ESL Teachers: Cultural Imperialism & Economic Necessity.
26 April 2019 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
there's this intense hatred especially
on the internet specifically for English teachers specifically with this cross-continental cross-cultural divide you shouldn't really disrespect someone for doing the job because they're paid a lot and you shouldn't disrespect to pay a little but I think English teachers are in a double bind exactly that way they're despised as if they make a lot of money but then they're also despised because they are seen as being like babysitters or au pairs or being equivalent to a kind of Filipino nanny someone employed in this in this capacity they're treated as the lowest level of low paid disposable hired help so that's one aspect and the only the respite and want to deal with here is cultural imperialism there's this underlying resentment of the cultural imperialism that uniquely separates and yet tethers together white Western civilization with Asian civilization there's this feeling of resentment that white Western culture white Western imperialism creates the standards not just for beauty but for everything for all things from the utensils they eat with to the inch the hour the days on the calendar all the standards and practices that define modernity and society the watt light bulbs are in watts who was mr. watt where there's this resentment of the authority that's uniquely tied to the role of the English teacher and there's this there's this irreconcilable political struggle of East versus West and of course the irony is that's the mean thing motivating people to learn English but tied to that motivation there's this resentment that's not always conscious they're not always aware of there's this resentment that when I go to the gym oh it's it's a white man on the wall as this symbol of male virility and it's white women as the symbol of beauty and everything about the gym sorry if you stop and think about it even just think about the equipment or every piece of equipment has a white Western name you know the names of the machines the names of the exercises we just think about it the English language and Ultra imperialism it's built into the whole gym surrounding everything with an Asian name is regarded as cheap and local and things with an Italian name or a French name or an English brand name there is this you know and get most people most of time don't consciously resent this and don't consciously repel against it but I think in many ways that is a kind of undertone or undercurrent that's poisoning and vitiating the discourse about English teachers over the teaching of English about why people choose to study it and why people are in effect forced to study it when they don't want to there aren't two different possible futures branching off from the present right now there's only one way this can go the one way this can go is inevitably the whole world needs to mature needs to grow up and recognize the really fundamental role played in people's lives by language teachers you can't really have a society in the 21st century that lacks the facility of face-to-face language instruction and not just for English for English German Chinese it really is an acute social need and it's a need for education that isn't well provided by prison style schools by hospital style bureaucracies and at this time nobody really has the answer yet neither in terms of economic organization business organization purely free-market for-profit organization and we also have the answer in terms of cultural attitudes and expectations for how language teachers are gonna exist within a society to disrespect my but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know the background of this video might be as interesting the foreground I've wanted for some time to make a video about the question why do people have so much disrespect often intense disrespect and hatred for English teachers and we are really talking about the unique cross-continental phenomenon of English teachers abroad generally generally but not always white Western people stereotypically you've gone to Asia now some of them are black some of them are Hispanic some of them are Middle Eastern ancestors on though people speak English as a first language and go abroad now the background of this video I've seen a lot of hand-wringing about this a lot of self-recrimination on YouTube there's a jave lager the Japanese youtuber by which I mean of course he is not Japanese he's a white Western guy living in Japan called Takeo Sam short for Tokyo Sam I've seen him I've seen him take so many different angles on this I've seen some videos where he's really sincerely pleading to the camera look you've got a respect English teachers these people take care of your kids these people raise your kids these people wipe your kids nose you know it's teacher you end up working with small children you this stuff dealing with your kids sometimes your kids are weeping so as you gets vomit on the teacher this is this is the reality of teaching these are loving hard-working honest people who are taking care of your kids not to mention maybe teaching them a language cheating them history politics you know whatever else so you know show them some respect where it's an honest clue of this and I've seen him take the opposite extreme where he's lamenting about his own life and he's lamenting about the job and he's saying he wished he never did this or that he's got to get out of this life where one way or another he's recreating back on it now also part of the background of this video there was a really cynical and really insincere hatchet job video about me nobody says