In response to Re: Re EF Baotou (Peter Pan The Wind Up Man)

While I disagree with your views on the training center business model and how it is operated around the world, I do agree with you views on the Spector poster. He was a regular on this forum and has merely changed aliases. He stands for nothing, really. Just wants to go against the grain for no other reason than make himself look good. Recently he has even taken up the rather anti-noble gesture of possibly being an emotional sockpuppet of his chinese wife. He really looks up to one of the GW's that posts regularly on here.

Training center businesses are often run by wealthier individuals who are in it for the money first, and education second. While theoretically employing patient, altruistic teachers will make the model work that is hardly the case in developing countries where the filtering process isn't always well planned out. Due to a lack of experience in terms of actually meeting expats of a diverse background (which can only come by living and interacting in a western country for an extended period of time) many foreigners of less than stellar character have made it up the management rankings in a lot of franchises around China. Even if a franchise makes money, I don't think they are doing "well" in terms of servicing the general masses if the students do not get good teachers. There was a study done which showed how one bad teacher can cost a student as much as 1 million dollars in lifetime earnings. Considering the less than stellar track record of training centers around the world, there are many bright young people who have already become working members of society who are much poorer because of what they went through at training centers.

Your views on government seems to lean towards that of an anarchistic model with the way you see it as a giant business which subsidizes things like school. The thing is, many foreign teachers prefer these types of institutions because of the lax control inflicted on them compared to training centers. While hardly an ideal concept of Education by modern day western standards, they are better in terms of treatment of foreign teachers though not by much. Bottom line is, it doesn't matter what adjective you throw at it be it private or public if it is run by incompetent individuals then it sucks.

If your idealistic society of privatization should come to fruition, you need to develop a plan on attracting competent people to the private sector. It is good for bad public schools to close down. Many of those former teachers were probably better suited to work as street vendors anyway. Right now as it stands though, we are still a long ways from any ideal setting with getting the smart students the knowledge they deserve.