This story from Japundit was pathetic enough to finally end any illusions I had as to whether teaching English in Japan is “real” work. It is the best argument I’ve yet seen against ever considering English teaching in Japan as a career option.
There are thousands of people like David who come to Japan expecting a free lunch. This guy did even worse than most, starting close to the bottom because of some sort of hipster condemnation of “the man” and working his way down from there.
Of course, he learns his lesson at the end of the story, right?
Then why is he still in Japan working as an underqualified “teacher” of English?
Let’s get one thing straight: Eikaiwa is not teaching in any meaningful sense of the word. Since Japanese society has a backwards, racist view of language learning the vast majority of people are convinced that the best way to learn a language is to sit in a room with any random native speaker of that language. This is WRONG. The eikaiwa schools’ “learn-language-quick” approach to something that always requires motivation and years of patient hard work is nothing less than a scam. And just because the suckers are all too happy to part with their money that doesn’t make it right! Doesn’t it make you sick to your stomach to know you’re a fraud? David’s bad attitude toward the students speaks volumes:
I’ve been teaching English to children from ages three to 10, or at least trying to do so. Ah, children! They’re not just our hope and future, they’re also gaseous balls of snot and flatulence filled with demonic energy out to leech the very life from our bones. No, seriously, this experience has taught me to love kids, especially in lemon and butter sauce. Accompanied with a light Chianti, they can’t be beat.
Now, I don’t mean to pick on David. There are tons of other eikaiwa teachers out there who are bitter at their lot in life but are too chickenshit to do anything about it. It can’t feel good to be approaching 30 and still not have any marketable skills under your belt.
(On a side note, I don’t get why he doesn’t seem to have a problem when small-timers scam people out of their money but chafes at “the system” if a business is successful and grows large. Jealousy perhaps?)
What’s sad is that some people get locked into eikaiwa, as if it’s really a sustainable career choice. They end up old, bald, and wrinkled, going home with middle-aged hookers after drunken nights at expat bars, and that becomes the story of their life.
I’m not a particularly materialistic person, but I’ve seen quite average people get good jobs in Tokyo, jobs that involve more than just speaking English to people. And while the allure of language teaching in Japan might be strong for someone who’s fresh out of school with no practical experience, they can do SO much better if they have a useful skill when they go in… be it engineering, accounting, finance, law, journalism, or just translation.
And if you really want to be a career English teacher, for God’s sake, get your master’s and sign up with a real employer–a university or something. Not these Mickey Mouse outfits that pay peanuts and expect their teachers to balance beachballs on their noses. Find a way to at least get tenured and respected.
OK, my component of the rant is over for now… 🙂
Bingo! Perfectly summed up with this: “There are tons of other eikaiwa teachers out there who are bitter at their lot in life but are too chickenshit to do anything about it. It can’t feel good to be approaching 30 and still not have any marketable skills under your belt.”
Exactly. And it means there are lots of pissed off, resentful foreigners in Japan who give all of us a bad name. When it comes down to it, most of them just like complaining, and this gives them an excuse to do it.
Wow! You couldn’t be further off the mark even if you tried! Impressive!
Where to begin to tear this flimsy house of cards asunder?
“There are thousands of people like David who come to Japan expecting a free lunch. ”
Ah, nope. Just wanted a job not a free lunch or a free ride. Please don’t make assumptions.
“Then why is he still in Japan working as an underqualified “teacher” of English?”
Like this assumption. Who said I was underqualified? I have a major in English and I taught a year in Egypt. The lesson I learned was beware of working for small start-up businesses particularly in the English teaching industry.
“David’s bad attitude toward the students speaks volumes:” (The snide comments here about English teachers speaks volumes)
Oh, give me a break, you opinionated blowhart! I can’t beleive you took that so seriously. Anyone who has taught kids knows the wonders and horrors that lie therein. Sometimes they’re angels. Sometimes they’re devils. Regardless of the headaches the little tykes give me from time to time, I actually enjoy teaching kids.
This story was mainly written as a humor piece – a tragic comedy. Its not something I am embittered about. I’m actually glad for the experience. I find it hilarous that my story is being used as fuel for ridiculous and inaccurate rant.
“(On a side note, I don’t get why he doesn’t seem to have a problem when small-timers scam people out of their money but chafes at “the system” if a businesses is successful and grows large. Jealousy perhaps?)”
Eh? What the hell is this gobbledegook suppose to mean?
