The hazards and misfortunes of being a language trainer

There are few things I find more frustrating, upsetting, enervating and infuriating than the English language training sector and the people involved. I shall elaborate, but this is really just a small part of the overall picture:

There is an awful paradox at the heart of it all that needs somehow to be killed off. If you look at people of other professions coming into contact with large groups of customers on a daily basis, like accountants, doctors, lawyers and the like, they keep themselves to themselves and don't reveal their secrets to the world so readily. They also provide a "need-to-have" service, rather than a  "nice-to-have" service, such as artists, restaurateurs and gardeners. For that reason they can charge a lot of money for their services. Artists, restaurateurs and gardeners too, but there are very few of the latter who actually can afford the kind of gated properties of the former. In fact, they are liable to be the clients of the latter. And far fewer in number, which is why most artists don't make a huge amount of sales.

Language training falls in a middle category. For some it is a "nice-to-have", for others a "need-to-have", where half are learning languages to better carry out their job, and the other half so they can hold conversations with strangers on hotel terraces; and herein lies the problem. The managers and owners of language schools are able to get the best of both worlds by charging clients in the "need-to-have" category a lot of money for the services of their trainers/teachers, yet pay their personnel the same kind of fees from the "nice-to-have" category. It is a trick of the trade, and a very prevalent one. Furthermore, a sizeable minority of the teachers are gap-year students, or freshly diploma'd twenty-somethings who can barely recognise the difference between a preposition and their elbow. The rest, who are trying to make a career out of it are terrorised by their employer by making competitors out of your colleagues (ever wondered why many are reluctant to share?) and making every day in the school seem like it's your last one. But the most despicable part of their little ruse is how many hoops they make you jump through for such a paltry salary. Take a look at some of the jobs on offer on the TEFL websites. Here's one I found today:

[Name removed] is a leader in the provision of educational travel programmes. Accredited by the British Council, we've been teaching English to international students for 20 years. Our aim is to provide students with a fun, friendly and safe environment in which to develop their communication skills in English.

We are looking for talented and committed EFL teachers to work on a non-residential basis at our centre based at [name removed].

This is a 1 week post, teaching up to 20 hours.


So far, so good.

Then:

Essential:
- CELTA, Trinity TESOL, PGCE in English or an MFL, or equivalent
-Bachelor Degree

Desirable:
- Experience of teaching students of university age
-An undergraduate degree

PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A NON RESIDENTIAL POSITION AND WE ARE UNABLE TO PROVIDE ACCOMMODATION.

So, you're thinking it's going to reward you for the fact you have a degree and you need to pay for your own accommodation? Wait for it...

From £12.50 per teaching hour.

I say, what?

From £12.50 per teaching hour.

I did read that right?

Yep, you definitely did.

That's virtually nothing. I got more per hour for mowing lawns, and that was back in the mid-nineties.

So, let's say you're doing the maximum 20 hours for the week. That works out at £250 for the week. Then let's add in your accommodation. You're in a well-to-do provincial city in the late summer. Kids are back at school but it's still warm. You're looking at £25-£40 per night, for a youth hostel or a cheap hotel. So that's between £170 and £280 for the week. In the youth hostel category, you come out with £80 profit, leaving you with just over £10 per day for food. In the cheap hotel category, you're £30 out of pocket even before you've bought a muesli bar for your evening meal. And you still have to factor in that you need to travel there. Oh yes, and UK tax. And that's not for preparing lessons, correcting and marking work and doing the admin. It says "From £12.50 per teaching hour".

This repeats itself over and over again in varying forms of ruthless cheapskatery and devious mind-trickery as to leave most people with the idea that you should be grateful for actually having something to bloody well do, and you're actually such an ungrateful little weasel for demanding a higher salary. You are supposed to understand that you are doing a humanitarian act, and asking for more money will lead to demands from the others, which in the end if all the teachers did it would lead the school to bankruptcy.

Utter rubbish.

