It seem like a lot of kindys employ Eastern European women. Why is that? It seems like they would rather hire those girls than males that are native English speakers. Are they trying to save money or is there some other reason?
They’re cheaper; they’re white, so the parents and bosses don’t realize they are not native speakers of English; they’re pretty, at least to Taiwanese eyes, and pretty beats competence in the Taiwanese job market.
The one’s that I saw at a one school were not very pretty. My real question is whether the preference for female teachers actually outweighs hiring a real native speaker.
this question is best answered by people who are in the position to hire teachers. if it were up to me, i’d hire native English speakers first.
I’d hire the one that would make the kids happier and potentially increase my business. But maybe I’m dismissing the importance of teaching in kindy.
How do you know there’s a preference? How do you know who applied for those positions and what are their qualifications?
Anyone who has had to teach a class of Taiwanese six year olds will immediately know where I’m coming from. Kids who have spent 2-3 years in kindys are at totally different levels. Why?
The big problem is many East Asians have a misunderstanding of naturalistic language acquisition. Their idea is that exposure to a native English speaker is all that is needed to acquire a language. Loads of input from an NES (or, in this case, someone they think is an NES) is enough. The quality and experience of the NES instructor is irrelevent. This is fantastic news for buxiban owners, who can treat teachers like potatoes.
I am not a great teacher of young learners, but I have seen those who are in action. They make a massive difference. Many Taiwanese parents don’t think they do. Their children’s English ability suffers accordingly. If you are happy for some whitey to chuck candy down your kid’s throat, that’s what you get.
I grew up with a NES but those old games had horrible English translations. I don’t quite understand why that would help language skills…
It’s the same as the ugly Taiwanese women who look gorgeous to Westerners, and the ugly Western men who look like Brad Pitt to the Asian women. These Eastern European women look ugly to you (and me), but I guarantee the bosses think most if not all are hot.
White women will get a kindy job faster than any man, including a male native speaker of English. Doesn’t matter if the woman can speak English or not.
Here women are preferred for teaching young children, as they are perceived as more “compassionate” and “nurturing”.
Men may have a easier time getting gigs to teach adults/older kids as they are perceived as more “capable”, “intelligent”, “authoritative”.
A friend told me a few months ago where he used to work that an East European woman is on more than the male native speakers per hour and has been there less than them.
Is this a Taipei phenonemon? I’ve never heard of this before.
Taiwanese people speaking English with russian accents… that is quite a phenonemon!
That’s almost as funny as Taiwanese people speaking English with a British accent. 
Yeah, we have Mexicans who’ll work twice as hard as we will for half the money in North America and you have the ex-children of Soviet Happiness that we protected you from- oh those so many years.
Good luck! They’ll sleep in closets and breed like rats–it’s called immigration. I’m a product of the infestation myself and what a fucking bastard I turned out to be. I guess they are here now teaching budget English to the narrow-minded masses.
The other reason many laobans might prefer women over men is a perception, whether rightly or wrongly, that women are more submissive and will do as they’re told, but men will fight them all the time.
If I wanted to get in the mindset of a Machiavellian laoban, I would only hire slightly unattractive, slightly overweight women from a non-North American background, specifically from a country with political and/or economic instability. I’d be thinking that such a woman would certainly not have a romantic life, or perhaps even much of a social life, outside of work. She’d therefore fuss over the kids and put in lots of extra time with them. Furthermore, because of the shitiness of her home country, she’d be really grateful to have the job and would be worried about the consequences of losing her ARC and having to return “home”. I’d be thinking of how many unpaid hours I could make those sad acts work (actually, I wouldn’t even have to make them work unpaid hours as they’d be coming to me with proposals of how they could work for free) and how seriously they’d take their jobs.
Who I would not hire would be: North American males (since they could walk out and get another job fairly easily) or Antipodean males (my experiences of Antipodean males, including myself, in Taiwan is that we WILL fight the boss on everything and point out every little thing that is not in the contract) or attractive North American females (since they could definitely walk out and get another job extremely easily). Men from other nationalities would be borderline, but why take the risk when you could get yourself an unattractive Eastern European or South African girl?
So in other words, dowdy Eastern European chick, yes. Me or my friends, no.
Obviously, I’d hire the person with the best qualifications and experience in early childhood studies. Then I’d promptly go out of business.