I agree with SuperHans. It’s criminal that people are sending their two/three-year-olds to “kindergartens” that mirror cram schools in their robotic, pedantic, regurgitatative methodology. Make some time for your kids during their most impressionable years, and if you ABSOLUTELY can’t, hire a decent nanny or send them to a reputable day-care where they can at least play; experience something tactile, without having shitty RULES stuffed down their throats.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]Whole Lotta Lotta: I’m a little confused about your position.
Do you think high school teachers should be required to have credentials in their home countries? Do you think kindergarten teachers should be required to have credentials in their home countries?
Or is your point that you make a distinction between public and private schools? If so, do you think private schools should have to conform to other laws that public schools also need to conform to, such as safety laws, employment practices, taxation laws, etc.?[/quote]
I make a distinction between public and private schools. I have no problem with the fact that foreign public school teachers have to be licensed teachers in their home coutries. I think public schools should have to conform to certain things, such as safety, employment and tax regulations. But, I draw the line at the government saying who they can and cannot hire (so long as the person does not have a criminal record in their home country). As private enterprises, private schools have the right to run things as they see fit. If you don’t like the way they do things, you have the right not to send your children to those schools.
Now, I know were you may go with this. You may ask why I think they have to follow regulations that other businesses have to follow, but not be required to hire only licensed teachers. This is because I think it could significantly interfere with the school’s owner right to run his school the way he or she sees fit.
I know that were I live in the US some private schools are not required to hire only licensed teachers. If they are religious schools, they are looking to see that you agree with their religion. Or the school may have some alternative approach to education that they require you to practice.
I was talking to somebody who works at a Waldorf School the other day. I asked him if he is a licensed teacher in his home country. He replied that he is a licensed Waldorf teacher. This means that he is trained in the way that Waldorf schools want you to teach. As private institutions they have the right to hire and train teachers in the way that they see fit.
Whole Lotta Lotta: I actually don’t really have too much of an objection about that. The only thing I would ask is do you think the government (or any third party for that matter, since the government may be a problem itself) has the right to step in if a private school is being negligent or harmful to children? I’m not just referring to them beating the children. I mean if their whole pedagogy is severely flawed.
Another question I want to ask is do you think that a third party (most likely the government) has a right to step in if the consumers (parents) don’t actually know what they’re doing and that they’re unintentionally sending their children to a school with severely flawed pedagogy?
I’d like to add to what GiT said above.
Do you think it is OK to sell shark fin soup because the customers want it? I hear many people object to that especially since a recent Hong Kong hotel group stopped selling it on their menu but their Taiwanese counterparts responded that they need to keep the customers happy. Should the government step in or not?
I am wondering if the responses will highlight the double standard in play here.
[quote=“heimuoshu”]Do you think it is OK to sell shark fin soup because the customers want it? I hear many people object to that especially since a recent Hong Kong hotel group stopped selling it on their menu but their Taiwanese counterparts responded that they need to keep the customers happy. Should the government step in or not?
I am wondering if the responses will highlight the double standard in play here.[/quote]
Are you seriously comparing shark finning with teaching English to young children? 
[quote=“funkymonkey”][quote=“heimuoshu”]Do you think it is OK to sell shark fin soup because the customers want it? I hear many people object to that especially since a recent Hong Kong hotel group stopped selling it on their menu but their Taiwanese counterparts responded that they need to keep the customers happy. Should the government step in or not?
I am wondering if the responses will highlight the double standard in play here.[/quote]
Are you seriously comparing shark finning with teaching English to young children? [/quote]
Of course not. It’s far more humane and less messy. The money is probably better too, and for less bullshit.
[quote]I have no idea how long you spent on that plan but you must be between jobs. Otherwise you wouldn’t have enough time to think of that.
How will fining the parents prevent anything. They will then send their kids to math kindergartens and this and that.
[/quote]
No - I’m just remarkably intelligent.
Seriously though, to stop prostitution, you fine or jail the people who are acquiring the service. To stop the proliferation of drugs, you arrest both the dealer and the buyer. if the government was serious about stopping English immersion kindergartens, then they would actually do something about it rather than just doing some token raids here and there.
I don’t think children should go to anything but play school before the age of 5. If the government actually had a collective brain, all this kindergarten nonsense would stop. I personally think all kindergartens are detrimental to the development of a child’s ability to learn in the future
[quote=“funkymonkey”][quote=“heimuoshu”]Do you think it is OK to sell shark fin soup because the customers want it? I hear many people object to that especially since a recent Hong Kong hotel group stopped selling it on their menu but their Taiwanese counterparts responded that they need to keep the customers happy. Should the government step in or not?
I am wondering if the responses will highlight the double standard in play here.[/quote]
Are you seriously comparing shark finning with teaching English to young children? [/quote]
No, but if you actually read everything you would know that.
When do the decisions people make influence government policy. When it makes you feel better?
Everyone wants freedom of choice right. Well newsflash, it’s a load of rubbish.
Everyone feels that they have a right to teach kindergarten and parents have a right to put their kids in those schools even though they are ill-informed and research indicates that early childhood education is miles better in the 1st language.
Everyone also feels that they hae a right to eat and thus serve in their restaurants what they want, but a few people are complaining because they are not so ill-informed.
Any different?
I was comparing the issue of choice but you already know that right? Please tell me you do.
Oh, the cognitive dissonance in this thread appears to be a bottomless well of whinging cringing crusading!
In particular, it’s patently nauseating to witness seemingly intelligent folk actually buying into the falsehood of how people shouldn’t teach kindy in Taiwan because, horror of horrors: it’s illegal.
So what? Countless things are illegal in this country, are us aliens supposed to know better? Why in tarnation is that? Are we supposed to be somehow setting an example for the locals, who willingly flout their own laws at each and every opportunity?
Screw that racket!
“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”, as a wise man once said. Buyer beware, and the seller even more so.
Any moralizing zealot that wishes to tread upon small c capitalism would do well to realize that they are merely treading water in the great swirling vortex of human desire. Any attempt to stamp it out will surely result in total failure, with much damage to the trickle-on down periphery.
Far better to accept the frail caprice of the weak bags of mostly water that is humankind, and adapt to the situation. Simple economics, really. Or realpolitricks.
I personally don’t give a rat’s arse whether or not anything is illegal in Taiwan. I’ve been through the courts and have first hand experience of what corrupt, idiot, lying pricks these people who pretend to uphold the law really are. However, this is academic discussion, surely, Gingerbreadman.
And you don’t think your approach might have a little effect on why you got nailed in the courts here? How many times if I may ask?
[quote=“heimuoshu”][quote=“funkymonkey”][quote=“heimuoshu”]Do you think it is OK to sell shark fin soup because the customers want it? I hear many people object to that especially since a recent Hong Kong hotel group stopped selling it on their menu but their Taiwanese counterparts responded that they need to keep the customers happy. Should the government step in or not?
I am wondering if the responses will highlight the double standard in play here.[/quote]
Are you seriously comparing shark finning with teaching English to young children? [/quote]
No, but if you actually read everything you would know that.
When do the decisions people make influence government policy. When it makes you feel better?
Everyone wants freedom of choice right. Well newsflash, it’s a load of rubbish.
Everyone feels that they have a right to teach kindergarten and parents have a right to put their kids in those schools even though they are ill-informed and research indicates that early childhood education is miles better in the 1st language.
Everyone also feels that they hae a right to eat and thus serve in their restaurants what they want, but a few people are complaining because they are not so ill-informed.
Any different?
I was comparing the issue of choice but you already know that right? Please tell me you do.[/quote]
Personally, the idea that teaching English to young children is in any way harmful is complete horse shit. Hence, parents should have the right to choose. Shark finning is cruel and inhumane. That is when the government needs to step in. Please show me any credible research that teaching a foreign language to a young child is harmful.
Please READ what I said. I did NOT say teaching a foreign language to young children is harmful. I said the idea that kids spend half the day being educated in a language they DON’T understand is harmful. Now since you know so much about it, find your own research. If you respond to what I said, I will be more than willing to supply you with research. Then again, if everyone is an Early Childhood Development expert like they claim, you wouldn’t need the research. Just ask them.
Are you a teacher? Have you ever taught young learners before? Kids pick it up quickly. The earlier they start, the better. Period. Any Early Childhood Development expert worth a grain of salt will tell you the same thing. Claiming otherwise is simply ridiculous.
Are you a teacher? Have you ever taught young learners before? Kids pick it up quickly. The earlier they start, the better. Period. Any Early Childhood Development expert worth a grain of salt will tell you the same thing. Claiming otherwise is simply ridiculous.[/quote]
While I fully agree that kids being taught in a language they do not understand is an absolute waste of time (for obvious reasons), what if they do understand?
My experience is that the level of English taught in the kindys is really basic. The large majority do understand as for the most part it is basic vocab, with some very basic grammar.
I have yet to come across a kid that does not understand anything, once they have been in the class for a while.
Most of the kids in the class I teach are in their 3rd year of learning English.
The main problem I have is when parents, whose kids have had no English before, put a kid in the class. Obviously they will not understand as the groundwork has not been done.
I have buxiban classes as well, and it is easy to spot which kids went to English kindy and which did not. They are far ahead of their peers.
At Chinglish, perhaps. The kids I used to teach at Hess who had been through Hess Kindergarten had all sorts of really annoying fossilised errors.
Exactly. It isn’t as if the teacher is reading Hamlet all day. My Taiwanese nephew was spoken to only in Mandarin for the first three years of his life in Taipei. At that point, his mother went back to work so he went to stay at his grandmother’s home here in Chiayi. She only spoke Taiwanese to him. Is that considered harmful? He seems like a perfectly happy child, so I guess no “damage” was done. 
Ah…this is why I have the approach I do now.
3 times, in fact.
Once for helping put out a fire.
Once for helping somebody at the scene of an accident.
Once for being hit by a drunk-driver.
Got nailed for helping at the accident and nailed for the drunk. Got let off by the skin of my teeth for the fire incident.
Civil court for lending somebody my house after theirs was destroyed during a typhoon. Got sued because my water was too hot and one of their children got scalded whilst having a bath. Not sure whether it was a bath or shower, actually, because their statement changed from bath to shower to bath several times, although I still settled out of court because I would have been fucked either way.
Perhaps now that I don’t give a rat’s arse about the law, like almost everybody else in Taiwan, things might go more in my favour. If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.
I’ll have to disagree that it is harmful. My kids could not speak or understand a single word of Chinese language before they went to prep school. We speak the English language at home and I myself could barely speak basic Chinese. My wife can’t, period. However, after 2 months in prep school, my kids are already talking in fluent Chinese! Now, my first child is in Grade 1 and he can read most of the Chinese characters I show him. And when my kids speak to each other at home, they now speak in Chinese language! And I can assure you, my kids social life got better because they learned the language taught to them.
Well GIT it was Hess.
On a more serious note we are talking about young kids. They probably cannot speak their own language properly. Neither can any kid in an English speaking country at that age.
While I agree that some speak Chinglish, they can make themselves understood for the most part.
I know highly educated adults here who speak Chinglish. It is not their first language and they can hold a proper conversation. They are easily understood. Whether their grammar is 100 percent correct is for the most part irrelevant. Communication in English is what is relevant.
Must go now. I have a Chinglish class.