In the future please don’t misrepresent or twist my stories to fuel these pathetic and vindictive rants.
Oooooh, an English major! Watch out, he read BOOKS in college! IN HIS NATIVE LANGUAGE! And WROTE about their concealed philosophical meanings! This man DESERVES a job. Hell, give him five! God knows there are too many jobs out there these days!
Sorry Dan, don’t take it too seriously.
It’s Adamu’s fault for publicly talking about what all of us Westerners in Japan working in real jobs do in private: look down on English teachers, especially the ones working with kids. But don’t worry, all the bankers and attorneys look down on translators, so Adamu can’t really be that snide.
all this talk about “real” jobs just sounds like covering up for some basic underlying insecurity. Doctor, lawyer, ninja, english teacher… so what? Judging someone by what they do for a living is pathetically small and immature and speaks volumes about the person making such comments.
Sure, eikaiwa works for those who know how to work it. But that’s a motivated few, and how many eikaiwa teachers do you know who know how to bring out the best in their students? Foreign language students deserve better, or at least they’re getting what they pay for. There’s nothing you can get out of eikaiwa that you couldn’t from a good “conversation partner” relationship, and those are free and easy to set up on Craigslist these days.
You’re right, David — I don’t know you personally. But are my assertions (based on what you wrote, not merely assumed) that a) You came to Japan knowing that it would be easy to get a job as an English teacher; and b) You’re not a trained educator really unfair?
You need to be prepared for the consequences of what you write, David (I, for one, don’t mind sounding like an “opinionated blowhart”). It shouldn’t surprise you that your tale of scraping the bottom of the eikaiwa barrel comes off as more than a little lame to those who can see the scam for what it is.
And for a comedy I don’t see much humor in your essay – the story was pure anecdote. Did you intend you and your goofy outlook on life to be the “tragic comedy”? On that point I can certainly agree.
Bitterness and vindictiveness? Nah, more like pity.
To be an English major with no writing ability, showing pride in having a bottom-level corporate job that lets you have (gasp!) a BANK ACCOUNT and MONEY after three years, and then backing it up with some sort of goofy samurai fantasy…
…that’s not something to hate. That’s something to pity.
But I WILL give you this, David: your post, for all its lameness, could help keep intellectually lukewarm 20-somethings from flying to Japan with delusions of eikaiwa grandeur. In that regard, I’m all for it.
Dave (not Dan, sorry): I don’t know why they’re being so rude (or alienating part of their audience, a large chunk of which are surely eikaiwa teachers). On my part it’s not insecurity but arrogance, plus most English teachers in Japan are unhappy bums. I admit my anti-eikaiwa bigotry.
Aburioe: When you invest, you sacrifice your current spending power on the belief that your investment will be worth more in the future. Hopefully your education is the same. If you were truly happy with eikaiwa teaching, you should have stuck with that.
Curzon, even though I am not all that interested in cultivating an audience of eikaiwa teachers, you have a point. Internet rudeness can be fun, but it was unfair of me to make some random weblogger the poster child for what’s wrong with the system. At a party David would receive a polite smile and perhaps a “That’s really interesting, let me go get something to drink” when he corners someone with his ronin story. So perhaps he deserves the same courtesy on the Internet.
David: The scam I am talking about is eikaiwa itself, not the fly-by-night operation that unfortunately screwed you. My anti-eikaiwa agenda has nothing to do with bitterness, insecurity, arrogance, pity, or even vindictiveness. Frankly, eikaiwa is a blight on Japanese society — counterproductive at best, parasitic at worst. Do you really disagree that it exploits and reinforces misguided (not to mention racist) beliefs at the expense of real learning? The eikaiwa phenomenon has been around for more than 30 years and Japan has nothing to show for it. Zero.
Finally, calling me humorless just because I don’t find YOU funny is very convenient indeed. A true humorist would have laughed off my comments instead of getting angry and defensive. You should take a look at some examples of truly funny anecdotes: tuckermax.com, philalawyer.blogspot.com, maddox.xmission.com, or chasemeladies.blogspot.com.
Or, for that matter, Azrael, creator of the Gaijin Smash.
Adamu: I’m not interested in cultivating an audience of liberals, as my rightist commentaries will show. But I’m not in the business of ridiculing someone with liberal views either. Your post and comments were fine — I was referring more to Joe’s writing — and your most recent comment above is once again a perfect critique: eikaiwa as an institution is evil and must be destroyed!
