Brexit Barfing: Both Taiwan and the UK need to stop fearing immigrants

Though I haven't read of anyone quite doing this yet, I imagine in the days to come someone will publish some thinkpiece drawing comparisons between Brexit and Taiwan's fight for de jure sovereignty. Certainly people commented that China watched the Scottish independence vote very closely, so I imagine they will also have watched the Brexit vote not only for economic reasons but political ones, too. Frankly, I'm surprised that China's state media wank-factory hasn't excreted some steaming turd of churlish nonsense that reads, in short, "see, Brits voted for Brexit and look at the turmoil that is causing! Imagine what would happen if we let Taiwan be recognized for what it already is! That can't happen! DOOM! GLOOM! ZOMBIES! Also you can never understand our 5,000,000,000,000,000 years of culture and that hurts the feelings of the Chinese people".

(I'd like to say my narrative above is outdated, but unfortunately, it's not. Or rather, fortunately it’s not - it's so simple to tear apart. China makes my hobby easy).

So, I just want to beat that hypothetical pundit to the punch and say that while there are philosophical relationships between Taiwan and Brexit, they actually have nothing to do with voting to break from a larger political bloc.

First, why they are different:

The people of Taiwan are currently fighting for international recognition of what almost every Taiwanese person already takes as fact: that Taiwan is inalienably sovereign and independent. This question has been so settled in Taiwanese society, to rip off Michael Turton, that the populace has already moved beyond existential questions of national identity and toward making the nation they have a better place. Nobody thinks that the UK isn't sovereign, nobody refuses to recognize it as the nation (or group of nations, whatever) that it is. The EU isn’t a big authoritarian regime across the English channel that openly strategizes how to force the UK to join its fold.

The UK agreed to enter the European Union. Taiwan never agreed to be ruled by China (or any other colonial power, including the ROC). When British people say they "took back Britain" I have to ask - from whom? Nobody invaded you, nobody claimed you as their territory. The EU didn't insist you must be annexed because you have been a part of their territory 'since antiquity' as China ridiculously does. You agreed to something and now you don't, so you voted on it. That's all. "We fought for our sovereignty" - no, you didn't, because you never lost it. In order to have the vote in the first place you had to have had sovereignty. They are simply not the same.

What Taiwan is fighting for is recognition of their entire nation from a horrid dictatorship that has clear, acknowledged designs on annexation. The UK seems to be pissed off about a few regulations, the downsides of which I have not heard articulated well, or at all, and an inchoate fear of “immigrants”.

Not the same. Do not compare them. Don't give in to the false narrative that Britain won back 'sovereignty' that it had never lost.

Instead, compare them in terms of how the people view their national identity, and the lessons that may be learned from putting too much stock in national identity along ethnic lines, and in terms of understanding how foreign workers impact a nation's economy.

All the talk about “we don’t want foreign bodies we didn’t elect setting laws and regulations in our country”...fine, sure. I may wonder what laws they have set or what regulations they have imposed that are so terrible that the UK no longer has faith in its own agreement to join the EU, but I can understand the sentiment at least.

But the talk about immigrants? That’s nonsense, and it has parallels in Taiwan. By the logic of Brexit voters, immigrants are a problem – they are taking away jobs and tanking the economy. They are a threat, somehow, to cohesive British culture.

Nevermind that there is little proof that immigrants – workers or students – hurt economies in deep, far-reaching or permanent ways (there is bound to be a little turmoil but nothing that outweighs the benefits of attracting diverse foreign talent), and plenty of proof that they do not have a net negative impact. All of the “Eastern Europeans” Brexiters are clamoring against are not the reason why their economy is in the tank, just as Latino immigrants are not the reason why the American economy hasn’t truly recovered from 2008.

Of course, the real problems are the wealthy business owners who continue to pay poverty wages and exploit workers, thinking of their own wealth only (which I can understand, but why are they given free reign when they don’t care about contributing to the economy and country that helped them get rich in the first place? What good are they doing that they should be allowed to continue?), and the relentless attacks on social assistance programs that could actually help the unemployed and poor get on their feet – and in Taiwan, a complete disregard for the idea of personal property by developers and politicians who are in their pocket.

As I’ve written before, it was never immigrants – we are fighting for the samecrumbs of one cookie with locals, while corporate interests have taken the restof the batch. Go after them, not us. We are not the problem.

You can see the same sort of anti-foreign-labor sentiment that drove much of the Brexit vote in Taiwan as well. It is apparent in mistreatment and prejudice against foreign workers – both domestic helpers and factory workers but also, at times, of professionals and English teachers.

By the logic of Brexiters who think, among other things, that “immigrants” are the problem, an immigrant like me in Taiwan could contribute nothing positive to this country. According to that train of thought, the best I could hope for would be to not leech too much off of another country, and I could never hope to be a part of it, do something good for it, be an overall advantage rather than disadvantage to have around, or even fully assimilate. Note that a lot of Brexiters say immigrants ‘don’t assimilate’ into British society, but when that is proven wrong with examples that they do in fact assimilate, those same immigrants are the target of harassment and insult. The same can be true in Taiwan – if foreigners don’t assimilate, they are held up as examples of why “IMMIGRANTS BAD, THIS IS OUR CULTURE”. When they do, they may be told they are not and can never be Taiwanese, or simply not treated as locals, ever, despite their best efforts.

It can be seen in the lack of enforcement of labor laws in the English teaching industry, fishing industry, many factories, many households that employ domestic laborers, and the brokers who bring all but the English teachers here.

And lest you retort with “but English teachers have it good here” – no, not really. Many don’t get enrolled in the labor insurance they are legally supposed to have. Most don’t get paid Chinese New Year even though it’s the law, even for hourly workers. Employer control of visas is a real problem, and plenty of complaints to the labor bureau go unresolved. 

It can be seen in the harassment faced by legislators who try to make things better for blue-collar workers, who receive actual death threats for their efforts because it would mean less money for shady labor exploiters brokers.

It can be seen in attempts to amend the law for professional workers (the class English teachers fall under), which would end the requirement that hires in fields other than teaching have 2 years’ experience or a Master’s degree (technically a relevant one but in practice this is often ignored), which then get resistance from groups I otherwise generally support, such as labor groups and the New Power Party with the excuse that it could “hurt local labor”.

Again, there is no evidence that this is, or would be, the case, and plenty of evidence that attracting foreign talent has more net advantages than disadvantages. Remember, most local companies prefer to hire locally because they feel more comfortable culturally and linguistically with other locals. If they want to hire a foreigner they probably have a specific reason for doing so, and should be allowed to.

By that logic, someone like R. (a person I know of tremendous intelligence and potential) who loves Taiwan and wants to stay, and has 1.5 (not 2) years’ media experience and no Master’s, can’t legally get a job outside of English teaching. R. doesn’t want to teach English, but her intelligence and interest in Taiwan could help her contribute a great deal both locally and internationally in the form of soft power. By the “immigrants hurt local workers” logic, someone like R. would be a hindrance, not a help, to Taiwan if she were allowed to do something other than teach – a job she doesn’t really want. If she can’t get something else, she will leave. Is that really good for Taiwan? How does it help in any way to ‘ghetto-ize’ R. and people like her in an industry they don’t want to be in?

If the problem is a fear that companies would hire foreigners at lower rates, rest assured that Taiwanese are among the worst-paid professionals in the developed world and most professionals, even from less-developed countries, want better salaries than are generally on offer here. If you are still worried about exploitation, then deal with salary stagnation and exploitation, don’t cut off foreign talent from potential jobs out of a misguided attempt to “protect” locals.

I know I’ve said it before, and repeated it, but I will keep repeating it until more people listen. For the same reasons Bernie Sanders’ outdated immigration policy is not right, this is not right either. I like the New Power Party, but they got this one way wrong.

Just as the UK seeks to cut itself off from open borders with 27 other countries, and thereby threatens depriving itself of foreign talent all out of fear of “immigrants” who “hurt local labor” (except they don’t) and “threaten our culture” (except they don’t), Taiwan has a real problem with its love-hate relationship with foreign talent. They say they want to attract more, then do everything possible to make it difficult to accomplish. Otherwise good parties like New Power take on straight-up terrible anti-foreigner policies despite calls for social modernization and progressivism.

In short, what we can learn from Brexit as it relates to Taiwan is not the oversimplified story of a country seeking ‘freedom’ or ‘sovereignty’ against a larger power, but that if you fear and push away your foreign talent, it will come back to bite you in the ass. In the UK and in Taiwan, we foreigners can and do contribute positively and we can and do assimilate. 

"Confucian values" are not the problem

So I was reading this article linked to by a friend on what's wrong with Taiwan and its approach to the business in the post-industrial era. 

And I have to say, I didn't care for it. I didn't absolutely hate it, but it missed the mark in a few key ways.

First, I'll give Stocker points for referring to Taiwan as a 'nation' and 'country' and not using the old 'island' cop-out that so many pussyfooting writers do. Thank you for that. More people should be so brave as to speak truth to power or just, I dunno, use language to describe a situation realistically. I don't know why that's so hard for so many writers, publications and weak-willed editors. All it takes is a backbone and some damn principles. And realistically, Taiwan is a country. It is a nation. It is also an island, but using that as the de facto descriptor is devaluing and belittling. I have trouble taking journalists writing on Taiwan seriously who do this, so much credit to Stocker for not doing so.

And he's right to criticize the ODM mindset that lower costs and ramped-up production based on what other people are ordering, absolutely. ODM itself is not the problem, the issue is that Taiwan can't compete on price. It just can't. That's not going to change. It's time to find something new.

In his words:

Taiwan’s four decades of economic development were built largely on a single business model: winning export orders by delivering a quality product at a lower price (aka CP Value). Despite the increasingly uncompetitive nature of this business model, and in spite of sales of millions of copies of books like Blue Ocean Strategy and Value Proposition Model, Taiwan has failed to break its reliance on the CP Value model; not much unlike a college student who continues to rely on mom and dad for money after graduation.

I can't honestly disagree with that.

