"Foreigners" Flooding In? (or) Children Not Being Born?

I have been looking for kindergarten work lately, and seem to be having a bit of trouble. My search encompasses Taipei City, Banciao, Yungho and Chungo. Anyway, it seems that there aren’t as many kindergarten jobs available as there were back 3-4 years ago… but at the same time, it also seems that there is more and more competition for any English-teaching position.

Do you all feel or notice the same trends? I’ve been talking to locals, and they seem to agree that there are less kindergarten-aged youngsters than there were before. It also seems that more “foreigners” are here in Taipei.

Agree or disagree?

On a side note; as someone of Chinese descent, it’s quite difficult for me to compete with a white face for a job teaching English. For example, I went for an interview at a kindergarten near my home and the director hardly let me answer the questions she was “asking,” before I was out the door! She didn’t even ask me to do a demo as per usual… While she was “interviewing” me, too, someone called in from Sanxia for an interview (and they arranged one for that afternoon). SANXIA! I wonder what the commute would be like from the Three Gorges all the way to Eternal Peace every morning?

That’s just what I feel is one more indicator of the rareness of morning jobs nowadays…

Isn’t it illegal for foreigners to work in kindies?

HG

Actually, it’s illegal for children under five to be taught languages other than Mandarin or Taiwanese. I don’t think it matters who’s doing the teaching.

All I can say is everywhere I go, everywhere I look, there are hundreds of the little monsters. :slight_smile:

My understanding is that that last year was the greatest number of 18yos in the population, next year’s 18yo group will be thousands fewer. Due to declining birth rates there will be fewer and fewer babies around and this is already being seen in places such as Kindergartens. Schools all over Taiwan are feeling the impact of the decline in births as they face closure or amalgamation. Some class sizes are being reduced in elementary schools - ostensibly for better education but more likely because they are not inundated with students as in the past. In ten years Kindy teaching jobs may be as rare as clean toilets in Taipei.

Wow! I guess add to that several years of at least the perception (doesn’t matter if this is truth or not) that the economy has stagnated or in decline and spending on dear little Bao Bao’s piano and English classes go down also.

HG

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Wow! I guess add to that several years of at least the perception (doesn’t matter if this is truth or not) that the economy has stagnated or in decline and spending on dear little Bao Bao’s piano and English classes go down also.

HG[/quote]

that is the last item of spending to be cut.

You never know, mate, they might already be brushing up on their putonghua and simplified script! Of course for many of the little dears Mandarin will be second language enough!:lol:

HG

I forget where I heard it, but isn’t Tw going to experience a dwindling population come 2017?

If it were so, population control with zero official mandate to do so must be a testament to the massive middle class becoming educated beyond high school. Taiwan has moved from agrarian thru manufacturing cheap goods to the perkier high tech industry in a relatively short time. You don’t need 7 sons for 7 rice paddies anymore. We should all be for tightening the belt, population-wise. Globally as well as locally. At least Taiwan’s culling is natural and peaceful. Iraq/America’s is neither. China/Myanmar/Indonesia/Sri Lanka/Thailand/New Orleans’ was natural and somewhat more peaceful than smart bombs/IEDs. But still not even a blip of a dip on the old growth chart. Tomorrow there will be more people here than there are today. We needs culling people. There is very little room left for us to grow into.

One has to wonder about the deeper ramifications of this Rubenesque class structuring. Can a single economy support an entire generation of, let’s face it, over-educated, under-motivated workforcees? What is life without quality? Isn’t that why buxibiz is still one of the largest industries in Tw? English proficiency will provide prosperity, won’t it? Gives one that competitive edge formerly reserved for successful Grad students, nu? So I personally don’t think the adult niche is in peril, but the OP may have something about the kindies. But hey, aren’t Kindy Teachers in Taiwan glorified au-paires anyway?:lol:

Yup, quality of life. It’ll be interesting to see where our priorities lie if this Honey Bee CCD becomes more than PETA Scare mongering. Are we gonna care if we have Benz’, Aspen vacations and retirement properties if the very air we breathe is laced with methane compliments of our meat-mad culture? I guarantee you this: Either of these scenarios will so completely end our over-population woes beyond what would be deemed erm…healthy.

Parents would be far better serving their bloodlines if they sent their precious Ping Pings to survival schools. 20 years from now, the world will be a very different place.

There seems to be considerable evidence that the birth rate is falling and those at the top are very concerned. Why? Well, off the top of my head I can think of three good reasons:

  1. In evolutionary terms, it signals the end of Taiwan and its people, which is a scary prospect.
  2. There won’t be enough young tax payers to take care of the elderly.
  3. If there is a war with China, there won’t be enough young men to defend the island.

Go here for a useful link: taipeitimes.com/News/front/a … 2003403167

Actually, one of the biggest problems facing us in Taiwan is overpopulation. Because of the above three reasons, there is a push to increase “the fertility rate, which is now the lowerst in the world”. This is the wrong way to go. We must send the opposite message if we’re gonna save our world from rape and pillage. Of course, other countries need to follow too, but with the prospect of extinction in the forefront of peoples’ minds, how are we gonna make the ‘paradigm shift’?

Regarding numbers of arrivals in Taiwan, I found this:

chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/%20b … ber-of.htm

According to this article, most visitors are Asian tourists. Unfortunately, there are no figures for the number of westerners that arrive with a plan to teach English or who are hired overseas. Until we know the numbers, we’re in the realm of conjecture.

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]You never know, mate, they might already be brushing up on their putonghua and simplified script! Of course for many of the little dears Mandarin will be second language enough!:lol:

HG[/quote]

can’t be true, haven’t seen a single such school opened :slight_smile:

the declining population rate has been affecting the buxiban industry as a whole, the phenomenon has been noted for several years already. increasing arrivals is most likely an incidental factor if a factor at all.