hatchet job anymore people now say take down video but I don't that doesn't make sense to me because takedown has too many meanings but there was a video denouncing me and slandering me made by nor vegan and in it he does a bunch of insensitive things but one of the things he says says this repeatedly he says that being an English teacher and again he means being an English teacher abroad he means especially in Asia he says as a job anybody can do that it doesn't need any qualifications or any skills or any background that all you need is to be to be born English is you know this this is insincere for a couple of reasons he I know but I know he doesn't believe this and you know why cuz his girlfriend who's sitting right next to him on camera that that's been her job that's been her career when they met and fell in love she was working as an English teacher so I mean I know in that case he's just saying this in order to insult me in order to denounce me I know he doesn't believe it I know that she his own girlfriend when he met her at that time she probably told him a lot about how hard the job is the ways in which it's a wonderful job the wisdom which is a terrible job the ways in which she struggles with you know she would have gotten a sense of that even if it's just just from her but look if we just change the language so I'm asking the question but I also have a specific answer I want to deal with here what if somebody said all these same things about a Spanish teacher someone teaching the Spanish language let's say it's in in New Orleans New Orleans is in the United States America southern United States these things these horrible things that are said to denounce English teachers as a common place here on the Internet I think people would be ashamed and embarrassed to say about someone who moved to New Orleans to teach Spanish to to black people in New Orleans I mean right away that image like okay let's say it's someone born and raised in Spain someone from Madrid and they've made the decision to get the qualifications and training to be a Spanish teacher and go to the United States of America and teach these kids and most of the kids probably don't want to learn Spanish they're there because they're forced to be there and you think wow that's a tough job and maybe think wow that's an important job and maybe you think hmm in a sense you're doing something beautiful you're trying to make the world in a better place you think hmm you know in some ways it's an impossible task you know I'm like what percentage of these kids in New Orleans are gonna be able to speak any Spanish ten years from now and all of these things can be said mutatis mutandis they can be said with minor changes about being an English teacher here in Asian how many of these kids are or ever gonna speak English even at the university level I was teaching at the university level and I was in a special program where they were supposed to be the best of the best of the English students and most of them couldn't speak comprehensible English at the start of the course how many of them would speak comprehensible English five years from now even though I won't give the other details of the program they were really they were specially selected they were supposed to be career English teachers themselves and and fewer than 5% of these these kids who are ever gonna go on to to speak English in any significant way thrives and that's looking at the university level not at high school middle school or primary school so so in some ways it's an impossible task it's a daunting task it's an pourtant asked and there's so much that's obviously rich and rewarding and meaningful about it real birth teaching English is not just teaching vocabulary you know when we taught English in you nan it's a hot climate they grow mangoes they grow coffee in minutes this is a tropical you know they're palm trees in the streets that were and I started asking the kids I had a series of lessons with this dealing with life in Arctic Canada hey how do you think people build a house when they live in a place where there's nothing but snow how do you think people make a boat in a culture where there is no wood you know there are no trees there's no grass they have no cows because cows eat grass you know let's let's talk about this and I taught them we taught them all kinds of stuff about the history of Canada we taught them about the first exploration of Hudson Bay you know a British colonial contact with indigenous peoples and this stuff and we did it to teach them English we also did it because it makes the whole experience more meaningful us more meaningful for us as teachers not to mention more more meaningful for them as students and the result was really rewarding and really intellectually stimulating for everyone even though how many of those kids are gonna are ever are gonna care about English maybe some of them will later look back and think whoa you know I once had those two those two teachers you know one from Canada with their nets they said that's two point they really care they really mean it she's looking back years later mmm that was kind of weird but that's about it I mean I don't I don't think at that school I don't know if even one of the kids really wanted to learn English you're really good maybe a couple now the thing of maybe maybe two or three kids out of 200 will really use the education you've given them but hey again there's this intense hatred especially on the internet specifically for English teachers specifically with this cross-continental cross cultural divide but if we said this about music teachers the same kind of criticism would be absurd if you teach piano to children