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The $4 Million Teacher | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dinguino Nonaglot Groupie GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4565 days ago 55 posts - 96 votes  Speaks: English, German*, FrenchC1, Catalan, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Turkish, Russian, Irish | Message 2 of 10 04 August 2013 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds interesting, tell me more...
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| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4512 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 10 05 August 2013 at 5:36am | IP Logged | ||
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This article paints a rather rosy picture of things. One that is not quite the reality. I work in these kinds of private education places and naturally I come across a lot of other people that do also, including hagwon teachers.
As a rule teachers are all low payed, extra money from popular teachers are kept by the school but the popular teacher is expected to work unpaid overtime to meet demand often with no possibly to have a vacation. They do not leave because they are poached, they leave because they are burned out. Teachers are bullied , cheated and lied to and sometimes black mailed. I myself have been instructed to lie to parents and "fiddle" the exam marks often to the point of changing students answers yourself all under the duress of being threatened with job loss, added to a national teacher black list for being "troublesome" as well as a myriad of other threats to play games with your visa. You can not even rely on getting paid what you are owed and on time, or the school even honouring their part of the contract and if it goes to court the decision usually goes against the teacher (especially in China when it involves a non Chinese teacher). There is also a particular university mathematics teacher who sells summer maths seminars he takes a note of which of his university students buy a ticket. Those who don't buy a ticket often fail the university exam. He has no problem openly that to pass their university exams they must buy tickets to his (very expensive)lectures. He is a millionaire teacher with massive student attendance too. Can we call him a rock star teacher too? Unfortunate a lot of "rock star" teachers do not actually do any teaching they are just entertainers or have the gift of the gab, not all of them of course but with some of these "teachers" students do well in spite of the teacher through their own hard work to over come the lack of actual teaching. The quality of teaching of some of these places is also suspect often being nothing more than rote memorisation. I know of one place that teaches 3 years words like mete and partition. The students have no idea what they mean, the meaning is never explained. They are just made to repeat them 100s of times so they can spit them out in front of parents to make the school look good, marketing at the expense of education. This being my personal experience and that of those I have spoken to in the field. My answer to the question of the article is in fact. No, the U.S. should not follow the example of South Koreas private education system. Unless they want to see a sharp decline in ethics. That extended to the whole of the private education sector across Asia really. Edited by eggcluck on 05 August 2013 at 5:58am 18 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4088 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 4 of 10 05 August 2013 at 7:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I can add nothing more but to second eggcluck's comment. Much of the East Asia (my city
included) is mad now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Enki Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5644 days ago 54 posts - 133 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written), English*, French, Korean Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 10 05 August 2013 at 8:02am | IP Logged | ||
Agreed. The biggest problem with those "Star Instructors" is that they seem to be focused more on cheerleading and giving nice speeches than being truly informative. The article says the most important thing teachers get rated on is passion. Of course a teacher shouldn't be boring, but I think being informative and being organized in thought are more important qualities in a teacher. Star instructors in Asia have an equivalent in the States already: Motivational speakers. Most of the ones I see on TV are motivational speakers- giving nice encouraging words, sharing personal stories, cheerleading- with a little bit of English thrown in. That being said, I don't agree with your conclusion that if America adopts the private education system they will "see a sharp decline in ethics." The examples of corruption you cited are not exclusive to schools and hagwons, it's part of the general business culture of the country. If it were adopted in another country, where there are stronger regulations and better sense of business ethics, I think private education would do quite well. In Korea you can see that things are getting better in terms of reducing corruption. Actually, for all its faults, I think the hagwon system has a lot of benefits. Most importantly (to bring this thread back to language learning ;) ), you have all these teachers and students coming up with different ways to teach and learn English. Once people stop and reflect on their actions, you're going to see a lot of interesting ideas about how to learn languages. Edited by Enki on 05 August 2013 at 8:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5460 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 10 05 August 2013 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Because the job market sucks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguagePhysics Newbie United States Joined 3957 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 10 05 August 2013 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find it staggering how the Japanese and South Korean governments put a huge amount of money into English teaching every year and yet the general level of English proficiency never seems to improve significantly.
Clearly there is something wrong with the language teaching styles that are common in East Asia. The Japanese are generally very enthusiastic about English, and it is common to see English used in advertising in Japan, yet more often than not, English in Japan is misspelled and grammatically incorrect. Edited by LanguagePhysics on 05 August 2013 at 7:32pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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