My situation mirrors yours. I work at a private EAC (English-only curriculum) college in Thailand, but the kids have about as much English proficiency as third-graders back in the US. I teach a third-year English writing class that is simply hopeless. These kids goofed off in their previous ten or twelve years taking English (typical of ALL Thai kids), and now I have to pay the price for their slackness when I try to teach them in this writing class--a class in which they don't have nearly the proficiency required to succeed. And I have to forget about failing them. If I fail students in my classes, those students will simply bitch and moan to the head honchos, who will then change their grades to passing grades behind my back.

The worst part is no one here in the administration seems to care one iota. I've told rectors, vice rectors, and even heads of departments about this problem, but I may as well have talked to a fencepost about it.

I simply have to accept that I'm powerless as a teacher. If a kid pays his or her money to take classes here, he or she is assured of getting a diploma in three or four years regardless of his or her ability or grades. Kids who have attented two classes per semester and have simply no ability at all are regularly granted degrees in such curriculums as 'Business English' and 'Business Administration'.

It's sickening, and very, very aggravating in the classroom, believe me. I really AM just a babysitter to these idiots as they kill time one class at a time (unfortunately some of those classes are MY classes) until that big day called 'graduation'.

Turnover is atrocious here, obviously. When a teacher leaves here (on average, one leaves once every three weeks) his or students will claim they never learned anything in his or her classes, so it makes him or her, along with those teachers who stay around here for the time being, look very suspect. The administrators then lash out at these unfortunate souls at the next teachers 'meeting' (it ain't really a meeting--it's a lecture) which causes more teachers to simply pack up and leave after the next payday.

My white-faced colleagues and I are constantly trying to figure out why this sort of thing is going on at a so-called 'college'. We've decided this 'institution' is simply a front for some money-laundering scheme or other nefarious activity. Those who sit on the thrones here obviously aren't in it for the kids or their educations.

Does this sound like your 'school'?