A Solution To Exploitation? Via EFL Geek

I think anytime you have an industry with such high demand such low expectations of people to fill the demands, you are setting yourself up for exploitation.

Spain is a classic example of a country with a huge demand for reasonably priced language classes. These schools cannot afford to pay for qualified teachers, so they hire anyone who speaks English, looks “English-speaking”, and will take the pay-and the cert TESOL helps a bit, too. This is great appeal to people who are backpacking their way around Europe and want to earn money-stopping for 6 or 10 months in each place.

Though I’ve certainly been on the receiving end of exploitation, I sorta had to remind myself, “What did you expect? You got off a plane, you have limited experience and no official qualification to do what you’re doing.” I suppose, in a sense, we might be exploited by employers, but we in turn are exploiting a situation that allows us to work w/o the qualifications that would be necessary in a better job.

This is a good point and I agree in some ways. I’m going to collect my thoughts and return!

I’m back but still not sure how to reply concisely… I think there are many different issues going on in this topic…yes, I think the situation as you describe it - with high demand and low expectation/requirements for those in a position to fill it - does create the potential for exploitation, or at least for problems. It is probably a useful way to look at the situation to a degree: teachers without advanced qualifications do benefit - financially and otherwise - from teaching abroad and it’s fair for there to be some trade offs. But I think there are trade offs, and the trade off doesn’t have to be, say, that you should count on being lied to.

If a teacher does even ten or fifteen minutes of searching online, it should not be a big surprise that it happens that contracts are not followed in some countries. And I have much less sympathy for teachers who don’t investigate and who don’t take the job seriously. But - I don’t consider it a contradiction to also say that deliberately misleading people on an employer’s side is wrong.

I think the unfortunate reality is that some employers - certainly not all but some - mislead people, count on their inability to act decisively as foreigners, make a profit off of this, and behave in the same way towards the next person. And even though the most common teacher in this scenario is a minimally-qualified one, those teachers are not the only ones who lose…students lose when their teachers are working too much (not to mention if/when they don’t take the job seriously or just can’t do it without any training). Teachers with advanced qualifications lose in the sense that their overall position is weakened by literally tons of cheaper labor being available…certainly the quality (teaching) is not the same, but if a system is focused on profit, quality may be lower in importance.

Again, this doesn’t mean that teachers are passive victims, but there is a difference between naively hoping for the best and deliberately manipulating someone…