He's not wrong, either, to criticize the educational system, which sees fantastic scholastic achievement but mostly in the realm of test scores, and even then, much of it is the result of the private after-school cram school industry:

The business environment as far as I can tell is a reflection of the classroom. People are trained into this way of thinking/acting over 16 years, and when the company they join reinforces this mode of operation, people just default to what they are used to.

“When each individual is taking his/her own test, you aren’t going to build a very innovative culture. No experimentation. No exploration. No observation. No conversation. No debate.

Sure, but I'm not sure that's the biggest reason for business problems in Taiwan.

I used to defend Taiwan's educational system more vociferously, but I've grown more disillusioned with it the more I learn about it. I will not, however, go as far as some commentators do and say it teaches Taiwanese kids to become drones incapable of critical thought. No, it doesn't do that any more than the American public school system, which is still very much in an Industrial Age mindset, does. And anyway, it's not like Taiwanese don't learn to become critical thinkers - they do, just not from school. They learn it from their families, their friends, from life. Just like most other people in the world, including Americans. I was lucky to have a few decent teachers who really were dedicated to teaching us to think, but honestly, I could have gotten through school fairly easily simply memorizing what I needed to know and regurgitating it. Often, I did, and did my real learning in other ways (such as through my parents' extensive library). So, I don't think American public schools were any better at teaching me critical thinking than Taiwanese schools are at teaching it to Taiwanese kids, so please lay off on that stupid stereotype. We are not any better. That's not to say the Taiwanese system is great, just that our pot is pretty black too.

What can I say - one of our most famous folk songs includes the lyrics "20 years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift"!

The same is true looking at testing culture: the West (at least, the US) is getting worse in this regard, not better. If anything, the Asian model should have shown that testing culture doesn't work. Taiwanese schools are more focused on bigger tests (such as the college entrance exam) than the US, though, and that is a problem. Most tests are not reliable and many have deep validity issues.

My one other true criticism is that teachers who study education in Asia, in many cases, don't actually learn to teach. They learn their subject matter well but don't go much into pedagogy, curriculum development, methodology or approaches.

Hell, if the education system were really to blame, Korea and Japan would be stagnating too in terms of brand reach. Both have education systems not that different from Taiwan's. Japan has its own economic turmoil but nobody doubts its international branding, and Korea just seems to keep climbing the ladder, outshining its old Asian Tiger rival, Taiwan in economic growth and global visibility. China, too! China is a bit of a rollercoaster economically, but people are touting it as the next great superpower, and it is already a global economic powerhouse. China's educational system is, if anything, far more repressive than Taiwan's.

So no, there is plenty to criticize about education in Taiwan but it is simply not the reason why business and international brand reach in Taiwan have been stagnating.

As for "no conversation, no debate", has Stocker walked down the street in Taipei on any given day to hear people sitting around outside their homes or the stores of their friends/neighbors debating issues of the day? Has he hung out in cafes overhearing student groups meeting to talk about politics and the way forward for the country? I have. In fact, I feel like I come across this more often in Taiwan than in the US, where "public discourse" seems to now mean throwing insults at each other over Facebook and saying stuff like "it's people like you who..." and "you [insert pejorative catchphrase here] make me sick" and "typical neocon/fundie/liberal/SJW crybaby". (To be fair, I argue with people on Facebook too, but I never stoop to that. It shows a lack of ability to support one's views with evidence).

People do converse, and they do debate. They experiment, too. Have I ever told you about my student who - as a child - would throw cats to determine their mass and velocity and tie firecrackers to lizards' tails to see what would happen? I mean, that's animal abuse and it's wrong, but you can't say he didn't experiment.

As for "Confucian values":

This leads to one of the big three challenges facing Taiwanese business as he sees it: Confucian values.

Says Stocker: “Unfortunately, too many Taiwanese are afraid to tell their boss what is going on and what should be done. Taiwanese employees don’t feel they have the right to make decisions, and for this reason they refrain from communicating (anything) with their superiors. There is no debate, there is no challenging of the status quo; there are no crazy ideas. The boss has to do all the talking, and over time since he/she is doing all the talking, he/she starts to do all the thinking as well. We end up with these incredibly flat organizations, with a boss on one layer and all employees on a second layer. Employees wait for the directive from the boss, and ignore anything coming laterally from co-workers. They also won’t collaborate with other employees to find an idea to work on, because the only relationship they need to attend to is that with the boss. It is very hard to be innovative when the only interaction is boss-to-employee in a downward direction.”

I mean, yes, I do often see a 'keep your head down, do as you're told, don't rock the boat' mentality in businesses in Taiwan. He's not wrong on the results, just on the reasons behind them.

Perhaps I'm just sick of the stereotypical invocation of "Confucian society" as a Western rejoinder to every issue they see in Taiwan. Don't like something or find it different from your own culture? Assume it's worse, and blame Confucius! It's so easy! Certainly all you have to do is go to an expat bar in Taipei to hear it. And I'm sick of it.

Because again, if that were really the problem, then how come the issues uniquely affecting Taiwan are not affecting Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong or China, or at least not to the same degree? They are all "Confucian societies" too, and again, while they have their own economic woes, they're not facing economic stagnation in quite the same way or for quite the same reasons as Taiwan is.

That's not even getting into how what Stocker describes as "Confucian values" are not actually very Confucian at all. Confucius cared about hierarchy and the chain of command, yes, but he also admonished those at the top to listen to their underlings and treat them fairly.

So clearly, "Confucian values" are not the reason.

What do I think are the main reasons?

Because what I think is important, at least on this blog?

They are wage stagnation, exhausting work culture, brain drain (a direct result of the first two) and China.

So here we go:

1.) Wage stagnation

Stocker almost gets it, here:

To the converse, if you as an individual do come across a good idea, you are going to keep it to yourself, and when the timing is right you will ‘start your own company’.

Do you, Mr. Boss Man (because you are probably a man, maybe you even have a top had and monocle or just secretly wish you did), want to know why your employees aren't sharing their great ideas with you?

Do you think it's because of "Confucian values" and all you have to do is tell them to make more decisions, talk more to each other and be responsible for their own roles as they play into the success of the company? Is that why, Mr. Boss Man?

Let me speak for Mr. Boss Man: "Yes, that is why. I shall tell my employees to talk more and make more decisions when we have our next annual meeting."

To which I say, no. That is not the reason.

The reason is that you don't pay them enough to make it worth their while to tell you their great ideas. 

I know this because I used to be someone's employee too. I used to have great ideas for how to improve our materials, our seminars, our support, our non-existent training. Years later, holding a Delta (meaning I'm now qualified to professionally assess the quality of my previous ideas), I still feel I had some great input.

I never bothered to share it with the company, though, because they didn't pay me enough to make sharing it worth it to me. I wouldn't see a pay bump, or a promotion. There wasn't a job to be promoted to. I would see precisely no benefit from sharing my thoughts with that company...why should I have given them my creative output for free, so they could profit and I could stay in the same place?

No, I kept my ideas to myself, created my own materials, syllabuses and teaching style and used it to build my own freelance business where I charge a rate commensurate with my abilities - a rate my former employer would never have paid me.

And that was the smartest thing to do.

I don't know anybody in Taiwan who would think "I have a great idea but I'm not going to tell the boss because she really cares about the chain of command and will see my speaking out as insubordinate."

No, every decent boss, "Confucian" devotion to hierarchy notwithstanding, knows a good idea when she hears it (there are plenty of bosses who aren't so decent, but let's assume enough of them get to be bosses by having some sort of talent) and if it is going to make her money, won't care where it came from.

More likely that worker thinks "I have a great idea but I'm going to keep it to myself because these people don't pay me enough to give a damn how successful their company is. It doesn't benefit me at all to help them make money while I continue to be underpaid and overworked, whereas I could stand to benefit a great deal from pursuing my idea on my own".

If you pay someone peanuts, they will give you monkey work. They may not actually be a monkey, but you will not be motivating them to talk to you with their most innovative ideas. Did anyone else read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, in which one of the protagonists invents the idea of advertisements on chopsticks through screens that can cycle through different images/ads? And he notes that that invention made his company billions, and all he got was his regular paycheck as always?

That's how it feels when you give your best at work, throw your crazy, wonderful ideas to the boss, and watch the company make scads of money while you are consistently underpaid. You might get promoted, but wages are so stagnant in Taiwan that not even that job is going to pay you what you are worth and what you might expect in literally every other developed country in Asia, if not the world.

Again. There is no incentive to do anything but save your best idea for yourself when you know you will continue to be underpaid even if it takes off wildly after telling your boss.

And no amount of "tell your employees to collaborate and speak openly!" is going to change that, Mark.

Pay.

People.

More.

PERIOD.

Until companies do, they can expect more of the same. You can't just tell people to hand you their good ideas if you show them through their lousy paycheck that you don't value them. They're not going to, because they're not stupid.

Final note - if you beg the question in your article with an assumption that people in Taiwan don't think/experiment/debate/collaborate/innovate, and then go on to say they take their ideas and start their own companies, doesn't that contradict your first point? Doesn't striking out on your own with your own idea require a huge amount of chutzpah, experimentation, thought, collaboration and innovation?

If Taiwanese really were indoctrinated into being mindless drones who always listen to their boss in the hierarchy, they would be happy to drone on in their jobs. But they're not - they're starting their own companies. This is clear evidence that they aren't educated to just obey the system.

And I say good for them!

2.) Exhausting work culture

I think this one speaks for itself - how are you going to come up with your best ideas and find creative new innovations, solutions to problems in the company and market, or come up with the next big thing, if you are constantly exhausted? If you are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week for less money than you'd be making in - again - every other developed country in Asia if not the world, constantly on the verge of nodding off, you just aren't going to be an asset.

In fact, studies show that more than 6-8 hours of work per day leads to decreased, not increased, productivity. And working people much more than that leads to a steep decline - you get literally no benefit, and in some cases you start to feel a deficit, in productivity from pushing your employees to work longer hours.

How can we fix this?

