It’s been a rolling discussion among teachers in the program for a while now, and I was wondering if some of the FETs using this site are being left out of that discussion. The new contract is available on the TFETP portal (if not available for everyone to sign), and the new housing subsidy only covers rental properties, NOT mortgages.
What do you think about this new rule? Is it subtle racism? Is it xenophobia? Is it just unfair? Does it not apply to you, since you’ll be on a plane to your home country next month?
They’re trying to get rid of someone. They have a history of doing shady stuff. They “claim” that they’re just trying to save money, but I suspect that it’s more sinister than that.
“Fighting it” isn’t as easy as it sounds. The program we work for has all the transparency of a terrorist organization. Cells adjacent to cells, and nobody’s really sure who’s making the decisions.
Wouldn’t that be a rent subsidy? If I’m living in my house, on which I’m paying a mortgage, why can’t the housing subsidy subsidize my housing?
The only way they save money on this is if the TFETP teachers all get mortgages, but with a ‘fuck you’ like this and teacher shortages in the US, the UK, and Canada, all they are doing is chasing awwy the people who might want to put down roots. They extra money they spend recruiting and the quality lost from a conveyer belt of new recruits means this is just a stupid policy
They might as well call it a landlord rental income subsidy
I don’t think the goal is for foreign teachers to put down roots. The strategy is for foreign teachers to help set up bilingual education for the taiwanese teachers to eventually take over. The goal is for bilingual education without the need for foreign teachers
The foreigners they want are high skilled tech workers or academics contributing to innovative research from what I understand.
Mine just gets tacked on to my salary and directly in the bank account. I could be living for free at my sugar momma’s place and investing it in dubious tea houses for all they know. Actually i use it to pay rent.
My point was, if the government had a policy to move towards English bilingualism, unneccessarily discouraging English teachers from staying because of a new ungenerous interpretation is counter productive
The program is actually sponsored by the US State Department. Having Taiwanese kids associating English with positivity is a form of soft power. I’m not making this up. I’ve worked in the program long enough to remember a visit from the educational representative from the US state Department.
I believe it, used to do some work for the British Council, lived near an Alliance Francais for years, and of course there are the Confucius Institutes!
Does anyone think there would be any value in contacting someone like Jenna Cody Lin to do a hit piece on this? MOE might budge with some negative English media…thoughts???
If that actually is their strategy, they might think of listening to any of the FET suggestions, any at all, when it comes to LANGUAGE REQUIRES INPUT AND NOT MINDLESS REPETITION AND MEMORIZATION OF OUT OF CONTEXT WORDS. Cuz that’s always been the MOE strategy when it comes to English.
Which program? FET is sponsored by the ministry of education of Taiwan. And for all its faults, at least it isn’t Fulbright, which is the US State Department “soft power” program which scams college grads into thinking they’re going to “assist” in local schools but actually makes them do WWWAAAYYY more work than FETs and without much guidance, for 40K/month. FETs have a starting salary of 62K (or did it go up?) and at least you get a housing bonus.
Also, to no one in particular, “housing subsidies” in FET never excluded mortgages before, which means this is a dick move on the part of the MOE, full stop. It’s right up there with “we Taiwanese need dual citizenship so we can travel back during a pandemic but you foreigners don’t have family in Taiwan and your family would never have a reason to need to come here so you don’t need dual citizenship”. The sole and only function it serves is someone really likes to use their power to bully people
The TFETP program is much better than the previous attempts to organize Native English Speaking Teachers through the Ministry of Education. Nevertheless, administration is done at a regional level (North, Central, South). I know administrators from all regions, from top to bottom. If you want to contact me regarding specific city/school issues, I’ll be happy to relay your question and try to find an answer.
I’m no big shot in the “game” but am happy to clarify in any way possible.