Allan P. is a consummate grumpy old man, and I enjoyed his grandiloquent and slightly dotty rubbishing of TEFL in China very much. I imagine him on an old granny bike harrumphing around the streets of Beijing with a pile of cardboard on the back and a big sign saying “At least I’m not an English Teacher!”

And Mr Allan Sir, could I make the suggestion that if you write this sort of thing…

Chinese parents have been brainwashed by Beijing into thinking that their kids will have an advantage in life if they can speak more English than their neighbour’s kid

Then people will be much less likely to take seriously your other, maybe more valid, points.

Fred Blake has an excellent roll call for China TEFLers. I can see him as a headmaster with a form in his hand calling out to a gathered crowd of English teachers.

“Ok, everybody…listen up. When I call out your type please form groups. So (stern frown) do we have the ex-convicts? Ok, you lot should have a few tales to tell each other, please go to the back of the room. Next…how many holy rollers in the house? Right, right, go over there and try not to sing too loudly. Any mental patients? I can see from your drool sir that you must be one…go over to the left please and don’t get mixed up with the holy rollers. Alcoholics and womanisers? Any alcoholics and womanisers? What! Nobody? I suppose they must all be in the pub then…”

But seriously…what to make of some of the more meaty claims such as “the Chinese educational leaders don’t want us here, we are just meeting a national requirement that none of the academics believe in or take seriously” and “China’s attitude towards foreign English teachers is condescending and that’s all that counts.” Well, again, all I can go by is my experience and stories from friends. As far as my Dean and Vice-Dean go, I must say they have been very supportive and encouraging to me. My colleagues are friendly and welcoming and we often chit–chat about pedagogy and share classroom experiences. I gather from some comments that this is an almost unbelievable working environment, and yet it has been my workaday life for the last two years. Is it just me? Is it just Dalian? I doubt it. I concede that because I work with English majors my experiences may well be different. Not sure.

As for the Doc’s offer to write a piece for his blog. Well, yes, thanks for the offer and I will give it a go in a couple of weeks when I have more time. I think I will write a piece called “Why I like being an English Teacher…even in China!”

Oh, and @Fred Blake…I am not trying to have a pop at the Doc for “weaknesses” or slips of the tongue and I am certainly not questioning his sincerity or his desire to help. My problem was that a fair few of his descriptions of English teachers in China made me feel not so much part of an “oppressed group” as a “patronised and maligned group”, and when I tried to point this out in a sincere and considered way, I got censored.

I’ve been teaching in China for 3 years and it’s nothing but whitewash to say that most are real English teachers, however you want to define that. Yes some are good and decent and are trying to do a reasonable job despite all the odds. I’d like to include myself in that group. But most between the ages of 30 to 50 are mental patients, ex convicts, holy rollers, alcoholics or womanisers. That happens to be the truth whether it sounds bad or disturbs anyone.

Can’t speak for anyone else but I am personally comforted that the contributors of middlekingdomlife.com call themselves foreign teachers in China. Makes it a lot easier for me to do the same.

That’s all.

And what’s the end result of all the money that is sacrificed and spent on English lessons? A whole country of nationals who can’t speak more than a few words of English if they had a gun pointed to their heads. HA. And why? All because Chinese parents have been brainwashed by Beijing into thinking that their kids will have an advantage in life if they can speak more English than their neighbour’s kid. Rubbish, all of it. It’s all about keeping up with the Zhou’s. It’s quintessential exploitation at its worst motivated by greed all around.

To answer the OP’s original question, yes, English teachers in China really are that bad. Not because they may be unqualified wankers pretending to be something they’re not, but because they are knowingly participating in a scam and that makes them no better than underground telephone hustlers conning old ladies out of their life’s savings.

Disgusting, the whole nasty business.

Oh, in case you are wondering, I am NOT an English teacher in China. There would be more respect in collecting recyclable waste in the countryside on one of those dilapidated bikes with a little bell. At least you’d be doing some real good and contributing something of value to the citizens of China.