I can’t believe Dave ended up defending the very people who screwed him out of money. Scam or not (and who is to say if it is or not? If they cheat you of your salary plus the severance pay they are legally obligated to pay you AND one of them runs away, can this not be considered a scam? I know of people that do this repeatedly with different kinds of businesses that invariably fall into bankruptcy. They still live in nice apartments, though.), at the very least this is morally questionable, I would think. It’s strange but perhaps admirable that Dave can be so forgiving, especially since it seems like he was in a financial hole at the time. I, for one, couldn’t handle it like that. I would definitely hire hashishans.
That was kind of mean Joe. Why so down on English majors? That was one of mine.
I have no strong feelings about eikaiwa- I even thought about doing it for a little while to improve my language ability by spending a little more time in Japan before grad school.
There are undoubtedly plenty of scam operations in the eikaiwa industry, some like the one in the linked story, but far more notably the giant Nova, which breached Japanese employment law so fragrantly that they were eventually investigated by the government. That doesn’t make the eikaiwa itself a scam though. Eikaiwa may not be the best way to learn the language, but what else are students going to do without studying abroad? I’ve known a few Japanese who studied in Eikaiwa schools, and many of them claim that it helped, giving them supplemental one on one language practice that went beyond what they could get from their public school classes.
Eikaiwa is just a symptom. The real problem is Japan’s public schools, which according to what I have heard and read (I have no first hand knowledge) use translation focused instruction techniques more appopriate for Latin class than English or another living language. And the results are commensurate with the methods-students who can, given time, read an English article or translate it into Japanese, and answer questions on vocabulary or grammar, but have little ability to understand spoken language, or produce original content in the language in either spoken or written form.
While there are certainly plenty of sad cases working as eikaiwa teachers, the vast majority are just young people fresh out of college that would like go live somewhere exotic for a little while, and didn’t have the luxury of studying abroad like we had. To do this they get a job at a juku, haegwon, bushiban, or whatever they call them in other countries, and are usually in and out in a year or two.
I can understand feeling pity and disgust for the balding and bitter 50 year old still working as an eikaiwa instructor after 25 years, but why so much hostility someone who goes with good intentions and gets screwed over by an incompetent and/or devious boss?
MF: I don’t have anything against English majors. I was ridiculing the notion that an English major somehow qualifies a person to teach.
Um, right. Before you start slinging around fancy words like “libel,” you should know what they mean. If something is true, or if it’s clearly an opinion, it isn’t libel.
Calling someone unqualified is not libel. Calling someone unprofessional, immature, and unfunny is not libel. Calling someone a libeler when they aren’t a libeler… now THAT’s libel.
Then why are you still commenting? If I was the author I wouldn’t be jumping in “just because people disagreed with me.”:http://www.blogrel.com/2005/12/04/armenian-territory-thru-history/ People have different opinions, views, and values. If you can’t deal with that, you shouldn’t be blogging.
Justin: you provide the dope and I’m _there_, man.
What, I say a few things that you don’t like, and you DELETE my comments, 1984-style??? Is that how things are run here at MFT? I thought you guys enjoyed the spirit of debate. Any well educated person would. But hey, at least you pretend to enjoy it. A non-educated person might appreciate that gesture. I guess it impresses somebody. But it’s cool. You’re in some mediocre, second tier law school somewhere, so that means you can insult everybody else…and then just delete their comments when they expose you for the fraud that you are.
Weber was right about you, and I didn’t even realize it until now. So was the whole Japundit community. You guys are losers. Pathetic losers, who just sit around on your mightier-than-thou pedestals and cast insults upon good people. Well, if you’ll look around, you’re the ones that everybody is ignoring, for the above reasons. I used to wonder why you had nobody visiting your site and posting comments. Now, I guess I know. Thanks for showing me the way out so clearly. What a waste. Screw you!
Aburioe: I don’t know what happened to your comments. I didn’t delete them. Maybe Adamu flipped out or something. I doubt it; we don’t delete comments unless they’re obvious spam.
Roy has all the technical power over the blog, but he’s off in the Philippines so I don’t know when he’ll be around again to tell us what happened. But please don’t think we’re censoring you because we don’t like you: we appreciate having you around.
Um, I don’t know what happened. I actually really liked your comment and was preparing a response to it. It could have gotten deleted in the process, but I really don’t think so.