what percentage of the kids are ever really gonna play piano what percentage then we're gonna care about what percentage they're gonna value it what percent of the kids like the music you're teaching you're probably forcing them to play music they despise they listen to hip-hop and you're trying to force them to learn classical it's it's a tough situation I don't believe in music the same way I believe in you know history and politics and language is having real value for everyone's life you know I just don't think the technical aspects of playing a guitar playing the piano or something I don't think it's something that rewarding or that meaningful in many people's lives but if you're a music teacher you got to be motivated you got to get up do it again again so I'm not just here to ask these questions as if they can't be answered think they're I think of our answers and there are really specific answers one answer is the misperception that teachers make a lot of money right so there's a real real simple issue here of perception versus reality and in different cultures that's worth the question whether it is but here in Taiwan that's come up again and again that students parents Taiwanese your co-workers everyone seems to assume that a white Westerner is making a ton of money doing this now in some ways that's just kind of dodging the issue if you were being paid a ton of money that still wouldn't change the kind of ethical analysis the situation oh wow seen with the Spanish teacher okay so if someone is paid to go from Madrid to New Orleans and let's just say they're teaching predominantly poor black inner-city kids in New Orleans you don't really want to learn Spanish who don't respect the educational opportunity that much and he said oh but this teachers paid eighty thousand dollars a year let's say huge amount still still respect them you wouldn't then hate them oh you're just here for the money you know it wouldn't change it for me look well okay gee you're getting a really handsome wage doing this but good for you you know no of course in reality they're not I mean in the United States of America teachers are really underpaid guess what Oh 2019 with very very few exceptions English teachers are not well paid the I could list off the exceptions you work on an oil rig you work for an energy extraction company getting danger pay but you know corporate direct corporate work for big corporations I saw an advertisement to go and teach English in Libya for an oil rig oil drink up oil drilling company okay you know home you know you must be willing to cope with living in those harsh conditions I knew a guy who taught English at mine sites for a gold mining corporation and he had to go out to work on a helicopter so he sent him out in a helicopter he'd stay at the mine site for like two weeks and then he'd come back to the nearest city and he'd get drunk and sleep around and stuff it's my opinion or whatever but you know it kind of encouraged this sense of intense intense self-indulgence when he did come back to civilization from the mind say I've known some cases there are there are a few exceptions but for the most part no like the whole education sector the wages normally are embarrassingly low I was talking to someone today we've had a series of job interview slightly but I was just asking the question I think I think she was a bit embarrassed when I asked I said look if I did this job for 10 years or 20 years what's gonna happen to me when I'm 60 years old I'm 40 so it is for 20 years where do you actually I asked her remember I said do you think I'll actually save up money for retirement this between its it's a question we talking with these really really low pay things and then again anyway look what either way you shouldn't really disrespect someone for doing this job because they're paid a lot and you shouldn't disrespect me to pay a little but I think English teachers are in a double bind exactly that way they're despised as if they make a lot of money but then they're also despised because they are seen as being like babysitters or au pairs or being equivalent to a kind of Filipino nanny someone employed in this in this capacity they're treated as the lowest level of low paid disposable hired help which you know of course is to some extent because they don't unionize or they failed to unionize they don't have collective bargaining anyway it's it's due to a failure to take over the leadership take over the means of production it's it's due to a failure of vision and discipline on the part of teachers themselves in part and of course it is in part due to the cupidity of the of the employers yes yes cupidity is a word mmm mmm here we go let's get out dictionary app you pitted e going back to the 17th century here cupidity noun greed for money or possessions mm-hmm mm-hmm Latin root QP t-tests yes my girlfriend is there you go you learned a new word today I don't know that the only word you but today all right so that's one aspect and the only the rest we don't want to deal with here is cultural imperialism I think for the best and the worst people involved in this there's this underlying resentment of the cultural imperialism that uniquely separates and yet tethers together white Western civilization with Asian civilization and I think we could say the same thing with any of the cross continental divides in English teaching if we're done with Africa or Latin America you know there'd be something similar to be said about white Western English teachers in Africa but age is what we're talking about today in Asia is what I know when I go in the subways here currently so this is Taiwan and the subway system I hate this they have sexy