I'm an old white male U.S. citizen who participated in a Crazy English summer program this past summer, in Qingyuan, north of Guangzhou.
I met Liyang and his wife on two occasions during the training.
I will not address the particulars of the program's mismanagement, the treatment of teachers, the cost to the students, and Liyang's personality... much of that has been accurately reported. Briefly, it was an experience that I found valuable but incredibly annoying and will never repeat.
But I would like to suggest that there is significant value in the 'Crazy English' program for some of the students.
I've been teaching in China for six years in colleges and corporate settings. My TESOL certification is from Columbia University in New York. I speak Mandarin.
I've observed that my university students with the best spoken English ability can be routinely characterized as brave and brazen. They are aggressive in their speech patterns and unconcerned about the reaction of their peers. As every foreign teacher in China knows, this is not the norm.
Any program that can somehow 'instill' this fearless attitude in a student attempting the awkward and unflattering process of acquiring a foreign language is of significant value, especially in China where the classroom is a cauldron of cultural intimidation.
I viewed the Liyang techniques as a 'deprogramming' of Chinese students, a 'reverse brainwashing', of kids too frightened to even ask questions in a classroom in their native language, who cannot possibly conceive of publicly stuttering unstressed vowels, final consonant clusters and other brutal realities of spoken English.
Does the Liyang program teach English? No. But for a cohort of students it presents an opportunity to become one of those 'brave and brazen' students who are ultimately successful in acquiring the ability to speak English.