And if your information is so “reliable” and “valid”, then why are you perpetuating a stereotype that has little factual basis? There are bad foreign teachers out there, as there are bad teachers everywhere, but this stereotype that all, or even many foreign teachers are Chinabounder types is patently absurd. My experience, teaching in Beijing, Tianjin, Taiyuan and Changsha over the last 8 and a half years, has been similar to Kim’s. Yes, I have met foreign teachers who fit the stereotype, but I can count them on the fingers of one hand. Businessmen, journalists and students, on the other hand…. In my experience, they’re far more likely to fit the foreign teacher stereotype than foreign teachers.

And why would Kim write for your blog? He has a blog of his own.

What would constitute a valid response? If you’re allowing comments, then deal with comments with the same level of respect they show you. If they’re abusive, insulting, prejudiced, delete them or even block them should that become necessary. If they offer a rational and courteous rebuttal to a point you have made, then engage. The discussion usually does more to expand everybody’s understanding of the issues than deleting alternative viewpoints allows.

Anyway, I don’t believe it matters one iota what one particular individual thinks an English teacher is. I think the main point is that all that matters is what China’s educational system thinks it is.

I have taught in China for 7 years and 6 of those were at the varsity level. The Doc is correct when he writes that the Chinese educational leaders don’t want us here, we are just meeting a national requirement that none of the academics believe in or take seriously.

At one college, they had a foreign professor from Australia with a doctorate in linguistics and he was teaching the same classes as the young bucks just out of school for RMB450 more per month!

I think China’s attitude towards foreign English teachers is condescending and that’s all that counts. That is a point that middlekingdomlife.com makes very nicely and accurately and I agree it is a fact of life that anyone thinking about teaching in China should know about.

Rick

PS. Just so you know, this site is blocked from Kunming. I had to use a proxy server just now to get to it.

If in fact our site does have a lot of “good stuff” on it and is a practical source of information for prospective foreign teachers, it is because we take the time to research and authenticate the information we offer. In our opinion, a forum (or, in this case, an ongoing debate about what constitutes an “English teacher” or whether I was too critical of ChinaBounder because he is not “a rapist or a sadist”) will do nothing but detract from the validity and entire purpose of the site. There are dozens of Internet forums for foreign teachers in China in which everyone has an equal voice and the right to disseminate their personal opinions, including a myriad of misinformation. It is precisely for this reason that Ken and I created Middle Kingdom Life—as an answer to these anonymous forums, i.e., a consolidated source of reliable and valid information.

In addition, I would like it noted that Kim was quite selective in the particular sentences he chose to quote from my personal e-mail responses to him. He failed to include, among other things, my specific invitation to him to write up his personal viewpoints about teaching English in China as a personal story for our blog. Now that he has had the chance to complain about our comment publication policy here, I am still hoping that he will take the time to write about his experiences for our blog in a manner that may be of real value to prospective foreign teachers. It seems to me that if the real goal in all of this is to present a broader or alternative viewpoint about teaching English in China, he would be jumping at the opportunity.

We are not attempting to censor alternative points of view that are well-written and valid. What we are trying to do is prevent the message from getting lost in the din of contentious debate that is commonly seen in other forums and venues.

On the other hand, what constitutes a valid alternative response? About a month ago I received an extremely well-written commentary regarding page 24 in the guide titled “A Few Cautionary Words about Prostitution.” In this reply, the author was quite critical of me for presenting what he felt was a very one-sided view of prostitution in China and for employing “scare tactics” by citing STD transmission statistics (even though, by his own admission, these statistics are valid). Aside from the fact that this information is contained in the guide and not in the blog (and, therefore, there was no appropriate place to append his response), I don’t think I would have published it even if it had been a response to a blog article. What possible value does it offer to Westerners thinking about teaching in China to serve up a heated debate about the pros and cons of prostitution in China? Nevertheless, I am quite certain that if that author also had his own blog, he would have written a similar commentary complaining about censorship on Middle Kingdom Life.

Kim, our offer is still good. You can write up a piece that expresses your viewpoints about living and teaching English in China as a personal story for our blog, but I won’t debate you online about what an English teacher is or isn’t, because I don’t see how doing so is useful or even consistent with the stated philosophy and mission of our website.

@Dan
Thanks Dan. Nice to get some moral support! I agree Dr Greg’s site has some good stuff in it.

His is actually a very good site, I think, for foreigners seeking practical information regarding education in China (and I see that he has quoted me on that), but it is a shame that cannot become a forum because I think it would have had a lot of potential for that. Oh well.