Simple - hire more people. Stop asking Ah-Chen to do the jobs of 3 people and then knowingly lie to him about it being possible to finish in a normal 8-hour day. A-Chen knows you're lying and you do too. (Again this may be a reason why he's not giving you his best ideas - you overwork him. You don't appreciate him so he doesn't appreciate you. What did you expect?)

Hire 3 people to do the jobs of 3 people (I mean for Christ's sake the math isn't even hard, come on guys) and pay them fairly, at internationally standard rates. Sure, this will cost you money, but you'll get it all back and more as your company roars to life.

Also, when you are expected to stay late as nothing more than a show of loyalty, or expected to do more than you can reasonably do in one work day, you tend to rebel, don't you? At least I do. Taiwanese employees don't sit on Facebook because they're lazy or unproductive. They're rebelling in the only way they can - by giving monkey work to employers who treat them like monkeys, regardless of how creative or innovative they actually are.

I don't blame them. I would too.

You want better work? More innovative staff? Start treating your employees like people. Give one person the work of one person, not 2 or 3.

3.) Brain Drain

This is a direct result of the first two problems. Again I don't blame those who leave - if office work in Taiwan were the option I was looking at if I stayed, I'd leave too. No thanks. Pay me what I'm worth and let me go home at 6, or I'll go abroad. Bye!

4.) China

I won't spend too much time on this, but I do think it's a factor. What does every country not have to deal with that Taiwan does? China openly and actively trying to undermine its economy to make annexation easier. Few people seem willing to admit this, fewer still are willing to debate it. It's obvious to anyone who cares to look - I mean hell, China admits it openly! They can and do interfere with Taiwan's ability to negotiate economic agreements with other countries and are quite open about the reason being that a weakened Taiwan is a Taiwan that's easier for them to take over. They are quite open as well that economic talks are, for them, an entry point to later political talks that they aim to "win".

This is not news.

China is actively trying to repress Taiwan's economy so as to render it both hopeless and economically dependent on China, for reasons that are obvious to everyone with two eyes and ears and a brain to process input with.

And that's why we can't seem to get the economy off the ground.

Why am I so sure it's these issues, and not the ones Stocker points to (real issues though they are) as the true mechanics behind Taiwan's economic stagnation?

Because they are the only ones unique to Taiwan. Wage stagnation is not a problem on the same level in South Korea, Japan or Singapore, and even China pays competitively now on the relatively prosperous urban east coast. (Hong Kong is another matter - wages are globally competitive but the cost of living has skyrocketed, especially vis-a-vis housing, to the point that it doesn't feel that way to locals). It's the same for the threat from China. Brain drain doesn't seem to be much of an issue for other competitive Asian economies - if anything they're the ones getting Taiwan's best and brightest.

Exhaustion at work is an issue common to other countries in Asia, and as such may not be the key driver, but I felt I should mention it because it is such a massive problem.

Want to fix whatever is holding Taiwan back?

Start here.

How living in Taiwan has helped my career

The other day I was talking to a friend who'd relocated from Taipei to Hong Kong (a journalist). He called Taipei a "professional backwater" and for a lot of industries, I can see where he's coming from. I don't think it's right or fair - I mean the city is about the size of Chicago and is the capital of one of the most prosperous and modern-industry-heavy countries in Asia - but he's got a point that successful professionals in Taipei are underpaid, the best tend to leave for Shanghai, Beijing, Japan or the West, and that a lot of times you just have to move because, I dunno, your crappy joke rich-people-are-trolling-us newspaper has decided to close down its Taipei office because now I guess it's OK to report on Taiwan from a totally different country - China. (I'm looking at you, Wall Street Journal, though that's not where my friend worked). I do think this is in part due to bad domestic policy - this is what allowing wage stagnation to continue has wrought - and in part due to purposeful and strategic marginalization by China that the crappy joke rich-people-are-screwing-us Ma administration has let grow unchecked.

But, with a few posts in recent months that included criticisms of Taiwan as a difficult place to build a career as a foreigner, I felt that perhaps a post about how Taiwan has actually benefited my career was in order. This will mostly be useful for English teachers, of which I am one: one of the few jobs it is fairly easy for a non-Taiwanese to come here and do.

Most obviously, Taiwan gave me the chance to actually try my hand at teaching longer term and as a possible career goal. That's not something that's so easy to do in the USA or, I gather, most western countries. I am in the USA right now for a family visit (for once there's no bad news) and I reflected during my recent trip to Hong Kong, where I spoke to this friend, and this morning in my dad's house, on what my life would be like if I hadn't chosen Taipei to spend the last decade.

If I'd moved on from Taiwan to another country to teach, I can't say for sure what it'd be like but I'm not at all sure I'd have the same level of professional development (CPD) that I have gained from living in Taiwan, simply due to time and funding. More on that below. Most countries underpay English teachers, and those that don't often require long hours, are very expensive, or just don't have the technological infrastructure to do well in online classes if they don't have in-country CPD.

If I'd stayed in the USA...oh god. I know many people prefer the stability of a salaried office job, but anyone who's met me knows that sort of work just doesn't suit me. I get restless if I'm in one place too long, or have to spend very long hours there. I get bored with routine more easily than many. I don't like being expected to clock in and out at certain hours when that's just not how my best work gets done. I have a strong personality that doesn't quite fit with most office politics, where 'normal' is the new beige. It sounds very self-centered and entitled and "kids these days" although I'm in my 30s, but better that I know this about myself and act on it than put myself and others through the torture of my trying to work such a job, yes? I find most office work meaningless on a personal level, even as I acknowledge that some of it must be done and others do find meaning in it.  So, with my remarkable lack of talent at doing office work I don't find meaningful, and my penchant for saying what I think regardless of the social consequences, and my intractable inability to act 'beige', I probably wouldn't have gotten promoted very quickly and would probably still be wondering why I'm on the bottom rungs at a company that's given me a job that I could do far better at, but lack the motivation to try. I wouldn't even be able to afford training for something different, so I'd feel stuck. I'd still be taking the bus 2 hours to work and back each day and struggling to pay rent on the fringes of a major city, working a 2nd job to have any savings at all, watching my 20s melt into my 30s with little change.

Doesn't that sound lovely?

Taiwan, in short, gave me the chance to do something else. I can't imagine I would have been able to afford the path to becoming an English teacher in the USA.

Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly knows that I'm a big proponent of teacher training. I really don't buy the argument that all you need is the right personality or talent and some classroom practice - if anything it's condescending to teachers who have worked hard to perfect their craft to imply that any reasonably extroverted upstart who isn't a total dullard could just sort of figure it all out in a few months through magic or something. But, what I haven't perhaps made clear is that I'm also a fan of experience, and getting someone fresh off the plane into a job where they can see for themselves if they like it and are suited to it as a career before committing to an expensive degree program is something I support.  After all I got my start that way. I'd only insist that such opportunities come with somewhat standardized, respectable on the job training and continuing with the job would require getting (school-funded) qualification such as CELTA after a year or two.

But you can't do that in the USA - you might be able to volunteer or get a job at an unaccredited school/institute, but you won't be able to get a real job paying a living wage teaching English in the USA unless you commit to perhaps more money than you want to spend getting certified to do something you've never even tried. Most such jobs seem to require a Master's or teaching license. I can see how promising new talent may decide to just take office jobs rather than commit to that.

So, thank you Taiwan, for making it possible for me to discover a career that suits me in a way my home country could not.

You could say that a lot of countries provide this - you can teach English anywhere. Yes, almost anywhere, but Taiwan has the advantages of being more livable than say, China (or the Middle East for women with strong feminist beliefs), with better wages than most of South America, all of Europe, Turkey and most of Southeast Asia (I hear wages in Vietnam are pretty good but are awful and exploitative in Thailand). It's not as expensive as Japan or Europe - perhaps only in Korea can you save more as jobs there tend to provide perks such as flight reimbursement and free accommodation.

So, in Taiwan you can live fairly well and potentially save enough to pay for CPD - which schools should be paying for or helping to fund but generally don't.  That's actually pretty rare in this profession! I'm not sure if I lived in a more expensive country if I'd have been able to afford Delta at all, or if I'd had to commit to one full-time job. You may have to go abroad for CPD in Taiwan - more about that and other issues below - but at least for me, Taiwan has given me the flexibility and funds I need to get it done.

Taiwan also allowed me to become a permanent resident fairly easily - not something a lot of countries necessarily do. This allowed me to sort of 'create a job' for myself in which I work part-time in corporate training, part-time in the IELTS world, and part-time for my private clients. This is not something I could have done as easily (and legally) in, say, China where permanent residency is hard to come by, or Korea where you need a job offer and work visa to even come in, and so that job - paying for your flight and accommodation and all - is more likely to expect you to work for only them. Even in Taiwan without permanent residency schools that sponsor your work visa can and do ask you to be available for them at set hours - you lose a lot of flexibility, but the fact that I was able to get PR fairly painlessly is a big plus in favor of Taiwan. That sort of freedom has really helped my career because I've had more chances, through being free to work whenever and for whomever I like, to not only get a Delta in my spare time (something that may have been torturous at a full-time job) but also to expand into other ELT specialisms. I don't know that I'd have had the chance to do both specialized private teaching, corporate training and IELTS in a more traditional job setup, and it has been very good for me professionally.

Notably, I could not have done this in the USA either, in part because there's just less demand for English teachers (and what demand there is seems to mostly be in public schools, and I don't teach kids) but also because that sort of freelance work requires a fair amount of bouncing around the city. I do not like to drive. Other than possibly New York - and maybe not even there due to long transit times - I couldn't do the sort of all-around-town commuting that I do on a reasonable schedule without a car. It's a life goal for me to never have to own a car, so this is a big deal.