Imagine you've got a class of 8 students. Their parents have paid a package of £500 to £900 for the week, including all meals and basic accommodation in the residence halls of the campus. That's about £4000 to £7200 per class. That means the people on the course are from families that are not poor. Indeed, they're likely to be the lawyers and doctors of the future. The school has overheads, so let's take away 60%. That still leaves £1600 to £2880 per group. And they can't pay proper salaries to their teachers?

There are many standard replies to that question, including the old cliché about profit margins and the like. But what I find most baffling is that these schools really do find the personnel for their courses. There really are people who wish to fill the gaps. And these are the pedagogical versions of interns, that new breed of modern crypto-slave that will do anything for the promise of a job in the future. Except in this business, there is no guarantee of success or riches beyond the current hourly rate afforded by language schools across the world.

I think it is really high time serious language trainers got together and separated themselves from the amateurish schools willing to employ bookish recent graduates looking for a jobby (job + hobby) from the more serious ones who look after their staff and treat them more like the career-minded human beings they are trying to become.

Career-wise, I live in a bubble of contentedness, and I am thankfully not in this predicament that the vast majority of my fellow language trainers find themselves in. But when I look through the job ads just to see what else I could be doing, I despair for the predicament of those wanting to join me in this noble yet poorly-rewarded of professions. It is a very well-oiled ladder, and that's how the schools like it.

Finally, a short note about the people who do my job. They are extraordinarily proud people, preferring to let someone else organise the lessons, set up the course locations, find the clients, level-test them, propose times and hours for their course, and ask them for post-course feedback. The teacher is only willing to involve him/herself in the bare minimum of extra activity, and you have to ask why. That is because it is not their job. They are paid to teach and give advice, mark work and guide students to their target. Correcting tests, preparing lessons and writing course records go largely unpaid. Many would say that out of every hour spent in the classroom, about 25 to 40 minutes is spent doing the accompanying admin. And in the class, the energy spent giving the lesson in comparison to the monetary rewards has a real effect on morale, psyche and sense of self-worth.

So next time you question the commitment and satisfaction of language teachers, remember there may be a hundred reasons behind it. Either the language schools need to stop their ludicrous race to the bottom with their course fees (a recent article in Swedish on public procurement of language services, this time translation and interpretation, found that low pricing had an adverse effect on overall quality and client satisfaction) or trainers need to refuse jobs that don't properly reward them for their efforts. I know already what is going to happen: all the time there are people willing to work simply for the work experience, who were legally minors less than 5 years before they do their dodgy TEFL qualifications, the rest will be exploited. And this particular formula is repeating itself in many other professional sectors.

I have a mind of my own, thank you.

