I'd like to post a word about one mindset that has been 'welded' to the area between the ears of a lot of those in TEFL, especially those who have white faces.

I hear too often in round-table discussions and teachers mettings, and I see too often in posts on website such as this, that if students are bored with a teacher's class/techniques, he is a 'bad' teacher and is incompetent/doesn't care, whatever.

And the flip side of that coin is also unfortunately true. It seems a lot of souls have also bought into the notion that if a teacher's students have smiles on their faces and are having a 'good time', this means those students are learning and the teacher is 'good' or even 'great'.

Dream on.

I teach in Thailand. Here the students are very lazy. They always have been. Probably always will be. This means that the students I encounter today more than likely have not done enough homework or practiced enough in the past five or ten years to do what is expected of them. If I get a class of functional illiterates and I'm expected to teach them material far above their levels of ability, I find myself in a 'no-win' situation. I have only two choices: either go back and teach them the fundamentals, which means I'm not adhering to the class syllabi, or teach what I am supposed to teach and blow them away. And in TEFL, if the students are not happy, for whatever reason, YOU will be the one blamed. Anyone who has taught in Thailand knows this is true, for sure.

I say to you, readers, don't accept the mindset that if the students are unhappy, it is the teacher's fault. Realize that if students didn't practice, didn't do homework, and goofed off in their classes in the past, that is THEIR fault and they must accept the consequences of their actions.

I taught a third-year college English class here in Thailand last semester. What a joke it was. I had students in that class, most of whom were passed down to me by slacker fellow farang teachers who came before me (teachers who believed it was more important to have 'happy' students than LITERATE students), who couldn't put more than two words together coherently. And I was expected to teach them paragraph writing.

This semester I must teach speed-reading techniques and reading comprehension in another class to students who can't even read English to begin with.

In both classes, I've had students bitch and moan that I teach over their heads. It doesn't matter that I had/have to teach according to a syllabus I was/am forced to use. I was/am the one who was/is 'at fault'. A couple of my colleagues and I have gotten into (shouting) discussions over this, as I understand what the real problem is (lazy students and careless farang)while my colleagues take the easy path and side with Thai students on the issue, meaning I am the 'bad' or 'wrong' one.

Am I the only one in Thailand who sees what the real problem is? It seems that way.