advertisements that are set up by the subway company themselves it's its subway system and their advertising safety and hold the handrail and they have sexy drawings of women like I'll hold the handrail in revealing skin tight clothes okay and the women are white almost all of them not always also they have blonde hair they have big boobs they're build their ethnic features some of them have blue eyes and blonde hair and stuff you know they are they're obviously a white Western standard of beauty right when I went to the gym here I think I never mentioned this on YouTube I went sorry I've been to various gyms here many times there was one gym I went where I took a funny picture myself with a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger and I told you I took other pictures all the images of beauty on the wall all of them were white and they were heavily photoshopped they were like the faces were so photoshopped that they they kind of barely look human some of them but uh uh you know so this is Asia and this is a gym that particular gym 100 the customers are Chinese there were it's not a just not that kind of neighborhood and the walls are plastered with in this particular gym there was a huge billboard in front images of white female beauty the white body the white face the white hair the white world there's this feeling of resentment that white Western culture white Western imperialism creates the standards not just for beauty but for everything for all things from the utensils they eat with to the inch the hour the days on the calendar that the rest of the world Asia and Africa have been forced to measure up to a standard both literally and figuratively them unless it measures you literally I mean literally the ruler you're using the meter the metric system all the standards and practices that define modernity and society the watt light bulbs are in watts who was mr. watt he wasn't shining and again eaves or even within China even if you get into the political reality and communism and so on who was Karl Marx who was Lenin I mean these are all white Western names and white Western faces where there's this resentment of the authority that's uniquely tied to the role of the English teacher and there's this there's this irreconcilable political struggle of East versus West and of course the irony is that's the mean thing motivating people to learn English but tied to that motivation there's this resentment that's not always conscious they're not always aware of there's this resentment that when I go to the gym oh it's it's a white man on the wall as this symbol of male virility and it's white women as the symbol of beauty and everything about the gym sorry if you stop and think about it even you think about the equipment or every piece of equipment has a white Western name you know the names of the machines the names the exercises we just think about it the English language and the cultural imperialism it's built into the whole gym surrounding you and of course the brand names sorry again oh this stuff is another part of my life but if you think about fashion design and someone everything with an Asian name is regarded as cheap and local and things with an Italian name or a French name or an English brand name there is this you know and get most people most of time don't consciously resent this and don't consciously rebelled against it but I think in many ways that is a kind of undertone or undercurrent that's poisoning and vitiating the the discourse about English teachers over the teaching of English about why people choose to study it and why people are in effect forced to study it when they don't want to won't jump in babe so as I said at the start the background of the video is in some ways more dredge than the foreground there aren't two different possible futures branching off from the present right now there's only one way this can go the one way this can go is inevitably the whole world needs to mature needs to grow up and recognize the really fundamental role played in people's lives by language teachers and the struggle because we've been looking at what it's like to be a language teacher in Europe and it's awful you can't really have a society in the 21st century that lacks the facility of face-to-face language instruction and not just for English for English German Chinese it really is an acute social need and it's a need for education that isn't well provided by prison style schools by hospital style bureaucracies for the most part it relies on again you can do a first meeting by Skype or by email it relies on people being able to find and connect with and cooperate with tutors it relies on you know the availability of affordable language instructors at all levels for children for elderly retired people and indeed even for mining companies and oil you know oil refineries I'm not those guys those guys need English teachers too again not just English Chinese Arabic there are so many languages that need this the military needs I've met and spoke to so many military men who were struggling to get you know language arts for the military and at this time nobody really has the answer yet neither in terms of economic organization business organization purely free-market for-profit organization and we also have the answer in terms of cultural attitudes and expectations for how language teachers are going to exist within a society and so I think this kind of disrespect and recrimination it's it's a sign of a contradiction that's unresolved in our attitudes in our economy in government policy in the organization of Education and you know it's a sign of a cultural attitude in the future that's that's yet to emerge I mean really people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know
