happy hooker!
- 2010-06-02
What about foreigners who must listen to all the BS and lies that Chinese people tell them? China is by far the biggest BS and pretend culture and society on this planet. You need to get your head out of the sand methinks!
Pharoah
- 2010-06-02
Foreigners who come to China should walk like an Egyptian. That's the solution.
Dragonized
- 2010-06-01
To make matters worse the Chinese observe the constant backstabbing between the foreign teachers. They have to listen to waves of lies about all the great things many foreign teachers claim they did back in their own countries. One guy sent me a 28 page resume detailing his top secret missions in the CIA and FBI. In China this amounts to a few laughs but in a western society it would amount to fear and caution and no doubt a subsequent investigation leading to an arrest and charges.
As a response to this, I can say that I have personally worked with colleauges who were like that. Rest assured that the local staff and Manager WILL NEVER get involved with these conflicts as it's not in their personal interests in their mindset. You will NOT find any of your colleagues (local and expat) giving you a warm feeling in your heart if you didn't lost some part of yourself to act unethically. You point this out yet at the same time you seem to overlook the VERY CAUSE of this, which is the blatant irresponsibility of the Investors/Management/Staff.
I feel like beating a dead horse regarding the treatment aspect of teachers. But that's why I stopped working in China to begin with.
The first step to solving any problem is to clearly identify that problem. That alone is 50% of the solution.
I find that most of the time people KNOW what the problem is but they refuse to do anything about it. The continuing allowance of issues to decay and decay and decay until it finally reaches full circle is something I have seen too often. It's what happenes when you have children running a business.
Franzen
- 2010-05-31
Don't you think that Witty actually forms part of "the underlying issues that plague the ESL industry in China and abroad"?
Sure but should we put all the blame on one side?
Normally in an ESL school in China, such as Witty, WallStreet, or Webi, the the Chinese staff outnumber the foreign staff 10 to 1, sometimes more. Yet from my experience the number of 'unbalanced' and untrustworthy people is higher on the side of the foreigners than on the side of the Chinese. I've seen foreign teachers borrowing money from students during class, sexually harassing Chinese female staff and students, stealing, fighting, and all sorts of unacceptable behavior. I've even seen teachers drunk in class. The worst case I've seen was a teacher telling his students he had a little boy in his head telling him to do bad things. He even started cutting open his arms in class trying to release the little boy.
To make matters worse the Chinese observe the constant backstabbing between the foreign teachers. They have to listen to waves of lies about all the great things many foreign teachers claim they did back in their own countries. One guy sent me a 28 page resume detailing his top secret missions in the CIA and FBI. In China this amounts to a few laughs but in a western society it would amount to fear and caution and no doubt a subsequent investigation leading to an arrest and charges.
Here's a good article which pretty much sums up a lot of the problems and behaviors within the ESL expat community:
Of course there are good teachers but they are outnumbered by the bad. But you shouldn't be surprised that stereotypes and distrust against foreign teachers exist. This plays an important role on the development of the industry. It's cause and effect. I too have been in management positions where I was responsible for both foreign and Chinese staff. Over all I much prefer the Chinese staff.
I'm not saying all the fault is on the shoulders of the teachers but at the same time we cannot place all the blame on the Chinese schools either. The first step to solving any problem is to clearly identify that problem. That alone is 50% of the solution.