Stupidity Reigns Supreme
It is purely ridiculous what is happening in Thailand now with teachers. This idea of making teachers attend a cultural class that they have to pay for themselves is bordering on insanity. Foreign teachers come over to Thailand to bring a bit of their culture and help people learn English. They don’t come over to take on the culture of their host country.
I can understand schools providing cultural for teachers with a bit of the language in order to help them adjust. That’s a-ok and that should be required. It goes overboard though when teachers are expected to pay for the course themselves and then they are required to take a test on what they learned….and pay for the test. Why do foreign teachers in Thailand put up with this? Why don’t they vote against these rules with their feet?
Trust me, Thailand isn’t the best place to teach and the salaries are low. I don’t think any self respecting teacher will be left in Thailand pretty soon.
2 comments
Is it really that ridiculous Rico? I certainly know that during my 6 years in Thailand my cultural awareness has grown, and as it grew, those seemingly insurmountable problems encountered in working at a Thai school became less of a problem.
Asking te teacher to pay for the course in not fair in my opinion but ten given the ‘fly by night’ nature of many foreign teachers in Thailand I can fully understand the schools reluctance to pay for the course. There are ways around it, a friend of mine working at a school has just signed up for the course, he pays up front and signs a two year contract with the school. At the end of the first year he gets 60% of the costs returned to him, at the end of the 2nd year he gets the same again, thus giving him a 20% return on investment and the school gets a guaranteed teacher for two years.
There is also another possible silver lining involved with this course requirement, which ties in neatly with some of your other blogs this week; you stated elsewhere that wages in Thailand are depressed simply because there is an oversupply of teacher wannabees. Many of these will think twice about trying to join the gravy train for their gap year if they need to front up so much money. This could then lead to an undersupply of credible teachers and in markets where there is an undersupply there must be a wages increase to attract teachers.
Here’s hoping anyway, although I teach at uni level and am not affected by the requirements anyway.
Very well put. I agree why put up with that nonsense? The alternative is quitting, and that’s not always easy considering the effort one makes in getting situated there. Thanks for the post.
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