That's not to say that Taipei is a totally professional place for English teaching, or that it's necessarily the best place to start a career. Certainly about 99% of the cram school industry, where most untrained "Engrish teechers" work, is also a crappy joke, Taiwan has no important professional conferences in ELT, whether academic or professional, and even real employers don't always treat you as a professional. I've been lucky in this regard but even friends of mine who've worked at actual universities complain about treated like grunt workers. There are no good training or qualification programs in Taiwan - you have to go online or go abroad. Most jobs don't care if you're qualified or not. Those in ELT research who actually want to participate in the academic side of the field rarely publish from Taiwan, and professional development is almost never paid for or even encouraged (again I'm lucky in that for me it is encouraged, but I can't help but notice it hasn't been paid for, and that's one other reason why I freelance rather than committing to one employer. No employer has a package quite good enough to get me full-time). The idea of working at a university and having a research budget as well as funding to travel to international conferences, as my friend in the same field in Japan does, seems to simply not exist in Taiwan. So, there's room to improve. A lot of room.

But it would be unfair to slam Taiwan totally. We have a very small community of ELT professionals - I probably know the majority of Delta holders in the country - but I've found a great deal of support in that community. I met my Delta tutor randomly through an online forum post. Other professionals have allowed me to observe classes, accepted me into training programs and given me advice on my way up. Those who 'get it' really get it, and there are few enough of us that perhaps it does mean we support each other more.

And on a more personal note, I grew into my own in Taiwan. I am not the same person who got on a flight from Dulles to Taipei 10 years ago - now I know how to work hard, I know how to deliver results at work (even if I am a bit temperamental or have high expectations at times), I know what I want and I feel like I have an actual career. I discovered that career through working in Taiwan, and I'm not entirely sure the conditions would have been right for it to have happened in another country. I couldn't stay in China, I love Japan but have serious reservations about what it would be like to live there, Korea is not as laid-back, and other countries don't pay particularly well. I've had the chance to try out different types of teaching and had work opportunities I likely wouldn't have had elsewhere. I recently had the opportunity to work in a professional capacity with a public figure I happen to personally admire and respect, on a topic I am very passionate about, and I enjoyed it greatly. I never would have had that chance if I'd just stayed in the USA and worked some crappy joke office job or slogged through work at a cram school in Japan. I wouldn't even be the same person - the professional English teacher who is passionate about her field - who would have had such an opportunity.

So, while my friend has a point about Taipei as a "professional backwater", I just can't entirely sign on to that perspective. Taiwan made me the English teacher and person I am. I  have come to love Taiwan as a second home, and care about it as a nation. I had none of those things in 2006 and while I suppose I could have the same feeling about any country I'd chosen to spend these years in, I chose Taiwan, so Taiwan means something to me.

Ready, Set, Go

Edited to add: I forgot to include a link to the song that underscored this post. Here you go.

They keep us at sea level so I'm stayin' on my A-game
They're local like the C when I'm express like the A Train.

I had wanted to get back into blogging smoothly, with a few softball posts about traveling in Kinmen and the East Rift Valley before yet another family emergency (this one turned out OK though) sent me back to the US for a good portion of the summer and Delta Module 2 began.

But this article in the Straits Times caught my eye - I do think it's worth a quick reaction post with some thoughts on racism and the ghettoization of foreigners in Taiwan.

I don't feel, up to now, that I have been limited in my career by living in Taiwan - if anything Taiwan helped me launch my career. But, I say that as a career English teacher: of course it would be easier for me than for a foreigner in literally any other field. With the exception of a few really bad years toward the end of my time at my former employer, after they treated my husband like dirt but I stuck around just to get an APRC (and had to pretend just to get through each day that I didn't think what they did was so heinous - when it was heinous, and unforgivable), I've generally had positive working experiences. I have been able to move on to freelance with two very good schools that, while they may technically be buxibans, are places that actually prioritize education and look after their people. I've been able to get a Delta - at least I am basically sure I passed and will have that baby in my hands soon. English teachers can do that. Nobody else, save perhaps an editor or journalist, can.

However, I have to basically agree with this:

The challenges that Caucasians face are more in the form of being "ghettoised", said Mr Michael Turton, 52, an American who has lived in Taiwan for two decades.

"Everyone is very polite to us, but try finding a permanent position in a university or business in one's own skill," said Mr Turton, who teaches English at a local university and said he knows of only two Caucasian deans among Taiwan's numerous universities. "Tension is ameliorated because everyone knows foreigners have no power."

One reason is, unlike Singapore or Hong Kong, Taiwan is not a regional financial hub that would have as many job opportunities.

Language is another barrier.

That said, Taiwanese women do tend to find Caucasians to be desirable matches, said Mr Turton, who is married to a Taiwanese woman. They have two children.

"How many local girls want to marry foreigners? Lots. That is because foreigners are an escape fantasy," Mr Turton said, referring to familial obligations women married to local men have to fulfil, and a perception of a better life in a Western country.

First of all, I feel that Taiwan has been a really great place to live this past decade. Up through getting my Delta it's also a nearly ideal place to work. While salaries are stagnant, generally speaking the pay is better than in much of the rest of the world and the lifestyle makes up for the fact that we really all should be earning more. Locals included. Flexible work allowed me to get that Delta while doing three modular courses. Taiwan is relatively well-connected to the outside world so I was able to access books I needed for my coursework. I've been able to travel a lot because of affordable airfares to the rest of Asia.

However, I have to say I've started noticing cracks in the facade of our great lifestyle here.

First, I know someday I will get a Master's - the issue is paying for it, not the actual work. I was born in a country where higher education is prohibitively expensive, I can't just say "Imma go to grad school!" the way Canadians, Australians and Europeans (and many Taiwanese) do. Once I do, I have to admit that I see the end of the line. At that point will I really want to be working in private language schools, as good as my two current employers are? Probably not, to be honest. But what else can I do? International schools aren't ideal (plus I'd also have to get a teaching license most likely) as I don't particularly want to teach teenagers full-time. Universities simply don't pay well enough (salaries are in the range of NT$60,000/month I've been told, and frankly, that's not enough even with paid vacation). But we foreigners really are limited in terms of moving up if we actually want to teach. There are a handful of schools that hire foreigners as academic managers or teacher trainers, and those positions don't always pay particularly well either (plus your job is often to be the 'bearer of bad news' between the teaching staff and Taiwanese upper management if it's a locally-owned school, which sounds like my idea of hell). The schools I work for don't do this, but a LOT of schools see foreigners as foreign monkeys to put in classrooms to get students in, and just take for granted that they should never be anything more. So, when that time comes and I'm ready to move up in my career...where exactly is there in Taiwan for me to go, when the only 'better' jobs are not actually better?

In short, Taiwan has been great for my career up to now, but I can see clearly down the road where it won't be forever. Someday that's a problem I'm going to have to grapple with, and it would be a lie to say it's not causing me stress now.

Secondly, I (well, we, but this is me writing) feel absolutely ready, once I rescue my finances from the clusterfuck that was late 2014-2015, to do adult things like, oh, actually own the place where we live so we can modify it to our liking. Have a credit rating in the country where I actually live! Have a job with benefits! Good luck doing any of those things - getting a credit card without a big fight, getting a mortgage (if you're not married to a local, forget it), finding that higher-level job without running into a pervasive feeling that foreigners shouldn't be considered for such positions (again I'd like to point out that neither of my current schools have that attitude, but they are the exceptions, not the rule).

Speaking of marriage, Michael makes a good point that a lot of foreigners here do marry locals, but I didn't - and in fact that's a bit of a male-centric phenomenon. Some foreign women do marry Taiwanese men but the balance is squarely in favor of foreign men and Taiwanese women (marriage equality is not yet law here but one can hope it will be soon as most Taiwanese support the idea). Nothing wrong with that generally (though that does mean there is a problem in the expat community with the slimier kind of fetishizers, but that's for a post I don't think I'll ever write). There seems to be this blanket assumption - and I'm not saying Michael is guilty of it, just that it exists - that 'expat' means 'straight male expat', like Plato's ideal form of Expat definitely has a penis and definitely wants to put it in a vagina. What that ends up meaning is that male expats, if they marry locals, are more likely to stay because they get the local benefits of that union. They get the mortgages and credit cards because their wives can co-sign. They get the guanxi. They get the sense of permanence. Other than the few foreign women married to Taiwanese men, female expats are just that much more marginalized. And yes, that is a problem. I happened to marry a white guy, and as a result, we can't get a freakin' mortgage in the country where we live. That's not OK.

Which brings me to my next point - yes, I do feel increasingly ghettoized as a result of all of this. As a professional English teacher - yeah shut up I have a Delta now :) - I feel stereotyped with all of the Johnny McBackpackers who just got off the plane and think that teaching (good teaching that is) is an easy and fun way to make a few extra bucks and requires no special skills. I feel marginalized because I can't even consider becoming a homeowner in the country where I live. I feel limited because after I get a Master's there won't be many growth opportunities career-wise, and it will become increasingly hard to push my salary up (as it is for everyone: see stagnation, wage). It does create the feeling that 'you're a foreigner, we allowed you to do a lot, but this is all you are allowed to do. Know your place." 

This is not an attitude I can point to in anyone in particular, but a general sense I get. It's compounded by the fact that it is commonly believed that foreigners - at least English teachers, obviously this is not true for largely Southeast Asian laborers - are treated better than Taiwanese. And in many cases we are - pay for teachers who don't know TBL from TPRS, or scaffolding from subordination, and teach weird things like "I'm well" rather than "I'm good" because they don't know what a copula is let alone how it works - is higher than actual qualified teachers who happen to have Taiwanese passports (which brings in the other discussion of how good teacher training is in Taiwan - not something I want to get into here). We get away with not following work culture expectations because it's not our culture. We get to take longer vacations, generally speaking, as long as our employers aren't too terrible. We generally get a lot of leeway.

But I can't say wholeheartedly that we actually are treated better. We don't get annual bonuses, which most Taiwanese expect as a matter of course. We don't get paid vacation generally (although this is partly why we can take longer vacations so there is a trade-off). We can't get a pension even if we pay into the system. We don't get paid Chinese New Year, although technically by law we ought to. We have trouble asserting our basic rights - non-discrimination, labor insurance, even a contract not full of outrageous illegal clauses including very illegal fines for "quitting" even with proper notice (again I'm lucky in that regard but a lot of people aren't). We can't become citizens unless we give up our original citizenship - a rule not imposed on Taiwanese who get citizenship in other countries. My husband got screwed by our former employer because they had entirely too much control over his visa, for someone who had been here for nearly five years. They should have never been allowed to do that to him, and yet they were. And again, we are limited in the jobs we can take because a lot of locals don't consider foreigners as serious candidates for real, skilled, high-level work. We'll always be outsiders.