on the internet specifically for English teachers specifically with this cross-continental cross-cultural divide you shouldn't really disrespect someone for doing the job because they're paid a lot and you shouldn't disrespect to pay a little but I think English teachers are in a double bind exactly that way they're despised as if they make a lot of money but then they're also despised because they are seen as being like babysitters or au pairs or being equivalent to a kind of Filipino nanny someone employed in this in this capacity they're treated as the lowest level of low paid disposable hired help so that's one aspect and the only the respite and want to deal with here is cultural imperialism there's this underlying resentment of the cultural imperialism that uniquely separates and yet tethers together white Western civilization with Asian civilization there's this feeling of resentment that white Western culture white Western imperialism creates the standards not just for beauty but for everything for all things from the utensils they eat with to the inch the hour the days on the calendar all the standards and practices that define modernity and society the watt light bulbs are in watts who was mr. watt where there's this resentment of the authority that's uniquely tied to the role of the English teacher and there's this there's this irreconcilable political struggle of East versus West and of course the irony is that's the mean thing motivating people to learn English but tied to that motivation there's this resentment that's not always conscious they're not always aware of there's this resentment that when I go to the gym oh it's it's a white man on the wall as this symbol of male virility and it's white women as the symbol of beauty and everything about the gym sorry if you stop and think about it even just think about the equipment or every piece of equipment has a white Western name you know the names of the machines the names of the exercises we just think about it the English language and Ultra imperialism it's built into the whole gym surrounding everything with an Asian name is regarded as cheap and local and things with an Italian name or a French name or an English brand name there is this you know and get most people most of time don't consciously resent this and don't consciously repel against it but I think in many ways that is a kind of undertone or undercurrent that's poisoning and vitiating the discourse about English teachers over the teaching of English about why people choose to study it and why people are in effect forced to study it when they don't want to there aren't two different possible futures branching off from the present right now there's only one way this can go the one way this can go is inevitably the whole world needs to mature needs to grow up and recognize the really fundamental role played in people's lives by language teachers you can't really have a society in the 21st century that lacks the facility of face-to-face language instruction and not just for English for English German Chinese it really is an acute social need and it's a need for education that isn't well provided by prison style schools by hospital style bureaucracies and at this time nobody really has the answer yet neither in terms of economic organization business organization purely free-market for-profit organization and we also have the answer in terms of cultural attitudes and expectations for how language teachers are gonna exist within a society to disrespect my but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know the background of this video might be as interesting the foreground I've wanted for some time to make a video about the question why do people have so much disrespect often intense disrespect and hatred for English teachers and we are really talking about the unique cross-continental phenomenon of English teachers abroad generally generally but not always white Western people stereotypically you've gone to Asia now some of them are black some of them are Hispanic some of them are Middle Eastern ancestors on though people speak English as a first language and go abroad now the background of this video I've seen a lot of hand-wringing about this a lot of self-recrimination on YouTube there's a jave lager the Japanese youtuber by which I mean of course he is not Japanese he's a white Western guy living in Japan called Takeo Sam short for Tokyo Sam I've seen him I've seen him take so many different angles on this I've seen some videos where he's really sincerely pleading to the camera look you've got a respect English teachers these people take care of your kids these people raise your kids these people wipe your kids nose you know it's teacher you end up working with small children you this stuff dealing with your kids sometimes your kids are weeping so as you gets vomit on the teacher this is this is the reality of teaching these are loving hard-working honest people who are taking care of your kids not to mention maybe teaching them a language cheating them history politics you know whatever else so you know show them some respect where it's an honest clue of this and I've seen him take the opposite extreme where he's lamenting about his own life and he's lamenting about the job and he's saying he wished he never did this or that he's got to get out of this life where one way or another he's recreating back on it now also part of the background of this video there was a really cynical and really insincere hatchet job video about me nobody says hatchet job anymore people now say take down video but I don't that doesn't make sense to me