Everyone, here’s the comment that got lost in the nether-regions of commentland:
Wait a minute! Maybe I haven’t paid attention, and you guys have explained your anti-eikaiwa reasoning in a previous post or something. But you guys in this one post have call eikaiwa an evil institution, a blight on society, counterproductive, a scam, racist, and parasitic. What experiences have you guys had with eikaiwa to lead you to such conclusions, because you haven’t exactly laid out any reasoning for them here? Like I said, I may have missed them; not saying you SHOULD have explained your anti-eikaiwa rationale. I’m just curious about it now, because in my experience, eikaiwa was a fantastic time.
I know it’s not real teaching, and I know there are plenty of bums in the eikaiwa world. But I also know that there are 10’s of millions of Japanese trying to learn English, and only about 500,000 native English speakers in the country, most of whom are busy with things other than finding language partners on the interweb. So, obviously, a compromise of some sort must be found if Japanese people as a whole wish to actually SPEAK with native speakers (can’t we all agree that speaking time is a fundamental part of learning a language?). That compromise, for better or worse, is eikaiwa.
I’ve personally lived in 6 different countries in my life. And NONE, with the exception of the US, of course, as I’m American, was able to put me in closer contact with the population and teach me about local culture than Japan and eikaiwa. I had students from all walks of life teaching me about sumo, tea ceremony, anime, karaoke, etc., etc. So it may be racist in other ways (though I’m scratching my head to figure out how), but as for teaching foreigners about Japanese culture, it was excellent. And out of those 5 foreign countries I’ve lived in, I EASILY feel the most nostalgia for Japan, in large part because of my experiences at eikaiwa.
Like I said before, from the students’ perspectives, a lot of them, but certainly not all, DID learn English to a noticible degree during the time I was there. They can’t all just find language partners because of the abovementioned, substantial shortage of language partners available. Besides, language partners are great for college students and 20-somethings (that’s the general age of most availabe language partners anyway), but what about for kids, teenagers, and anybody over the age of 40? It’s a little tougher. So they pay some money, perhaps too much, in some people’s eyes, and they get the convenience, reliability, consistency, and in some cases, safety, of a steady language partner that you guys think are so easy to come by.
So my question is: what’s the problem with eikaiwa? I know it’s got a lot of problems, but above, I’ve listed a lot of good things about it as well. Lastly, eikaiwa’s extremely successful in Japan, so the assumption I derive from your anti-eikaiwa statements is that you guys obviously think Japanese people are too STUPID to know what’s good for them. Is that true?
This was aburioe’s first comment, which came after David’s initial response:
Weber’s got a good point, and I think you guys are coming down way too hard on eikaiwa. It’s NOT fraudulent. It may not be the most effective way of teaching, but it DOES work. When I was over there teaching, I could notice pretty substantial improvements among some of my students. Furthermore, as a student myself of Spanish and Japanese, especially as I live now in Holland, I would welcome the opportunity to take classes here that are similar to the ones I taught in Japan…in fact, I feel deprived for not having the opportunity to speak with Japanese and Spanish-speaking people now.
Having said that, though, I see your point about the folks who get “stuck” as lifers in big corporation eikaiwa jobs. We’ve all seen those 30 or 40 something coworkers who are sleazy, pathetic, losers on a fast track to nowhere, but that’s not ALL eikaiwa teachers. If somebody doesn’t want to become a lawyer, translator, banker, or businessman, then teaching eikaiwa isn’t a bad way to go.
Then again, I left Japan after two years to go back and figure out a better way to make a living there. But I can’t blame people for sticking with eikaiwa in japan…it’s a great place, and a better job than you guys seem to think. Personally, my last two and a half years in grad school have been shit compared to my time teaching in Japan.
(Afterthought: 3L exam stress?)
Dave: Not sure what sort of responsibility you think I’m supposed to be taking for what I wrote, but I think I do owe you an apology now that I’ve come to my senses.
Had I not been trying to act like a dick, the point of the post, as I mentioned at the end, would not have been to pick on you. However, epithets such as “pathetic,” “looking for a free lunch,” “chickenshit,” “jealous,” “underqualified,” “fraud,” “no marketable skills,” “not real work,” etc were unnecessarily hurtful and mean-spirited.
Ultimately, it’s not even a question of my assumptions or misinterpretations (though I admit to those too) since put together the post at best achieved a kind of hateful nonsense. Regardless of how I feel about eikaiwa (it’s got to go) and some of the teachers (bums!) you don’t deserve to be personally attacked.