A final thing that bothers me is how many Taiwanese - rather like Americans in this way - deny that there is any racism at all in their country. Here is a near exact excerpt from a conversation I had with a neighbor (translated into English):

"Well, there's racism everywhere, so of course there's racism in Taiwan."
"No there isn't! We treat you well."
"Sure, you treat ME well, but that itself is a form of racism - in some ways you treat white people better than locals. But really the problem is that you don't treat EVERY foreigner well. Only the Westerners, and often only the white ones."
"No, I don't treat others badly."
"You personally don't, but do you think Southeast Asians in this country are discriminated against?"
"Well, yes, there's some racism there. But it's for a reason. They come from poor countries with a lot of crime, so we have to be careful!"

UUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHH HULK ANGRY HULK SMASH is all I have to say to that.


So, while I personally have never experienced the sort of racist rant that Christopher Hall did, and likely never will, I definitely feel it in big ways and small, and I have to say it's become more noticeable in the past few years, especially as someone not married to a local. I don't know what the end result will be, but I can't deny it's an issue. 

"As mothers could leave work earlier to take care of their children"

Good news! The Legislative Yuan, apparently sick of being seen as a raving pack of fuckwits, has passed legislation that caps the work week at 40 hours, or no more than 84 hours (where'd those extra 4 hours come from?) for two weeks.

That's awesome, although I had thought that this was already policy in Taiwan, and the reason people worked such long hours was because basically every single company ignored the law (and many of them found ways to weasel out of paying overtime - my former employer did this to Taiwanese staff, making them clock in on time but not clock out, so there would be no time-stamp of overtime worked). Though perhaps I'm wrong about that? If I am, please weigh in.

And we do need this - assuming that companies will actually pay attention to it. They seem to have found ways to creep work into Saturdays, which were made a day off as a two-day weekend some time ago (along with the somewhat Faustian bargain that if an extra day off was declared to merge a national holiday with a weekend, that day would have to be made up the following Saturday. I feel people work so hard they shouldn't have to do that). People are overworked, sometimes to the point of death. Almost always to the point of it affecting the rest of their lives. I'm not even going to continue talking about that aspect, because it's so obvious and well-documented that I don't have to. This is what the free market hath wrought, and it sucks. It needs regulation. It's screaming for it.

Even though what is most likely to happen first is bosses saying "sure, you can go home at 6" and then just never promoting that person, ever, for daring to actually use the new law to his or her advantage. The real change won't come until workers, coming to this realization together (whether they're organized or not - I happen to be pro-union but it's not strictly necessary for this to take place), simply refuse to work at places where onerous or even unpaid overtime is expected.

Along those lines, why is this clunker buried at the bottom of the article:

These include an increase of the monthly limit for overtime from 46 to 54 hours, Liu said.

If you increase the overtime allowance, it hardly matters that you're capping the work week. Work hours will be the same. So this law, while a step in the right direction, is not really going to change much. (Thanks to my friend V. for picking that up - I'd missed the line completely, so far down is it buried). 

What stuck in my craw about this otherwise great new legislation was this:

“Flexibility is conducive to a more friendly working environment and the enhancement of female workers’ participation in the workforce, as mothers could leave work earlier to take care of their children,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏), who proposed to include the clause in the amendment.

Ugh!

I mean, I am happy that new laws like this, if followed* and enforced** will make lives easier for individuals and for families, and people who want to raise children will find it easier to do so.

But this calls back to all sorts of bullshit stereotypes that women are the nurturers, they're the ones who always care for the children, it's their job. Their husbands' reduced working time is less important, because raising children isn't their job, or something. Nope, we leave that to the ladies.

That? That's crap. Why bollocks on about women taking care of children rather than parents taking care of children or families having more time together? Why ruin perfectly good legislation that way? I know you're taking a stab at feminism, and that's cool, and you can have your own brand of feminism (no True Scotsman here) but comments like this hurt as much as they try to help. 

*fat chance
**hahahahahaha

Bougainvillea

One of the nicest features of our apartment is that we have a really nice south-facing window with a spacious casement. It looks out over a courtyard with a small playground, not a road, so there aren't any exhaust fumes or loud traffic noises. The light is soft and indirect - perfect for an apartment in a subtropical city, but not great for growing plants. So we keep it simple: a few large plants that we inherited (I don't know what they're called), mint, a few orchids, a fern that took root in an old pot of soil gone to seed, and a big fat fuchsia bougainvillea.

On nice days, I like to open up the screens and occasionally stick my head out into the sunlit air and enjoy the leaves and flowers. I was doing that just the other day - head out, light streaming in, a slight breeze which rustled up the smell of the mint, and swirls and splatters of bright pink flowers. To maintain the "shades of blue" theme from the living room, we added (okay, I added) inexpensive blue glass candleholders and lanterns and had chiffon curtains in shades of green and blue tailor-made.

Side note: when I gave the fabric and design specs to the tailor, her reaction was "this fabric is too thin! You don't want everyone seeing in, don't you? Why not choose a thicker fabric that can keep out the sun, too? The sun will come right through this!"

"That's what we want, and anyway we don't mind if people can see into the living room, not that too many people can. And there are plants to hide the view inside," I bit back.

"You foreigners are so weird."

Convinced she had the right of it, she got to work on my curtains.

Anyway, looking out on those flowers, I became aware of something: it was a Thursday afternoon.

Life is pretty good. I make good money for Taiwan; we live downtown. How many people with apartments nice enough to enjoy the view and the air from their windows and live downtown can, in fact, look out their window to admire whorls of bougainvillea on a Thursday afternoon? Even in Taipei, most people were toiling away in offices. Night would be falling before they could leave.

So I was thinking.

One of the advantages of being an expat - especially if you're from a country with a wide-reaching, globally-influential pop culture (which, sorry other countries, I know that can be annoying), is that you get to watch your own culture evolve from a distance. You're totally fluent in the sociocultural language of your home country, but you're not there, which lends the whole thing a rarefied distance. Not unlike observing the terrain from a tiny airplane window far overhead.

I have a reasonably broad view for Taipei - more than just the street below (there is no street below) and the apartment across from you is considered a good view in the denser parts of this city, or any city, really. But I can see just one courtyard - a broad view of a small space. The view from that window, past those bougainvilleas and their thorns (did you know bougainvilleas had thorns? I didn't until I inherited one), out on a little slice of Taipei is narrower than my extreme wide-angle view of American goings-on - a broad view but from a tiny little window way up where jet planes fly.

And recently, that American pop culture terrain has been marked by the volcanic eruption that is Women. More specifically, Sheryl Sandberg. Her name is the most ubiquitous, it has the most cache abroad (most of the people I know in Taiwan have heard of her, too) and she, like a lava flow, has mostly succeeded in her concerted attempts to bring the discussion about how we treat working women to the forefront of cultural discourse.

I'm not sure if I'm 100% on board with what she says: I don't wish to contort myself into some pleasing, perfect aggressive-yet-feminine, strong-but-not-bitchy Gumby woman. I'd rather just be me, and if some boss who thinks he or she can either walk all over me or that I'm a "bitch" gives me problems, I'll walk away as soon as I'm able. And I'm not a mom, so her advice to working mothers doesn't really impact me much. If I wanted to devote lots of time to work, I could, with very few consequences. And I see what people mean when they say that she can take her own advice - she's a wealthy, established, distinguished woman at the top of the ladder. It's not exactly useful to single mothers trying to put food on the table with the pay from their job as a receptionist at, say, Southern Oconomowoc County Chiropractic Associates.

It's not only Sandberg, of course, I'm only picking the most famous name from among a few people participating in this conversation.

And what I hear again and again is how a lot of these women - not Sandberg, but others - who write about how being a working mom with a flexible job is a great choice, how it works for them, how more women should do it. Most of these women are writers. That's why they write about this, natch! Which is great, but those jobs tend not to have stable incomes (especially tough if you're single, whether or not you have kids), are often harder to pull of with kids at home than you'd think, and really not available as an option to the receptionist at - say - Southern Oconomowoc County Chiropractic Associates.

Either way, a lot of people - a lot of women especially - seem to covet the semi-freelance flex-time lifestyle. Some make it work, some are trying, some have it but only because they can afford to with a high-earning breadwinner partner, some feel like it's a windmill they're better off not tilting at.

Because, let's face it: it's hard to have that lifestyle in the USA unless you've got the backing of a stable breadwinner. Possible, but hard. I don't know about you, but "I'm freelance (because my husband works long hours in an office so we never have to worry about money)" wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I decided to strike out on my own, work-wise. Of course people do make it work, it's just a lot harder. In Taiwan - especially Taipei - it's much easier. I know a lot of people who are making it work without the burdens of living in the USA. I don't know if any of us would be as successful or self-sustaining in the USA. I've met quite a few independent artsy locals (artists, designers, writers) who manage to live independently on that salary in a way that few Americans would be able to. In some ways, Taipei is a city of independent shopfronts, of indie jewelry crafters, of writers, translators, journalists and editors striking out on their own. I don't see a lot of this in the USA except perhaps in Brooklyn, and I can guarantee we all have better standards of living than the indie and freelance folks there.

Which makes me think from my perch at 30,000 feet above my own culture, that it's really a damn shame that there aren't more expat women in Taiwan. If more expat women lived in Taiwan, more of them would realize that if they want, they can have that kind of life here more easily than in the USA.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that while some people can do it in the USA, I never would have been able to.