because takedown has too many meanings but there was a video denouncing me and slandering me made by nor vegan and in it he does a bunch of insensitive things but one of the things he says says this repeatedly he says that being an English teacher and again he means being an English teacher abroad he means especially in Asia he says as a job anybody can do that it doesn't need any qualifications or any skills or any background that all you need is to be to be born English is you know this this is insincere for a couple of reasons he I know but I know he doesn't believe this and you know why cuz his girlfriend who's sitting right next to him on camera that that's been her job that's been her career when they met and fell in love she was working as an English teacher so I mean I know in that case he's just saying this in order to insult me in order to denounce me I know he doesn't believe it I know that she his own girlfriend when he met her at that time she probably told him a lot about how hard the job is the ways in which it's a wonderful job the wisdom which is a terrible job the ways in which she struggles with you know she would have gotten a sense of that even if it's just just from her but look if we just change the language so I'm asking the question but I also have a specific answer I want to deal with here what if somebody said all these same things about a Spanish teacher someone teaching the Spanish language let's say it's in in New Orleans New Orleans is in the United States America southern United States these things these horrible things that are said to denounce English teachers as a common place here on the Internet I think people would be ashamed and embarrassed to say about someone who moved to New Orleans to teach Spanish to to black people in New Orleans I mean right away that image like okay let's say it's someone born and raised in Spain someone from Madrid and they've made the decision to get the qualifications and training to be a Spanish teacher and go to the United States of America and teach these kids and most of the kids probably don't want to learn Spanish they're there because they're forced to be there and you think wow that's a tough job and maybe think wow that's an important job and maybe you think hmm in a sense you're doing something beautiful you're trying to make the world in a better place you think hmm you know in some ways it's an impossible task you know I'm like what percentage of these kids in New Orleans are gonna be able to speak any Spanish ten years from now and all of these things can be said mutatis mutandis they can be said with minor changes about being an English teacher here in Asian how many of these kids are or ever gonna speak English even at the university level I was teaching at the university level and I was in a special program where they were supposed to be the best of the best of the English students and most of them couldn't speak comprehensible English at the start of the course how many of them would speak comprehensible English five years from now even though I won't give the other details of the program they were really they were specially selected they were supposed to be career English teachers themselves and and fewer than 5% of these these kids who are ever gonna go on to to speak English in any significant way thrives and that's looking at the university level not at high school middle school or primary school so so in some ways it's an impossible task it's a daunting task it's an pourtant asked and there's so much that's obviously rich and rewarding and meaningful about it real birth teaching English is not just teaching vocabulary you know when we taught English in you nan it's a hot climate they grow mangoes they grow coffee in minutes this is a tropical you know they're palm trees in the streets that were and I started asking the kids I had a series of lessons with this dealing with life in Arctic Canada hey how do you think people build a house when they live in a place where there's nothing but snow how do you think people make a boat in a culture where there is no wood you know there are no trees there's no grass they have no cows because cows eat grass you know let's let's talk about this and I taught them we taught them all kinds of stuff about the history of Canada we taught them about the first exploration of Hudson Bay you know a British colonial contact with indigenous peoples and this stuff and we did it to teach them English we also did it because it makes the whole experience more meaningful us more meaningful for us as teachers not to mention more more meaningful for them as students and the result was really rewarding and really intellectually stimulating for everyone even though how many of those kids are gonna are ever are gonna care about English maybe some of them will later look back and think whoa you know I once had those two those two teachers you know one from Canada with their nets they said that's two point they really care they really mean it she's looking back years later mmm that was kind of weird but that's about it I mean I don't I don't think at that school I don't know if even one of the kids really wanted to learn English you're really good maybe a couple now the thing of maybe maybe two or three kids out of 200 will really use the education you've given them but hey again there's this intense hatred especially on the internet specifically for English teachers specifically with this cross-continental cross cultural divide but if we said this about music teachers the same kind of criticism would be absurd if you teach piano to children what percentage of the kids are ever really gonna play piano what percentage then we're gonna