A Long Rant: English Teachers

So let me pose a situation to you. Imagine If I came to any random place in the US and I told the people I ran into the following…

I have a job you can do—English teaching in a foreign country. You don’t need to be well educated; graduating college is absolutely a plus but not necessarily required. All your job requires is minimal skill—you have to speak English, that’s it. Translating, logistics, and disciplining students will be handled by a local teacher’s aide. In exchange, you will receive a salary that places you above the local norm and is more than enough to live comfortably. This is in exchange for teaching classes in the late afternoon and evening so you can sleep in every day The local environment is pretty modern and with a little time you can get used to it. In addition, local people will treat you quite well and more often than not defer to you. Many people (especially some women) will find you a hot commodity. The downsides are that you live abroad, your salary is not high by American standards, and you cannot speak the language which can make even small things a huge pain in the ass (but enough local people speak English that it matters less and less).

Of course, the place I am referencing is Taiwan. So who would want that job? Let’s see, generally males who tend to be young and college grads with no job. Absolutely, there are lots of them over here. But who else? Well people with few marketable skills or abilities, people with poor prospects back home, people with bad jobs back home, and people who may not fit in well.

Those are the characters who seem to end up over here in Taiwan—in seemingly increasing numbers. Now I prefer to live and let live. The problem, however, is that these (shall we say less than upstanding) English teachers become what Taiwanese people view as the norm for all foreigners.

When I meet a new Taiwanese person and they find that I speak Chinese, or even if they ask in English, I invariably get a few standard questions. “Where are you from?” “Are you an English teacher?” “Do you have a girlfriend?” Then something along the lines of, “Do you like the food here?”

You see, Taiwanese people here tolerate English teachers as a necessary evil. They realize a lot of them are not overly savory characters but do not realize just how unsavory they may be. At the same time, they teach English, which is needed in Taiwan to get ahead so they serve a necessary purpose. They are also known as a less than hygienic mob that teaches most nights then boozes or goes out to pick up chicks the rest of the time (read easy money and easy women—who are derogatorily called “Western food girls”). On top of that, a lot of them do not behave well or have an entitlement complex.

There are many foreign teachers who come here and just set up shop. They find some local girl who speaks English to help them with daily stuff—reading and getting around. Because they don’t speak much, if any, Chinese they have to find girls that speak English which limits the pool to the Western food girls who tend to have a foreigner infatuation (this can badly for both sides, as nearly every embassy here can attest). Still many just stay here, marry and open their own English teaching school while gaining a modicum of respect as people cannot understand that they may just be a sleaze. Example, I know a girl my age who was dating a 35 year old English teacher who had been over here for years and was still teaching English and making a local wage. I hate to say it, but that is not unusual for many foreigners here.

The problem for me is that I am the same age as many of them. So I am looked at the same way. They give me a less than desirable reputation before I open my mouth. When I am with my ladyfriend I tend to get a lot of looks that seem to say, “Ah, just another English teacher here to pick up women.” There is no way to explain through eye contact that this image could not be further from the truth. I can do nothing to change that, and that pisses me off since I don’t like being lumped together with jackasses.

Disclaimer: They are not all bad, of course. I have met some genuinely fine individuals who teach English in Taiwan and care deeply about providing the best education possible to their students. But in my experience they are an exception and I avoid nearly all association with English teachers when possible.