Anybody working in a kindergarten has seen this going on for the last 2 years. Where schools are having to close 1-2 classes because of lack of students. My school will see around a 15-20% drop in students next year.

[quote=“shawn_c”]

Do you all feel or notice the same trends? I’ve been talking to locals, and they seem to agree that there are less kindergarten-aged youngsters than there were before. It also seems that more “foreigners” are here in Taipei.[/quote]

Clearly, the foreigners are eating the youngsters. I’m surprised you couldn’t put two and two together.

“It’s people… Soylent Green is people!!!”

What?! Soylent Green is people?! Haha…

Hmm… so everyone thinks that transient English teachers could only be, if at all, a small contributor to the downfall of private “American” kindergartens, eh?

My school, Joy English, had about five kindergartens 2-3 years ago and slowly shut them down as the semesters rolled by. In fact, they now only have two kindergartens - each of which is composed of only one class, crammed within their respective after-school program building. The company is now turning their focus towards adult education (their first adult class will be opening soon).

In regards to Malthus and those others worried by overpopulation: “The area of Texas is 268,581 square miles. Assuming 6 billion people, that’s 22,340 per square mile; this means each person gets 1248 square feet, which is about the size of a respectable apartment. So, yes, you could fit everyone in the world quite comfortably in Texas.”

So that means the Earth’s population could increase by 6 billion a couple more times. But if everyone was crammed in like they are in Hong Kong… the Earth would have UNLIMITED space! Food is a different story, however, although I feel that food shortage isn’t the problem we’re facing; affordability is the problem.

“On a side note; as someone of Chinese descent, it’s quite difficult for me to compete with a white face for a job teaching English”

While the birthrate in Taiwan is very low (1.13 children per woman), I think the preference for young, white faces is the main reason for the tough job search. A first generation Russian-American of would be hired here before a sixth generation American of Chinese descent. The kids’ parents judge everything on looks
.
Taiwan will never produce a Stephen Hawking with this mindset. It’s their loss.

[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Isn’t it illegal for foreigners to work in kindies?

HG[/quote]

No, it isn’t. It is not illegal for foreigners on Joining Family visas to work in Kindies.

As quoted, this would mean that everyone on earth could be comfortably compartmentalized in TX, but we’d not all fit comfortably. If we all left the appartments at the same time, there’d be a mess, so we’d have to work out some system to assure that no more than some very low percentage of us were out of our appartments at once. The fact that we’re all concentrated in Texas also means that foods and consumer goods would need to be shipped in and distributed–every day or two, to the entire earth population, as most of us couldn’t leave the appartmen. So that low percentage what is allowed out must be doing only that. Simply no room for more traffic.

But who’s growing the food, and where are all the animals living and who’s tending them? Well, there’s got to be at least a kind of farming elite population who live outside of TX and take care of these things, right?

And how do we handle medical emergencies? Is there special space given for hospitals? That’s going to reduce individual living space. And what about the population explosion that results from being keept indoors almost constatly with nothing better to do?

If people were commodities, your math would work. But we’re people.

I can remember when my son was born in 03 the Taiwanese government was advertising NT$30000 bonuses for families having children due to the declining birth rate. Friends urged us to look into it and we did. We were told that the bonus is for families who have more than 3 children. Government thinkers at work. But that was 5 years ago and I can immagine that it was already too late, really, to make any difference by that time, even if they’d offered the bonus for a couple’s first child.

I think some report called this “the Geriatrification of Humanity,” or something like that. This same problem is happening everywhre. People are living longer and their children are producing fewer grand children. Not enough people to care for the elderly, not enough money to pay for the better health services that are helping them live longer, so people have fewer children because they can’t afford them. The children face the same burdens and even more. Ecconomys shrink because of a shallow work pool. Far fewer unskilled laborers and fewer real laborers at all because fewer kids mean that more of them have been more highly educated.

Utopia just doesn’t work.

[quote=“housecat”][I can remember when my son was born in 03 the Taiwanese government was advertising NT$30000 bonuses for families having children due to the declining birth rate. Friends urged us to look into it and we did. We were told that the bonus is for families who have more than 3 children. Government thinkers at work. But that was 5 years ago and I can immagine that it was already too late, really, to make any difference by that time, even if they’d offered the bonus for a couple’s first child.

[/quote]

I remember that bonus program, but we were told that it only applied to children whose FATHER was Taiwanese. If only the mother was Taiwanese (as in the case of my girls), the bonus does not apply.

[quote=“ludahai”][quote=“housecat”][I can remember when my son was born in 03 the Taiwanese government was advertising NT$30000 bonuses for families having children due to the declining birth rate. Friends urged us to look into it and we did. We were told that the bonus is for families who have more than 3 children. Government thinkers at work. But that was 5 years ago and I can immagine that it was already too late, really, to make any difference by that time, even if they’d offered the bonus for a couple’s first child.

[/quote]

I remember that bonus program, but we were told that it only applied to children whose FATHER was Taiwanese. If only the mother was Taiwanese (as in the case of my girls), the bonus does not apply.[/quote]

I was the whitey. My son’s father was Taiwanese and the bonus did not apply to us either. Hmm. Sounds like the whole deal was just for show. Or maybe they just made up excuses for any half white kids? Who knows?!

[quote=“housecat”]
I was the whitey. My son’s father was Taiwanese and the bonus did not apply to us either. Hmm. Sounds like the whole deal was just for show. Or maybe they just made up excuses for any half white kids? Who knows?![/quote]

I wouldn’t know, but while most ordinary Taiwanese seem to LOVE mixed-race children, the old Sino-snob KMT stalwarts working in the government seem to hate them or something. Offends the Sino-snob notion of race purity. Sign them up for Sino-Stormfront or something.