care about what percentage they're gonna value it what percent of the kids like the music you're teaching you're probably forcing them to play music they despise they listen to hip-hop and you're trying to force them to learn classical it's it's a tough situation I don't believe in music the same way I believe in you know history and politics and language is having real value for everyone's life you know I just don't think the technical aspects of playing a guitar playing the piano or something I don't think it's something that rewarding or that meaningful in many people's lives but if you're a music teacher you got to be motivated you got to get up do it again again so I'm not just here to ask these questions as if they can't be answered think they're I think of our answers and there are really specific answers one answer is the misperception that teachers make a lot of money right so there's a real real simple issue here of perception versus reality and in different cultures that's worth the question whether it is but here in Taiwan that's come up again and again that students parents Taiwanese your co-workers everyone seems to assume that a white Westerner is making a ton of money doing this now in some ways that's just kind of dodging the issue if you were being paid a ton of money that still wouldn't change the kind of ethical analysis the situation oh wow seen with the Spanish teacher okay so if someone is paid to go from Madrid to New Orleans and let's just say they're teaching predominantly poor black inner-city kids in New Orleans you don't really want to learn Spanish who don't respect the educational opportunity that much and he said oh but this teachers paid eighty thousand dollars a year let's say huge amount still still respect them you wouldn't then hate them oh you're just here for the money you know it wouldn't change it for me look well okay gee you're getting a really handsome wage doing this but good for you you know no of course in reality they're not I mean in the United States of America teachers are really underpaid guess what Oh 2019 with very very few exceptions English teachers are not well paid the I could list off the exceptions you work on an oil rig you work for an energy extraction company getting danger pay but you know corporate direct corporate work for big corporations I saw an advertisement to go and teach English in Libya for an oil rig oil drink up oil drilling company okay you know home you know you must be willing to cope with living in those harsh conditions I knew a guy who taught English at mine sites for a gold mining corporation and he had to go out to work on a helicopter so he sent him out in a helicopter he'd stay at the mine site for like two weeks and then he'd come back to the nearest city and he'd get drunk and sleep around and stuff it's my opinion or whatever but you know it kind of encouraged this sense of intense intense self-indulgence when he did come back to civilization from the mind say I've known some cases there are there are a few exceptions but for the most part no like the whole education sector the wages normally are embarrassingly low I was talking to someone today we've had a series of job interview slightly but I was just asking the question I think I think she was a bit embarrassed when I asked I said look if I did this job for 10 years or 20 years what's gonna happen to me when I'm 60 years old I'm 40 so it is for 20 years where do you actually I asked her remember I said do you think I'll actually save up money for retirement this between its it's a question we talking with these really really low pay things and then again anyway look what either way you shouldn't really disrespect someone for doing this job because they're paid a lot and you shouldn't disrespect me to pay a little but I think English teachers are in a double bind exactly that way they're despised as if they make a lot of money but then they're also despised because they are seen as being like babysitters or au pairs or being equivalent to a kind of Filipino nanny someone employed in this in this capacity they're treated as the lowest level of low paid disposable hired help which you know of course is to some extent because they don't unionize or they failed to unionize they don't have collective bargaining anyway it's it's due to a failure to take over the leadership take over the means of production it's it's due to a failure of vision and discipline on the part of teachers themselves in part and of course it is in part due to the cupidity of the of the employers yes yes cupidity is a word mmm mmm here we go let's get out dictionary app you pitted e going back to the 17th century here cupidity noun greed for money or possessions mm-hmm mm-hmm Latin root QP t-tests yes my girlfriend is there you go you learned a new word today I don't know that the only word you but today all right so that's one aspect and the only the rest we don't want to deal with here is cultural imperialism I think for the best and the worst people involved in this there's this underlying resentment of the cultural imperialism that uniquely separates and yet tethers together white Western civilization with Asian civilization and I think we could say the same thing with any of the cross continental divides in English teaching if we're done with Africa or Latin America you know there'd be something similar to be said about white Western English teachers in Africa but age is what we're talking about today in Asia is what I know when I go in the subways here currently so this is Taiwan and the subway system I hate this they have sexy advertisements that are set up by the subway company themselves it's its subway system and