You can't get around to meet people, promote yourself and meet clients without a car, so there's a whole bunch of expenses. The only city where you can both live near public transportation and not have a car is New York, other cities don't have a good enough network for you to be able to rove about town making money. Sorry, DC, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago, but it's true. I strongly dislike driving - it would be a major change in lifestyle for me to have to do it, and a major expense I probably wouldn't be able to shoulder to buy and maintain a car with all of its associated costs. People without a lot of money buy cars all the time, sure, but imagine doing it on the freelancer money I'd be making. Yeah, not so much.

If your clients tend not to drive you'll also want to live near public transportation if it's available. Or, if you just want to avoid driving as much as possible, you'll want that too, without having to schlep a mile to the nearest MRT station. So, that'll be a much higher rent or mortgage payment for you. We could conceivably live near-ish a subway station on the American equivalent of my freelance career plus whatever Brendan would do, but it wouldn't be downtown. Forget it. I could not do what I do here and live where I do in the USA. Anywhere in the USA.

Living expenses are astronomical, too. At least, compared to Taiwan, they feel that way. In Taiwan, in months where I earn less, we can squeeze by surprisingly cheaply. We managed it for months without significant problems while doing Delta Module One, when for all intents and purposes I was working part time. You can budget and squeeze in the USA, too, but just not quite to the same degree. In Taiwan it was a matter of "maybe we don't need fancy Belgian beer this weekend". In the USA it would be "maybe ramen is a fine dinner idea every night this week".

In short, I could do it, but my lifestyle would suffer so much that it wouldn't really be the same. I could either have the lifestyle I do now, but work all week and miss out on those sunny Thursday afternoons enjoying the flowers of my labor, or I could have the work schedule I do now but live in a dank little view-less apartment far from downtown and a schlep to everywhere. Other people make it work, but I know that I likely wouldn't be one of them. For everyone who can shout out their windows to the bright, wide world that it's "fine for them! Try it out!", I bet there are ten more people who just wish their windows faced something other than a wall.

Until recently, I wouldn't have been able to pull it off because of this little thing called health care. I'm healthy, but not robustly so. I have had back problems (seem to be fine now) and occasionally get bronchial infections. I get migraines. My family history is riddled with heart problems, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's and a few other fun things, too. I need, need, need health insurance. Taiwan makes that happen for me. The USA...well, we have Obamacare now, and I'm curious about whether that would work for me. But when I left, I couldn't have gone freelance, or entrepreneur, or even worked for a company that didn't have a health insurance benfit, because quite simply I could not afford the health insurance. 

It wasn't a matter of budgeting: in the USA I budgeted myself into rice and lentils, rice&beans, cheap bread and pasta, frozen veggies and carrot sticks with apple slices because carrots and apples were cheap. And I still wouldn't have been able to afford my own health insurance: on an entry-level salary I could barely afford one of the cheaper company plans. Obviously working in companies one would either get promoted or look for something better (not that I thought about such things much back then, within a year I was plotting my return to Asia having decided that the cube monkey life was not for me), but how does one strike out on one's own when one can't afford basic health care?

Side note: this is one reason I will basically never vote for Republicans. Also the "weak track record on women's rights and their party platforms are bigoted against LGBT people", but a big part of it is that they talk big about entrepreneurial spirit, but don't do anything to help would-be entrepreneurs like me. I didn't need lower taxes - I needed health insurance I could afford.

Back to the main topic.

So, while I realize my experience is not the only experience, and my view is not the only view, it's unbearably clear to me that there's no way I could both maintain the lifestyle I have (those gorgeous bougainvilleas in that spacious, sunny, convenient downtown apartment) and have the time to enjoy it (those random weekday afternoons free), as a freelancer in the USA.

I have what a lot of people, especially (but not only) women, want. The freedom to do the job I love on my terms, with flexible time and good pay. I can both have my bougainvilleas and enjoy them, too.

I have this because Taiwan has made it possible. I could not have this in the USA. Even when I needed a visa to stay in Taiwan, I was able to have my own side interests and private classes and more-or-less have flex-time work. It would be remarkably easy for a lot of American women, sick of dealing with sexist workplaces, sick of being told to "lean in" or contort themselves, sick of having someone else dictate when they worked and for how much pay (less than men's), to grab a job that provided an ARC in Taiwan for a few hours a week of English teaching or whatever, and use their extra time to pursue their freelance side work, until they could get permanent residency and chase their dream full-time, or full-ish time - whatever time could be scheduled around not "leaning in", but leaning out of their sunny windows and enjoying a spray of bougainvillea, orchids and mint on a weekday afternoon.

But they're not here, and something tells me they're not coming.

It's too bad. I'd like to share my bougainvilleas.

Ears of Corn

Teaching English is a real job, but few people treat it that way.

Shibboleth shibboleth shibboleth!
Photo from here

Yeah, I know, that will shock exactly no one, except maybe those who were under the impression that teaching English could never qualify as an actual career (and I know a few folks who think this way). There are enough people on both sides to fuel many debates on LinkedIn, expat forums and TEFL forums, and yet nobody's written a truly thoughtful article or blog post on the subject. I found a few basic posts (like this one) that I don't think fully addressed the issue, and nothing that was comprehensive. I've written about it before, but I hadn't really found my voice on the subject yet.

My stance on it is basically this: teaching is a profession. It's as hard - or harder - than law or business and at times can feel like you work similar hours to those working in law, medicine or the higher echelons of business (all that talk about how teachers get their evenings and summers off? Bullshit. Plenty of teachers not teaching children in school systems don't get that time off, and those who do usually use it to do all of the spillover work which can't be finished during the school day, even with free periods. Continuing education, thoughtful marking of in-depth student work that goes beyond basic testing as well as planning good syllabi and classes all take time). It's a profession that requires a degree and certification as well as continuing education.

First tangent: a lot of people who don't fully understand the role race, class and gender play in our lives and what lives are on offer to us will often say "the reason women tend to earn less than men is because they choose less-well-remunerated careers such as teaching over well-paid ones like law". First of all, this is not true. Secondly, even if it were, the underlying assumption is that teachers are not well-paid because of something intrinsic to the profession. Perhaps that it is "not that difficult" (except it is), or that people who are passionate about it are more likely to do it despite the low pay (which is true - how often do you hear "I'm so passionate about law, I'd be a lawyer even if lawyers didn't earn a lot of money"?). But what I suspect is really going on is that it's not that women often become teachers despite the low pay; rather, teachers are poorly paid because they tend to be women. Gender discrimination at work (pun INTENDED). The teacher-and-nurse effect.

I just made "the teacher-and-nurse effect" up but it really needs to become a thing.

Most people would expect this of a math teacher, a history teacher, a Civics teacher, a French teacher, a Chemistry teacher, even an art teacher. They would never stand for "well I don't have any experience but I'm pretty good at chemistry and the school gave me a quick training session so let's go!". They would never accept a teacher for themselves or their children who was not trained, and they would want a teacher who was not only engaging and fun, but also had long-term course plans and class learning goals, and knew how to take concrete steps to achieve them. "Well, I'm being paid $15 an hour, I don't know a lot about history but I'll learn it and then teach it" or "I don't have a degree in Calculus but let's just figure this out together" would not fly. Not in a public school, not in a university, not in a center of continuing education.

Even if you took a foreign language - the sort of class that (obviously) most resembles a TEFL classroom - you wouldn't be okay with "I'm a native Spanish speaker, I have no teaching experience but I have this book, let's go through this together". Maybe that would be okay for a language exchange partner, but not a teacher. You'd want someone who actually knew what they were doing, someone who had training in pedagogy and methodology and knew how to impart knowledge of and fluency in Spanish unto you. Merely knowing something doesn't translate (pun intended) into knowing how to impart knowledge of something.

Basically, we expect our teachers in any other subject to be professional. We don't always treat them like professionals - we pay them too little and give them few resources and often even less respect, which is why some great potential talents in teaching don't go into the field - but we expect professionalism.

So why is it that we don't expect professionalism from English teachers? Why is this the one area of teaching - a profession - where it's not treated professionally? What is so different about teaching English as a foreign language that any inexperienced rando can get hired to do it, as compared to science, math, Civics or French?

I honestly can't think of anything. In terms of pedagogy, the methods used in language teaching don't differ that much from methods used in any other subject, including the difficult subjects such as Chemistry. In terms of content, I don't see how it's all that different from French class in my high school - the language has changed, but the ways of teaching it are more or less the same. There is really nothing special or different about TEFL/TESOL/ELT etc. as compared to any other subject you may wish to learn.

Before I go any further: I know that English is not the only foreign language to suffer the scourge of untrained, nonprofessional "teachers". Certainly the vast majority of Chinese teachers are awful, or at least wholly untrained. There are good ones, but pedagogy in Chinese and Taiwanese TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language - I just made that acronym up) certification/diploma programs, if it is taught at all, tends to be taught very poorly, not relying on the mounds of applicable research available, not taking advantage of current practices in LT methodology, and generally outdated. In TEFL there is a (wrong) assumption that a native speaker just spending time with students will cause them to learn English (well, not entirely wrong: they will pick up some English, but not in any easily measurable way). There seems to be a different (also wrong) assumption that if you are a native speaker of Chinese, that telling the students all about the target grammar - all about it, even aspects they don't need to learn when first introduced to a concept - and then plugging in vocabulary, will cause them to magically learn Chinese with minimal practice required (certainly at Shi-da we didn't get nearly enough practice and fluency did suffer as a result). And again, that's not entirely wrong: if you attend a class like this, you will learn some Chinese. It just isn't the most efficient way to do so. Certainly language schools aimed at tourists in various countries employ untrained native speakers who have taken a quick introductory course.

All of those fall under basically the same rubric of the TEFL model that I'm criticizing. My attempt here is to compare TEFL to teaching as it is professionally considered, and to language classes done that way, by trained, talented and knowledgeable teachers.

So yes, quite clearly, TEFL is a real job. It's a real career. It's teaching; teaching is a professional occupation. It's no different from teaching Biology or Geography (which, I wish Geography classes would get an overhaul too. There's so much interesting discussion and learning fodder there, of the Guns, Germs and Steel variety, although maybe not so much the End of History or Clash of Civilizations variety, and yet it's so often reduced to memorizing capitals and main exports. Now that I'm gaining more knowledge of the various elements of good teaching, and being knowledgeable about Geography, someone should put me in charge of a Geography class - we'd have so much fun, ohmigod).

