NIC or Lakeland College?

[Crossed]

The bubble brought a brief respite in that there was enough money for schools and companies to attract higher qualified individuals. The burst of the bubble brought the curve back to normal, or SNAFU, if you will.

I will grant a lot of truth to that, although I was focusing more on the rise of the "English Factory" mentality.

Regarding Hakkengaisha: My first point of concern is that, if they are being used to circumvent the laws for benefits, it would imply that the benefits laws need to be revised to provide better protection for hakkengaisha employees. The laws existed for a reason before, and being able to do an end-run around them is not an admirable trait; it is merely exploiting a loophole -- and teachers -- to marginally improve the profit margin.

Having said that, I have to add that there are a lot of well-meaning and dedicated teachers also. But, filling a lot of the hourly positions that don't provide enough total income for a dog to live on, cannot be filled with the cream of the crop. So employers have to make do with what they can get to stay in business. After all, the purpose of busness, no matter how undispicabe some people might find it, is to make a profit.
Just my two yen worth.

And here you give a nice summation of the problem: The school does not want to pay enough to hire real teachers, so they hire every kid who steps off the plane, and in doing so shoot themselves in the foot. Unless your business is rooking your customers, it is difficult to create a satisfactory product with staff that is disloyal, unskilled, and uneducated. The schools end up killing the goose.

Of course, what is being run now by most schools is not a business, but a con that takes advantage of the fact that few people know what real teaching is, or what a difference a skilled teacher can make in your ability to learn. This is doubly true in Japan, where the average Japanese teacher's ideas of English language pedagogy are limited to haranguing a huge class for an hour in Japanese. Perhaps the English teacher unions should do more to educate the customers about education.

[Sensei]

Perhaps the English teacher unions should do more to educate the customers about education.

The thing is, unions do not have real concern for education quality. Like Iraira above, a stated concern is used more as a weapon to try to discredit the school as a bargaining tactic or other hardball measure. This was clear, because his/her goal was not to be assured of educational quality (that assurance was pretty clearly given), but rather to get the administration on the record for tactical reasons. That's not where you want to place trust for quality control.

Not that it is a worker's union issue in the first place. A professional teacher's union might be better to give advice, although a more appropriate platform would be an association of teachers unrelated to working conditions, so all that unpleasantness does not get in the way of professional issues unrelated working conditions and contracts.

There can be some overlap, but general unions would be more likely to protect workers jobs even if they do not have high qualifications, rather than restrict positions to higher-qualified professionals. The union's first and overriding concern is about workers, not students.

Unfortunately, it comes down to a matter of cost. You want a higher level of professionalism and quality, you pay a higher price. You want mass-market, low-priced "ekimae" McLanguage lessons, it's extremely difficult to do it without sacrificing quality. I'd love to see better quality there, but I'm not counting on it.

In the end, real education quality has to come from within the school. It has to be a desire of the people running the school, either equal to or greater than increased profits. Ideally, it means getting people with the right training, credentials, and experience, setting up a mechanism for constructing and maintaining a curriculum, one which responds to results seen in the classroom and constantly improves itself. It means adhering to standards. At so many levels, it means doing things that might not be good for business. It means paying more for quality staff and work, and less pandering to customer desires that conflict with educational quality.

I think you really have to resign yourself to accepting the McSchools for what they are, and hope that a discerning customer can understand the levels of quality involved.

[Crossed]

Perhaps the English teacher unions should do more to educate the customers about education.

The thing is, unions do not have real concern for education quality. Like Iraira above, a stated concern is used more as a weapon to try to discredit the school as a bargaining tactic or other hardball measure. This was clear, because his/her goal was not to be assured of educational quality (that assurance was pretty clearly given), but rather to get the administration on the record for tactical reasons. That's not where you want to place trust for quality control.

Quite right. I should have said "English teachers should organize to do more to educate the customers about education." It is certain that few of the "company" schools won't because too much of their profit relies on the student's ignorance in the field of education.

There can be some overlap, but general unions would be more likely to protect workers jobs even if they do not have high qualifications, rather than restrict positions to higher-qualified professionals. The union's first and overriding concern is about workers, not students.

And again, quite right. It isn't the role of a union to deal with education in particular. They are more concerned with securing the rights and benefits of their members, and rightfully so. They exist as a result of workers organizing to counterbalance the excessive power that a school possesses.

I think you really have to resign yourself to accepting the McSchools for what they are, and hope that a discerning customer can understand the levels of quality involved.

And here is where I would agree again, except for two problems: 1) Even mature students have trouble identifying good teaching techniques. They persist in thinking, for example, that partner work is a waste of their time, and that discussion time -- which is actually a skills practice time -- detracts from what is really important: lecture. 2) Even a casual perusal of the Consortium website would indicate that your students are not mature, and have even less ability to discern, less ability to affect their own lives if they do decide that the teaching is substandard, and, finally, how hard would it be for them to get a refund if they were unhappy? Colleges are notoriously tightfisted when it comes to refunds.

Ultimately, quality teaching comes from educated, experienced teachers. Managers can help or hinder, but they are not there when the rubber meets the road.