So ya, I’m done with this unproductive bit of meanness. I’ll try and keep my nose clean from now on. Sorry.
That’s not to say this discussion is over. Watch for a more constructive (but no less challenging) indictment of the eikaiwa industry coming up, though perhaps much later.
PS: Are you banning me from commenting on your posts? I tried to post on your Lost in Translation thing but it hasn’t shown up.
Well, thank you. I appreciate it, adamu. I just thought it was out of line. I don’t mind being insulted but dammit I want to be insulted for something I actually did or said. Beleive me I get far worse from some political boards I post on but then its generally with valid reasons.
That and using my story for an attack on eikaiwas is what got my dander up. Not that I wish to defend eikaiwa but only that even from an impartial point of view my story is not strong enough to support an argument against eikaiwas or underqualified teachers. I’m sure there are far better ones that one could be used to build a better case against eikaiwas.
As I said before to me to call my “company” a company doesn’t seem right. Better “two wishful thinking idiots with a dream.” While Ivan and I were two wishful idiots with a dream of stable employment.
To me the eikaiwa scam as you call it is only a symptom of much larger problems for example the Japanese education system – what was it something like 500 japanese teachers in the school system or more were found to be unqualified?
When it comes to student progress, I find some of them lacking in essential studying skills such as taking notes (especially after the teacher has written important info on the board), recording their lessons, doing homework, and practicing outside of class. Then some of those who do not do any of those things while only taking one lesson a week complain that they are not improving as though they expected us to create a miracle for them.
My Japanese is dreadful so I can’t fault a person for their ability or inability to learn English. However, when I took a few Japanese lessons at my school, I took all kinds of notes and asked all kinds of questions. Even those few lessons helped to improve my miniscule amount of Japanese.
In my own experience, I found that students who generally want to learn, have a healthy attitude for life (ie having hobbies and interests), a keen interest in other things, etc… often progress quite well. Those who never do their homework, never practice outside of class, and barely participate in the lesson even a private one – well as you can imagine they never progress.
Then there are the ones with extremely low confidence. They are the ones who will say “difficult” before you even begin an exercise – an exercise they haven’t even seen yet! This defeatist mentality is often a difficult beast to defeat. If a person says difficult to themselves over and over again – guess what? It IS going to be difficult. The Japanese need a Tony Robbins over here – or they should try to be more like folks from Osaka.
In some ways joining an eikaiwa reminds me of gym memberships in the US. Lots of people buy them thinking they’ll use it all the time then they only go a few times before they get bored. In other cases the students’ companies pay for the lesson and so some student’s level of enthusiasm is not very high.
The problem with some eikaiwas is the factory school syndrome which is why I was hesitant to join a big company. With large schools student feel less a part of their school and have less repoire with their teachers some of whom they may only see once every three months or more.
I work for a middle-size school so I teach the same students fairly regularly plus we leave notes on their files for other teachers pinpointing any weaknesses or special requests the students may have. We generally known the students by name or face. In the larger schools, thats impossible and in such a situation I can see how a student’s motivation would dwindle in the face of such an impersonal organization.
As for english teachers – its a mixed bag. You got some embittered ones, content ones, qualified ones, Khao San Road College alumni.
I admit we have some at my school who complain about students (I count myself in that number) but these complaints are about those who don’t try. Any student regardless of their ability as long as they are willing to try is a joy to teach.
So when it comes to learning english some factors depend on the teacher, some on the eikaiwa, and some on the students themselves.
Alright enough of this rambling rant. The building manager is fixing to throw me out so if this piece looks incoherent and riddled with spelling and grammar errors its due to a lack of a proofread – and multi-tasking.
oh! No, I’m not banning you from posting on japundit. I have no such powers so I7m not sure what’s that about. You might want to check with them yourself on that.
D’oh! I forgot another important factor: OVERWORK. I mentioned indifferent students but not all are by choice. Some just don’t have the mental energy to light a blacklight bulb and who can blame them due to the crushing schedule of work responsibilites they have. I found myself exhausted after 80 mins of Japanese lessons and this was without having finished a 10 hour workday. These students I feel pity for especially if their company is forcing them to take lessons on top of their workload.
In Eikaiwa, you are just treated like chop liver. Good luck to those in it.
This link to the disadvantages of eikaiwa and teaching in japan is interesting:
http://www.tefl.net/alexcase/teaching/the-disadvantages-of-teaching-in-japan/comment-page-1/