I do wonder if the lack of respect for pedagogy/proper methodology and what it can do for one's teaching is something more ingrained: public and primary/secondary school teachers are expected to have this training, but professors and other academics, mostly, are not. I think in four years of college classes that I had maybe three professors who actually knew how to teach. They were all very knowledgeable, some were quite well-known in their fields. But they didn't know how to effectively impart their knowledge: it was all lectures, Powerpoints, multiple choice and the occasional essay question. Part of that is, of course, huge class sizes especially at the lower levels, but part of it seems to be this pernicious idea that if you know something, then you know how to teach it. Professors know their subject, therefore they can teach it, apparently. Except they can't. Most of my professors would have benefited a lot from some training sessions, not in improving their own knowledge, but in how to get that knowledge to us in an interesting, motivating and relevant way.

If you do go ahead and get yourself educated - a Master's or at least a string of reputable certifications (no online weekend courses), or even better, both - and learn how to teach, it will show in your work. The difference between you - a professional - and an untrained 22-year old (or even an untrained 42-year-old) will be apparent. You will be able to lift yourself out of the Expat English Teacher Gutter pretty quickly. Anyone with a shred of sense or acumen will see the difference. It is absolutely worth it, and that's why I'm currently pursuing a Delta, and after that, hopefully a Master's (we'll see: I can't afford a Master's, won't take out more loans, scholarships and fellowships are hard to get for students not intending to enter a PhD program, and for American students tuition is preposterous - and foreign schools charge us international student tuition which is also preposterous. I could cash out my IRA for it, but that would be stupid. I could retire for a few months on that! WOO! PARTY WHEN I'M 90!!1! So...let's see if the winds of life blow me that way, or if they just blow).

So why don't people treat TEFL as teaching in a professional capacity? If there is nothing to differentiate it from any other kind of teaching, why does it get the shaft?

Three groups of people are affected by this: owners/bosses, teachers/"teachers", and parents/students (depending on the students' age).

From the boss' or school owner's point of view, this is obvious. They can pay an unskilled, untrained "teacher" far less than a real teacher would expect, and treat them like unskilled labor (something a real teacher would never accept). These folks - often twentysomethings with little life experience, though not always - will feel they've gotten a lot if you give them a slapdash bullshit training session made up of a mishmash of cribbed notes from teaching textbooks, strung together with vague platitudes about "keeping it fun" and "engaging the student", hoping that the interesting foreign-ness of the worker, with a smidge of charisma from that worker, plus a few textbooks thrown their way for material, will keep up the illusion that the students are getting a professional service - all for cut-rate prices (for the boss - the students or their parents pay a premium of course).

Some owners, I presume, know that they're peddling shoddy product. Others don't know the first thing about real teaching or what it takes to be a professional educator, and truly do think that all it takes to teach something - including English - is to know a lot about that thing. And who better to know about English than a native English speaker? Nevermind if they don't actually know all that much about the grammar or underlying structures or history of their own language, and therefore can't teach it. Nevermind that they are unaware of the latest practices or past research on teaching methods so they can't employ them in the classroom. Nevermind that they haven't heard of even the most basic concepts in English, Linguistics or pedagogy and therefore can't refer to them. If you've never learned, or heard of, IPA, you can't use it when it would be effective (and it isn't always). If you've never heard of a "student-centered classroom", you can't work towards creating one. If you don't know the difference between PPP, TTT, TBL, Dogme, TPR, Audiolingualism, Grammar-Translation or the Communicative Approach, you can't learn about, and practice, how to use them in your classroom at the times when they'd have the most effect, or when to avoid them. If you haven't read up on research into the best way to introduce new language, you won't be able to consider it when you plan a class, and your approach may be substandard (or it may just be different, if you are extremely talented. Most people are not). You may base some of your teaching methods on inaccurate or misguided assumptions about language learning, or not really know at all why you are doing what you're doing - which is rarely effective.

The first type of owner recognizes the shibboleths that distinguish teachers from "teachers"; the second doesn't. In both cases, they don't care.

From the newbie "teacher"'s point of view, it's a relatively well-paid job - for the country it's in at least - that they can get right out of school, no experience necessary, and they get to live abroad. Makes sense, even if from a professional standpoint it doesn't seem very ethical: I'm going to go and pretend to be something I'm not so some school owner can charge people rates for my work under the illusion that I have the credentials! But since when have ethics ever played a big part in prosperous business models?

In fact I'd go so far as to say that a lot of those twentysomething unskilled workers fancy themselves teachers: intellectually they know that a professional teacher must have training and experience that they don't have, but there's a bit of cognitive dissonance going on, fueled by not a small touch of defensiveness: they are teaching, and they want to style themselves as education professionals; they know they aren't, so they tell the voice in their head that whispers "you need more credentials, you need more training, you need more experience" to shut up, and they gas on about how they are real teachers, how they're just as good, how their bosses are lucky to have them. They don't seem to realize that the reason their bosses chose them was because they lacked credentials, and therefore the ability to seriously negotiate compensation and treatment, not in spite of their credentials in the face of their massive - often delusion-based - "talent". They're college grads, they're used to believing that no matter what they do they'll be professionals, they'll be skilled, they'll be worth something. They're used to having that belief reinforced. I don't blame them for wanting to believe that they are more than they are.

I am definitely guilty of this. I was guilty of it before I had training or experience, I was guilty of it before starting the Delta, and I might still be a tad guilty of it up until I enroll in a Master's program. Until I realized how bad I was, I thought I was pretty good. Then I got to be pretty good, and all I want to be is better. But that process took awhile. So, I know of what I speak.

I want to stop here and note a few things before I get back on track.

First, that I am somewhat grateful to the TEFL industry for being what it is. I don't think I would have gone into teaching otherwise, and I wasn't doing very well at the bottom rung of the office ladder. I need to write a longer blog post about this at some point, but this is one way in which the USA screws over its youth. I didn't know teaching was right for me when I went to college, and so I didn't major in it. I "wisely" majored in the subject I'd enjoyed most in high school: I chose International Affairs because it was close to Social Studies. Social Studies + history + travel + language? Sign me up! By the time I knew I not only wanted to teach, but would be very good at it with the proper training and guidance, I couldn't afford a Master's program. I still can't: the deal was that my folks would help me with college, but I was on my own for grad school, and I shouldn't go until I'd worked awhile and knew what I wanted. By the time I knew what I wanted, I didn't have the money because, well, wage stagnation and wealth inequality are real things. Now, I bet they actually would help me if I asked, but tuition at an American school is far higher than any of us can take on and international tuition is not much better.

So, TEFL allowed me a path into teaching that didn't require that I go get a Master's I couldn't afford, for a job that wouldn't pay me enough to pay it off in any reasonable amount of time. I am sure many very good teachers have taken this route, and the educational landscape is richer for it. I wholeheartedly support having this sort of route into teaching, although I'd like to see the model change (maybe a future blog post on that too - what a 'path into teaching, but not TEFL as it is now' might look like). I wouldn't be doing what I love today, with at least a shred of professional dignity, without that start as a twentysomething hack. I'd probably still be at some crap office job that I never got promoted out of, because I hated it enough to not be in a mental state to do well. It would have been a waste of a life.

Second, that as above, many good teachers do come out of this cesspit. The ones with a spark of natural talent that leads them to seek training and experience, to be better and to do better.

Third, that many schools, especially in rural or underprivileged areas, can't afford more than an unskilled twentysomething. There are professional teachers who would be willing to take a job like that, in rural China or a small Bolivian town or what-have-you, or even rural Taiwan, for low pay. A lot of them join the Peace Corps and do something like that. But not enough to meet the demand for English class among those with a bit of money in those places. Plenty of others would love the experience, but would expect a higher standard of pay and benefits that the school just wouldn't be able to offer.

In those cases, a twentysomething hack with a local teacher in tandem is still better than nothing, in terms of offering some sort of foreign language education to those who who want it and can afford it.

So, all that aside, back on track - what about the final group? Why do parents support this awful, unprofessional system? Unless they are paying markedly lower tuition (as may be the case with rural schools or schools in impoverished areas), they may simply be unaware. People without a background in education don't always understand what being an education professional is. That goes for students, school owners, parents and obnoxious people at parties who think they can tell you how to do your job. They may hear the teachers' and boss' "blah blah blah professional blah blah highly-trained teachers blah America blah" and believe them when they say that their words are "shibboleth shibboleth shibboleth", because they don't know better. They may just be lied to by the owner. They may know that the teacher is not a professional, but not realize that that matters and feel it's acceptable to pay high rates just to be in proximity to a native speaker. 

And of course, if they think it doesn't actually take that much training, talent, experience or knowledge for a native speaker to teach their language effectively, and that anyone who speaks English can do it, they'll feel more confident in trying to tell the teacher what to do (I will accept this from adult students in terms of what they want to learn, and will at least consider what they say when they express how they want to learn it. I don't teach children, but if I did, parents of children telling me what to do would get straight-up ignored unless their child was problematic and it was advice on how to deal with managing the behavior problem). It gives them a handy sense of superiority. Seems like a small thing to pay inflated tuition rates over, but what can I say?

That's really the crux of the problem, too: it's that school owners, often shrewd to the point of immorality, rake in huge sums of money by glossing over or entirely misrepresenting either teacher qualifications or the need for them. I suppose all's fair in business&war, and if someone is aching to pay too much money to get talked at by some white kid (because hiring practices really are racist), then they should be allowed to pay that money. If I want to pay a million dollars to snort cocaine cut with diamond powder, I should be allowed to do that (note: I don't want to do that). If a school advertises "look, we've got foreigners!" and folks line up to pay, then okay. If they advertise with "qualified, experienced native speaker professional teachers will help you gain fluency quickly and with ease", they're lying. Even f the "teachers" are qualified, experienced and talented, students still won't gain fluency quickly and easily. 

