Hi Turnoi,

In regards to the first point I can agree with you a little bit but I think the real problem is that the investors get involved. In my opinion this is where things go wrong. But on the other hand I have to look at the situation. Chinese today are still dealing with culture issues from the recent past. When I speak of culture I'm not referring to superficial culture such as chopsticks and dragons. I'm talking about the real culture, the general behavior and tendencies within a society and in the case of the Chinese I think they have a few identity issues thanks to Mao and his thugs. One of the results of Mao's perverted communism is a complete lack of distrust between Chinese in general. Mao knew how to divide and conquer and he made it acceptable to cheat, lie, and steal. With this in mind I can understand why investors get involved. It's probably the lesser evil and I've give an example later in this post. Personally I think investors should keep their noses out of businesses they know nothing about but at the same time after having lived and worked in China for over 8 years I have to say I could count those I deemed as trustworthy on one hand and still have fingers to spare.

Regarding the second point, I still fail to see the necessity of advertising a mission statement, especially when most are dishonest in the first place, whether you are talking about Enron or the Lucky Fragrant People's English School. Mission statements are designed to make the reader feel all fuzzy inside. Actions speak louder than words don't they?

As for the third point, Witty is based upon Dyned's CALL package. This is not a simple case of buying a product and using it. I'll not go into too much detail but you should know that Dyned sells itself similar to a franchise. Like McDonald's you have to serve BigMac's the way headquarters demands. Headquarters also serve as the supplier and collect royalties. Witty can do nothing with the Dyned product without Dyned knowing. Like I said though, I shouldn't go into details. You can pretty much figure things out from what I've written.

But if you are curious about Witty's philosophy then you should check out their website and click on 'About Witty'. You can also browse the site a little and get more information on their product and the philosophy behind it.

http://www.witty.com.cn/en/news.html

For the fourth point I should point out that both middle management individuals I mentioned previously were fluent in Chinese but only one was fluent in English. This brings me back to my the first point. These guys were working against both Witty and the staff. They held the school back from improvement and they were able to do so by pitting upper management against the frontline staff. All the while these two were conspiring to open a school on their own and they were getting as much as they could from Witty. Can you imagine how much more damage these two individuals could have caused if the investors had stayed out completely?

I appreciate you making the effort and taking the time to post as you do but I think we are getting seriously off topic with the philosophy issue. I am not trying to plug Witty but at the same time I do see misrepresentations and quite possibly even lies from other posters who have made negative claims against Witty. Both potential teachers (the real ones) and Chinese ESL staff and management read these boards.

What sort of impression is being made here? Hopefully people will take note of the language used by posters and realize who is real and who isn't. To the Chinese I imagine they see all foreign teachers as dishonest and to potential teachers the all Chinese must look dishonest too. What does all this negativity do for the ESL industry in general? Some teachers speak of European or western standards as if they actually had experience. To be honest I left China and came here to Germany thinking the ESL industry would more developed. The fact that I am returning to China this summer says a lot. Germany's ESL industry is not only behind in comparison to China's but almost completely unregulated. Every teacher I've met is a freelancer which means there is absolutely nothing other than payment for class hours. To add the quality of ESL teachers in Germany is comparable to those I've met in China.

Most of the posts in this discussion seem to focus almost entirely and obviously exaggerate the negative aspects without taking the positive into account. From my point of view this is as damaging or even more to the ESL industry than the content of the accusations made against the schools. One poster, Ben I think, had his person attacked for not joining in on the mobbing. He's had positive experiences but simply because they contrast the rants of others he becomes the enemy and labeled the 'western suck-up'.