DAMN!
After only 5.5 years of openly operating and shamelessly promoting my website, listing it on every search engine in the world, participating periodically on THIS website (of course, including links to my site) and so on, I guess the jig is finally up: they know that I exist and have a website. My secret is out. Teacher@sfls was just too clever for me...

But no, seriously...the same person made the same charges (basically, that I'm light on data about this school) earlier and elsewhere, and I very carefully showed that this was just not the case. Unfortunately, this just doesn't seem to have made an impression...
Don't get me wrong...I can certainly understand the impulse to ignore reality when it doesn't behave the way we want it to, but I also understand that, unfortunately, this strategy usually doesn't really work.

But...one-sided? Yeah, OK, it's a fair cop. While living long-term right there in the selfsame glorious city of Suzhou, after a sizable number of personal, locally-based friends told me face-to-face with no prompting the same remarkably-identical complaint stories over a period of a sizable number of years, I suppose I COULD HAVE approached the management of SIFLIS, whom I didn't know, and asked them if it were really true that they were in a terrible location, professionally dishonest and incompetent, yanking people around on pay and vital documents, throwing desks and screaming abuse, constantly losing and replacing teachers, and so on, and then diligently reporting their responses.

But I...I.....well, I didn't do it.
Not sure...I think I was washing my hair or something that day...

Raoul

Reply #31 on: June 09, 2009, 12:10:34 AM, by Raoul Duke

I would only add that, for my part, I did not work at this institution. However, as a long-term resident of Suzhou, I had a great many personal, real-time, in-the-flesh friends who DID spend time there...and ALL of them had much to say about this school.
This was not some remote, unsupported ax-grinding I read on the internet. This was over-a-real-table opining received from a substantial number of people whom I knew well, telling essentially the same stories over a substantial number of years. This falls into the realm of "local reputation"...and while it's not the same as direct work experience, I submit that it's a perfectly valid basis for forming an opinion about a school...perhaps even more valid and illustrative than the testimony of one single person who worked there and was lucky enough to have a good experience.
The first-hand accounts I received had little good to say. Complaints about the location and the administration were universal themes. I don't care to rip up a Suzhou school that hasn't wronged me personally- indeed, I'd love nothing more than to have a place there that I could unabashedly recommend to people- but I'd be remiss in my duties here if I failed to pass on such a large and uniformly-negative body of data...some of which is still less than a year old.

Link: http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=326.30

Amen! And not only SFLS, but all schools probably have to try and amend their contracts constantly due to overzealous teachers as well as teachers that can't or won't fulfill their side of the contract. The most recent contracts of SFLS I've read are trying to cover all the bases due to a few teachers that have screwed THEM over. Granted, their are corrupt Chinese schools out there that are going to be totally dishonest and not hold up their end of the deal - - I get that. I've been lucky enough to not be on the bad end save for one dismal summer camp job I had a few years ago. "Silverboy" and a very few others who come onto this or any other website and offer their less than stellar opinions probably hail from that group of foreign teachers who have come here expecting China and their school(s) to roll out the red carpet for them. The minute something they PERCEIVE has gone wrong, they convert to attack mode and come at schools, professional teachers, and message board posters with guns blazing. Sure, there will be a few that will nod their heads in agreement and give a poster like Silverboy an "attaboy" and a pat on the back, but I think most intelligent, level-headed teachers and message board readers can see through the muck and not take what he has to post seriously. I know I don't! Thank you for your insights OP.