Interesting post Warren.

I feel more comfortable teaching in china than in the gulf, for one main reason:

1) The confucian respect for elders/teachers.

Arab students think you are nothing more than an indentured servant or slave to do their bidding. When most of them have a filipino servant who brings them coffee and wipes their ass at home,it's harder to teach rich kid abdul who is the son of a sheik or leader...

Thoughts?

I can't comment on teaching in the gulf, because I've never really considered it as an option for myself. Generally speaking, though, I would agree that rich students can be more of a handful than others, and the Chinese general respect for teachers and elders makes them much easier to work with than kids in America. Somehow, it also seems we're not really seen as teachers and elders so much as "foreigners" even if we are teachers and older than whoever is addressing us.

I've noticed that if I'm walking across the street to my university, and I'm walking in a crosswalk, nobody will slow down (unless they want to look at the foreigner). In front of a uni, being a foreigner, it must be obvious I'm also a teacher working there, and yet there's no respect at all. And then walking down any street people will make loud comments, and sometimes swear or even lob insults about foreigners. In short, I'm not sure the reverence for elders and teachers applies to monkeys, even if those monkeys don't have much fur, happen to be older, wiser, more worldly, more educated, and even wealthier. It doesn't seem that the leaders in the schools have much respect for us either, and think we can't see through their constant humoring us.

PS, I'm kidding a bit, though there's a kernel of truth in all that.