Presumably most parents and students want a good teacher for their money; a qualified and experienced one. Misrepresenting the teachers you are actually offering as worth the money - as more than they are - and then paying those "teachers" far less than you'd pay real teachers so that you can $$PROFIT$$, is thoroughly reprehensible. 

It also contributes to that same pernicious myth that it is not hard to teach well, that anyone can do it - and that for language teaching all you need is to speak the language, you don't need any knowledge of underlying structure, grammar, history or etymology. By hiring people who don't have that knowledge or ability (at least not yet), and paying them fairly well by local standards (although not well by international teaching professional standards), you're spreading the idea that this is all a teacher needs to be - that anything more is unnecessary, possibly even unwanted as it comes with demands for higher pay and better treatment. (That it also comes with better measurable outcomes for students is often ignored - I still don't understand why nobody, at least the students or parents, seems to care about this). 

That contributes to the norms of hiring cheaper inexperienced people, which makes it harder for the good people to get jobs. Quality goes down and fewer people bother to get qualified. Schools treat "teachers" badly, because these "teachers" are basically unskilled laborers, no matter how they're advertised. When qualified teachers want to get jobs, they often don't go into TEFL because they know it's a labor dispute minefield and their credentials likely won't be respected as they would in any other field of teaching.

That's a loss to us all. I suppose you could make the Libertarian argument that if quality goes down and nobody complains, then the quality was too high to begin with and if the market runs in that direction, then it should go down according to what people want. I reject this: those students still want to learn English. Whether or not you believe your "teacher" is a real teacher won't change the outcome of whether you've learned English to a satisfactory degree or not. It's like the market for medicine. Even if people are willing to buy your snake oil, the outcome will still be that patients won't be cured. In medicine (although not in homoeopathy) we have laws against this: if you are going to sell a product, it has to work. Learning a language is a lot more like medicine: you need a measurable outcome. It's not homoeopathy.

What's the solution for this? How do we get more people on the road to training, qualification and a professional career path and in the process raise the level of respect for TEFL as a career, as well as improve working conditions for those already in the field? How do we do that while also making it possible to become a teacher through a process of hard work and experience, without having to go back and get a degree that many can't afford, and when they were in school, didn't know they wanted?

I don't know. I suppose that really is the subject for another blog post.

I've gotten a lot of pushback on my stance on this issue in other discussion forums, so I'll just address some of the more common backwash here:

But certifications like CELTA and Delta won't make you a better teacher! If you are talented and have experience you can be a very good teacher!

I just don't believe this. If you are talented and have experience, you still need training to be a truly good teacher. It would be the rare prodigy who could do well without it. I don't care much where that teaching came from but I prefer reputable programs to "a teacher trainer at School X told me". Certainly it is possible to go that route and do well, but reputable programs are more likely to have measurable outcomes. 

The actual piece of paper you get for CELTA and Delta don't mean as much as what you learn in the process of getting it. It bothers me when people denigrate what you learn on these courses without having taken them, or worse, assuming that they are more than they are meant to be. While a piece of paper won't make you a better teacher, what you learn in order to get that piece of paper will. 

The only real pushback to this I've heard is "no it won't" and that's too ridiculous to bother replying to.

CELTA and Delta are nothing - real teachers need Master's degrees or a teaching license after their bachelor's degrees, like a PGCE.

I'm a fan of a two-pronged approach: a Master's is great for theoretical knowledge related to the English language and to teaching. I would like one someday and am currently deciding which kidney would garner the best payoff with which to pay for it. But from what I've seen during my time in the field, a Master's doesn't provide a lot of great on-the-ground practical teaching advice. I've noticed it in ivory-tower comments on LinkedIn full of advice that would make no sense in most real classrooms, and noticed it in watching other teachers who certainly had the qualifications but weren't very good with flexibility or trying different, more student-centered approaches. 

So, in order to get that practical knowledge, I believe it would be smart for most would-be professional English teachers to also have a CELTA or even a Delta. The CELTA is thoroughly practical, and the Delta starts delving into the theoretical. After that, a Master's is the next logical move, to expand your theoretical knowledge base.

It's not that I think Master's are worthless, or that CELTA and Delta are the gold standard, but that they focus on two entirely different things, which are both valuable if you want to be a true education professional.

Pfffff! But CELTA promises to make you a great teacher, as though it can stand in for a real teaching degree. It can't!

That's true, it can't. 

But that's also not what CELTA advertises. They advertise an introductory course that will help you to become basically competent in the classroom without making a right fool of yourself. If you pass, which most people do, you'll still need a lot of training at your first place of employment. The CELTA grading rubric spells this out. If you get a B, you'll need some training, but not as much. If you get an A, you'll be fine without training (but everyone can benefit from receiving it). Almost nobody gets an A - around 2-5%. I got one, but I'm just special like that. (Actually, I'm not. I had good training before I did CELTA). 

A lot of people seem to think the CELTA advertises as a teaching certification on par with a degree - it doesn't. Or they think what the CELTA claims it offers is more like what the Delta offers - it's not. If you're going to criticize CELTA, do it on its own merits. 

The reason schools hire those inexperienced teachers is that the "qualified" teachers don't want to pitch in and always demand more. They won't go outside and hand out fliers for the school, they want more money - it's no wonder schools go for the inexperienced ones. 

This is technically true, but that doesn't make it right. A teacher is a skilled worker - it doesn't make sense, in terms of resource allocation, to have your skilled worker stand on the streetcorner with a signboard passing out fliers (also it makes your school look ridiculous, but that's a PR issue, not a teaching one). If you had a college intern, and an experienced logistics professional, who would you send outside wearing a sandwich board? Who is worth more in the office, creating something great? 

And of course they ask for more money - they have embarked on a professional career path. They have paid - often out the nose - for education. Business, legal, medical and other professionals all expect to be paid accordingly - why wouldn't teachers? You get a quality outcome.

But you don't get a quality outcome! I've seen as many bad qualified teachers as I've seen good un-certified ones!

Something tells me that line of thinking comes from anecdata. Of course there are bad qualified teachers - there are also terrible lawyers and shitty speech pathologists and horrible doctors. But on average, not just along the lines of some anecdote about a bad teacher you knew once, but as a statistically significant group, teachers who are qualified do provide better outcomes than those who are not. I wish I could quote a study on this, but I can't. Someone should do a study. Especially as I'm putting on scientific airs I can't easily back. 

And those un-certified talented teachers? Probably got their training unofficially in one or more of their previous jobs. And that's great - I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm not saying they shouldn't be recognized (some sort of reputable program that could certify such teachers after a survey of their work would be great, but is not likely to come about and might not be trusted). But these are not Fresh Off the Plane kids we're talking about here. 

What a teacher does is not measurable, therefore it can't be jammed into a certification or degree program. 

First, all sorts of professions do things that are not measurable - social and political scientists comment and analyze non-measurable outcomes. They are still considered professions. (I know a lot of hard science types would like to think they're not, but I'd actually argue the soft sciences are more challenging as you're dealing with squishy unknowns - analyzing something immeasurable without as much access to clear data is much harder than analyzing based on hard results). 

Secondly, I would say that what teachers do is measurable, or at least it can be. The state of the global testing industry is pathetic, and I don't believe the tests given today consistently measure student ability or learning. But good testing is possible - tests with construct and content validity, integrative, direct tests...you could do a lot better than the way students are tested in most schools today and get a truly measurable outcome.

In my own work, I feel that what I do is measurable. My IELTS students come in, and when they go out their mock test scores are higher than when they came in, and they score higher on the real IELTS than they would have without my class. My long-term students show measurable improvements in systematic errors - if I wanted to, I could in fact graph their improvements in past tense consistency, correct usage of perfect aspect, correct usage of prepositions in various circumstances and more. I could measure how many sentences per speech block were correct at the beginning vs. the end of the class. I could do identical beginning- and end-of-course role plays that could be analyzed for language learned. 

But these certification programs all force students to adopt one kind of teaching style which may not be the best. And degree programs teach young teachers to stifle creative lesson planning.

Spoken like a person who has never been through a certification program (I can't speak for degree programs, but at least in my observation that's not the case). CELTA and Delta don't actually push one teaching style on you, and in my courses they've been pretty open to any style that's effective, and any style that reflects the teacher's personality. They're not trying to create clones or automatons. Sure, CELTA advocates the communicative approach, but what else would you advocate? There's nothing new on the horizon, or at least nothing so new that it's unseated the communicative approach, and it's arguably the best of the lot that we have, although it's okay to let ghosts of teaching methods past inform your lessons. And a truly innovative new idea, while unlikely from an inexperienced teaching student (few if any of us are nascent Steve Jobses of teaching), if effective, would probably be embraced or at least allowed to pass. 

"Theyre all 'student-centered classroom, less teacher talking, the activity must be communicative'! No creativity! It's mind control!" 

First, having been at the weird end of cult recruiters in my neighborhood (and it appears I'm not the only one - there's a new blog out exposing these people, but I won't publish the link until I vet it further and talk to some people), I have an idea about what mind control is, and teaching degree/certification programs ain't it. 

So what would be better - a teacher-centered classroom? More teacher talking (note: this can at times be okay - and in my CELTA and Delta courses it was seen as potentially okay, depending on what the teacher was talking about and why)? Activities that don't urge the students to communicate or speak? Huh? 

Creativity is usually enhanced by training and experience, not diminished by same. The most creative lawyers can be creative because they know the law and can pick it apart. The most creative doctors can be creative because they know enough to know where a new experimental treatment may come from. The most creative businesspeople can see opportunities because they know the market and have experience in watching it change. The most creative person on your team is probably not your intern (and if it is, then training that intern will make them more creative, not less). It's no different with teachers.

But small schools in poor countries or rural areas can't afford these fancy spoiled foreign teachers!

That's actually true, and it's one of the few times in which I'd say hiring an inexperienced native speaker is better than not hiring anyone at all. This isn't a black-white thing.

* * * 

Anyway, this has been a very long blog post, but one I hope people will read to the end. I've enjoyed writing it - I hope you enjoy reading it! 

Peace.