachers.