[quote=“urodacus”][quote=“steelersman”]
I could care less about their qualifications. Papers don’t make you qualified and most people don’t know how to do their jobs until they actually get one. Furthermore it is possible to become an accountant with out a B.A. in accounting.[/quote]
So does that mean you are able to care less, meaning you currently care at some level that is significant?
or does this really reflect a lack of understanding that the phrase actually should be “I couldn’t care less”, i.e. it would be difficult for me to care about it less than I currently do as I already care zero?[/quote]
It’s a reasonably common Americanism. We Americans find it easy enough to understand without any kind of complex analysis, though admittedly this does not seem to be the case throughout the rest of the world. Whatever its merits, the phrase does have a demonstrated capacity for getting people’s “knickers in a knot,” if I’m using that correctly. I believe there is a current thread on “Americanisms” in which the usage of this phrase is now being debated. That would seem to be the best place for any further discussion of it
I can drive a car, really well, and much much better than my mother. My dad taught me when I was a kid and I read a book about it. Yet I’m not allowed to perform this simple, non-complex task without taking some stoopid, fascist, government test! I probably have a higher chance of fucking it up and killing someone than someone with a license, but I’m an intelligent person and I’ll try my hardest not to fuck it up and knock down an old lady. It’ll probably be OK and if I stay away from traffic police, no-one will know.
As ScottSommers said above, people talk about this aren’t talking about their own education or that of their children. When you go back to your own country and have paid a lot of money to have a non English-speaking foreigner with little basic education, no teaching qualifications and questionable immigration status to rovide your kids with role models and teach them to read, or your university education is partly conducted by ‘conversation teachers’ then we can talk.
I have the CELTA. Done at a UK university. I have an “academic” degree, oh alright then, a Law degree. I have about four years’ experience teaching EFL. But the over-riding memory I bring back from teaching in Taiwan is the emphasis on the ability of the teacher to pour English into the brains of students without much effort on their part. I contrast this to the brute-force method by which I learnt Chinese. I like to think of myself as the enemy of fashionable bullshit, but in the EFL classroom, if you’ve had the pleasure of being a “facilitator of learning” it is actually a great pleasure. I once taught Europeans English and their thirst for knowledge and diligence spurred me on to try and better myself as a teacher.
Let’s not be too hard on the Taiwan English teacher. He/She has a lot to put up with. A student who is eager and willing to learn will do so even in the classroom of a “mediocre” and unqualified teacher. In most adult classes in Taiwan you’d be hard pressed to use your CELTA, except as Buttercup says, as a springboard for self-reflection. And even then, only maybe 10% of your class would benefit from the techniques you have learnt on your 4-week CELTA. The rest… well, you can’t survive financially without them even though you know they have no place being in your class. What are you supposed to do? At the end of the day you do your best.
[quote=“Lord Lucan”]
Let’s not be too hard on the Taiwan English teacher.[/quote]
I know, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound arrogant or hateful. And Taiwan is the most soul-destroying place to teach. Lazy boring students with an entitlement complex. Give me Iranians or Polish kids any day. Thank God I wasn’t in Taiwan for work, either.
I just get pissed off when some dear boy tells me that what he does is second nature/common sense when it’s clear that winging it is, 9 times out of ten, complete shit.
Buttercup, I have a lot more to say about regulation and qualification than just this. There’s little that pisses me off more than the hypocrisy of people who argue that regulation and qualification are no different than facism. As I said it back in 2005, scottsommers.blogs.com/taiwanweb … _than.html
urodacus, I hope you are not teaching here since you seem to lack basic reading comprehension skills. I said one could become an accountant without a B.A. in accounting.
No we have professors with PhDs to do that instead. Some have never held a job outside of academia and know little more than theory.
Buttercup wrote:
I don’t think there are many English university teachers in Taiwan without at least an M.A. Maybe I am wrong. Please correct me if I am. There are plenty of low level language instructors with only an M.A. in Europe and the United States. I have taken university language classes with instructors with only M.A.'s in Europe and the United States. I am talking about credit classes not language center classes.
I can’t follow your argument, steelersman. People with PhDs do not teach children how to read, as a general rule: people with primary school teaching certification do.
You really don’t care if someone who is teaching you does not have a higher level of education than yourself?
And steelersman, I wouldn’t pull the ‘I hope you’re not an English teacher’ line on urodacus: your written English is not exactly polished and 100% accurate.
This is because university language techers in Europe have crappy jobs. In fact, the instructors who manage the language lab at National Cheng Chi University are contracted from a buxiban and do not have MAs. Their jobs are comparable with language teachers at univrsities in Europe and the USA who do not do research or other activities for the school. These are bad jobs without the enormous benefits usually associated with teaching at the university level.
[quote=“steelersman”]
urodacus, I hope you are not teaching here since you seem to lack basic reading comprehension skills. I said one could become an accountant without a B.A. in accounting. [/quote]
Indeed, so you did: i must have been so gobsmacked by your could care less line that i missed the rest!
My humblest apologies, kind sir.
I must learn to read and write properly one day. Maybe I could even get a degree in it!
The funny thing is that in some fields, to your surprise people do not care.
People hire vocal teachers and piano teachers who have good experience. For example they have performed in operas, etc. Some actually have not graduated from a school or university.
I guess it depends what you mean by education. Do you mean a piece of paper or education?
Of course I hope they know more about the subject than I do but they may have a B.A. or other qualification and may actually know less than I do.
Well I guess urodacus, you, and I are in the same boat. Maybe none of us should be teaching English. I was not serious when I made the comment about urodacus. I made the comment because what I said is standard American English and in the same post he seemed to not have been able to read simple English.
It’s not about “paper qualifications.” It’s about being educated and trained in a profession. Knowledge, training and experience are almost always good. Sure, if you’re talking auto mechanic or carpenter, a good apprenticeship with a skilled master will serve just fine. But in other fields school training is preferable. I’d rather have a doctor or lawyer who went to medical or law school than one who just kindof figured it out on his/her own. Same for my accountant or my university professor. I don’t give a damn about the actual diploma itself: it’s just a piece of paper. But I do care about what it represents: that this individual sat down for several years to receive the wisdom of people knowledgable in the field and was tested regularly on his/her own knowledge, skills and abilities before being released into the world to practice on the general public, including me.
What it represents and what you believe it to represent are two different things. Someone who got their degree in X field 10 or 20 years ago may or may not be up to date with current knowledge and facts.
Of course some people continue to learn and some don’t. The point is that B.A. or Master’s degree will never tell me or anyone else how much that person has keep up with their field since graduation. In the case of certified teachers their current subject knowledge can sometimes be appalling.
Despite regulation and having to continue your knowledge to maintain your teacher’s license in the United States, teachers can attend seminars and get hours towards maintaining their teacher’s license without having spent an hour learning any content knowledge about what they teach. It is possible to fill these requirements by just learning educational methods and attending other seminars about how to deal with students, etc.
Why am I back here doing this? I hope it’s not too offensive to say my response is a remark about the extent of your knowledge. There are arguments against certification as qualification. There are very convincing arguments for other systems of qualifying professional workers. Internet-based discussions of this do not attract these positions. Instead, what you get is a half-informed discussion of the problem. Sure language teachers in European schools are generally wives of diplomates. But then, they’re not professors and have terrible temporary jobs. There are foreign English teachers at universities here who have similar backgrounds. These are the people you read complaining about their jobs and how their school screws them. The foreign teachers with graduate degrees hired as faculty are generally very satisfied with their jobs. I guess my problem is that the point you raised has little to do with qualification and would only appear so to someone not really informed about the issues.
This is an extremely complex problem because it leads to one of those solutions that no one wants but it’s really hard to think of a better way to do it.
By the way, you spelled my name incorrectly. It’s SOMMERS.
Yet another random anecdotal example.