Just seen the full-length documentary on the collapse of Enron. A couple of thoughts popped into my mind (apart from “What kind of creature is humankind????”, which I managed to block out). The first was that Japanese management getting together to apologise and bow in front of the cameras before quitting to take a job in a related company might not mean much, but it does actually make Joe public (e.g. me) feel better than the “I didn’t do nuffin” teenager attitude of the tossers at Enron.
The second was that the amount of slagging off TEFL teachers get from various quarters is a bit overdone. As much as I’ve had a moan about lack of professional standards myself at times, I must admit that I have never met an EFL teacher who took the job in order to:
- Make obscene amounts of money (traders)
- Have the power of life and death over people (doctors)
- Feel holier than thou (nurses)
- Give their parents one up on the the Joneses next door (lawyers)
- Have fun ripping off the punters (door to door salesmen)
- Do the Times crossword while being paid by the taxpayer (local government)
- Spend time with little boys (Catholic priest)
- Meet people from all over the world and shoot them (Army)
Etc. etc.
Just comparing the number of crimes by US forces in Japan and English teachers gives a bit of perspective. Makes wanting to travel the world, go out with someone exotic and learn a little bit about a foreign culture seem not so bad, don’t you think? There might be relatively few ESL teachers who do it to save the world either, but does that mean our glass of thousand-yen Guiness is half full or half empty?