their advertising safety and hold the handrail and they have sexy drawings of women like I'll hold the handrail in revealing skin tight clothes okay and the women are white almost all of them not always also they have blonde hair they have big boobs they're build their ethnic features some of them have blue eyes and blonde hair and stuff you know they are they're obviously a white Western standard of beauty right when I went to the gym here I think I never mentioned this on YouTube I went sorry I've been to various gyms here many times there was one gym I went where I took a funny picture myself with a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger and I told you I took other pictures all the images of beauty on the wall all of them were white and they were heavily photoshopped they were like the faces were so photoshopped that they they kind of barely look human some of them but uh uh you know so this is Asia and this is a gym that particular gym 100 the customers are Chinese there were it's not a just not that kind of neighborhood and the walls are plastered with in this particular gym there was a huge billboard in front images of white female beauty the white body the white face the white hair the white world there's this feeling of resentment that white Western culture white Western imperialism creates the standards not just for beauty but for everything for all things from the utensils they eat with to the inch the hour the days on the calendar that the rest of the world Asia and Africa have been forced to measure up to a standard both literally and figuratively them unless it measures you literally I mean literally the ruler you're using the meter the metric system all the standards and practices that define modernity and society the watt light bulbs are in watts who was mr. watt he wasn't shining and again eaves or even within China even if you get into the political reality and communism and so on who was Karl Marx who was Lenin I mean these are all white Western names and white Western faces where there's this resentment of the authority that's uniquely tied to the role of the English teacher and there's this there's this irreconcilable political struggle of East versus West and of course the irony is that's the mean thing motivating people to learn English but tied to that motivation there's this resentment that's not always conscious they're not always aware of there's this resentment that when I go to the gym oh it's it's a white man on the wall as this symbol of male virility and it's white women as the symbol of beauty and everything about the gym sorry if you stop and think about it even you think about the equipment or every piece of equipment has a white Western name you know the names of the machines the names the exercises we just think about it the English language and the cultural imperialism it's built into the whole gym surrounding you and of course the brand names sorry again oh this stuff is another part of my life but if you think about fashion design and someone everything with an Asian name is regarded as cheap and local and things with an Italian name or a French name or an English brand name there is this you know and get most people most of time don't consciously resent this and don't consciously rebelled against it but I think in many ways that is a kind of undertone or undercurrent that's poisoning and vitiating the the discourse about English teachers over the teaching of English about why people choose to study it and why people are in effect forced to study it when they don't want to won't jump in babe so as I said at the start the background of the video is in some ways more dredge than the foreground there aren't two different possible futures branching off from the present right now there's only one way this can go the one way this can go is inevitably the whole world needs to mature needs to grow up and recognize the really fundamental role played in people's lives by language teachers and the struggle because we've been looking at what it's like to be a language teacher in Europe and it's awful you can't really have a society in the 21st century that lacks the facility of face-to-face language instruction and not just for English for English German Chinese it really is an acute social need and it's a need for education that isn't well provided by prison style schools by hospital style bureaucracies for the most part it relies on again you can do a first meeting by Skype or by email it relies on people being able to find and connect with and cooperate with tutors it relies on you know the availability of affordable language instructors at all levels for children for elderly retired people and indeed even for mining companies and oil you know oil refineries I'm not those guys those guys need English teachers too again not just English Chinese Arabic there are so many languages that need this the military needs I've met and spoke to so many military men who were struggling to get you know language arts for the military and at this time nobody really has the answer yet neither in terms of economic organization business organization purely free-market for-profit organization and we also have the answer in terms of cultural attitudes and expectations for how language teachers are going to exist within a society and so I think this kind of disrespect and recrimination it's it's a sign of a contradiction that's unresolved in our attitudes in our economy in government policy in the organization of Education and you know it's a sign of a cultural attitude in the future that's that's yet to emerge I mean really people like to disrespect my truth but the fact is that you know my name is I don't know