Sorry for not having posted much between Christmas and this weekend. I was in Prague for the entire month of February, making up for lost time... I've never really been one for smalltalk. Indeed, I don't do it very well. In Prague I needed to be a master at it. Everywhere I turned, new people to be introduced to, but invariably the same conversation and Q&A pattern: Where are you from? What do you do? How long are you here for? Where are you living? Blablabla... Which was OK, as this is standard when you're meeting new people. But when talking about nothing in particular is a common theme amongst people you see more often, it becomes a little irritating... After a while, it makes no sense to spend longer than you should around them. Another group that irritates me is (for want of a better word) sheeple. Sheeple are those who don't really do anything alone because they need approval for their actions, and that can be manifested through others wanting to join in. But then, sheeple attract other sheeple until the entire place is full of baa-ing humans. There was one place, for me a living hell, which was full of nothing except latte-swilling expats and oversized t-shirts containing the sort of person who needs a map to find the bathroom in the morning. Its main selling point was its bagels, and boy if that was its selling point, you can guess what type of place it was. Tourist guides stopped there with huge groups of sheeple who were force-fed muffins, cheesecake or brownies. Just 50 metres away, there is a glorious café selling Viennese and Parisian-style cakes and proffering proper coffee out of a Gaggia without pretentious names like "flat white" and "frappuccino" and in sizes so disproportionate to the coffee content, a microphysicist would find it hard to find many atoms of the said bean. The establishment in question also had its own ticket booth selling nights out to some "authentic" Prague shows. The same authentic ones you can find in the West End or on Broadway. You came all the way to Prague to take in a show you could see in any other city. Groovy. Prague has innumerable amounts of interesting places to go to in the evening, and caters for all ages. Why sequester yourself in a place meeting other people you could see in any other city, talking about the same stuff, asking the same questions, and going to the same shows? Could you imagine a conversation between two of these people? "I saw Cats in Munich last week, but it wasn't as good as the Cats they put on in Budapest." "It was the opposite for me. I found the ornate theatre setting in Budapest too disturbing for the eyes. If they want to put on musicals, they need somewhere without gold-leaf around the edge of the stage and those awful cherubs in the frescoes." Begone, foul sheeple! But then there's the most irritating group of all: the bubble. These are people who, no matter where they are, no matter what huge range of options lie before them, will go out in their group, the same group, night after night after night. Prague is full of them, as is every other city. These über-sheeple seem to think there's nothing else outside their group. They walk around large cities talking to each other and fail to notice little details that make the place they are in special. They take photos of themselves eating in a restaurant, mainly when the plates are already empty, and they must be caught smiling in a photo hugging a statue or with the fingers and faces contorted in front of a monument or building. They rarely speak to locals (usually only shop assistants who speak their language) and eat at famous burger joints because they don't really understand local food and have a slight distrust. And there may be someone in the group with dietary requirements (doesn't like cheese, can't stand the smell of beer, gets bouts of Tourette's after eating spicy food) who makes it almost impossible to find an alternative place to eat, so they end up in the same place all the time. I think the worst case of sheeple syndrome I encountered whilst in Prague was on the final Thursday of the month. About six of us had got tickets to a concert in the glorious setting of the newly-renovated Malostranská Beseda, a palace built solely for public entertainment. One gave up his ticket for someone who when the tickets were booked didn't want to go and now did. Just under two hours before the concert, we agreed to meet at the metro station. Ten minutes later, I got a text saying they all wanted to grab something to eat first and would meet me there. I went to the station, one person there so we went together. My flatmate who was not in Prague when we bought the tickets but was interested also came along in case there were spare tickets. We got into the concert hall about ten minutes before the band started - no sign of the others. My flatmate could not get in, so he waited in the bar upstairs until he could. Forty minutes into the concert, I received a text message from the others saying they had only just sat down to order some food. In a pizzeria. In Prague. On the night they had concert tickets. Halfway through the act. They arrived, no joke, in time for the final two songs of the encore. I wouldn't have minded so much, if one of the group hadn't sacrificed his ticket and hadn't come, which could have gone to my flatmate, who was on time, and was getting bored on his own upstairs. See? Sheeple. One is hungry, so the others follow. Satellites around the one currently having the issue. And to think, my flatmate could have bargained a ticket off one of the others. So it came as a huge relief that I was able to hang around with a few people who wanted more than swapping clichés, hanging round in tourist trap cafés, eating in pizzerias and missing concerts. We had so much fun night after night that we almost flunked the course we were on. But that was by-the-by. We would never have done anything to jeopardise our prospects of passing it, especially a whole month-long course. That would have been reckless. Nevertheless, there was too much to do than just sit in a restaurant as a group and just... chat. Despite them, I have a huge set of new memories I never thought I would have, after what can only be described as the best time of my life. I thought the days of fun were over when I left London in 2000, but I was given a month reprise in February in my favourite city, Prague, the place I like to call my second home town. She is still as alluring and enticing as she was twenty years ago when I first fell in love with her. But if I were only going to be there for the one month of my life, why on earth would I want to ignore her by hanging around the same people in my little bubble? That is an insult to the host city. I see it as a badge of honour that I only squeaked a pass but had enormous fun and didn't spend day after day working on projects in the hope of getting a higher grade (which made no difference to how you would be seen) with little or no contact with the real Prague.

Sorry Mr Solvay, you don't have a qualification

Funny old world we're living in currently. You need a diploma for everything. Want to work in a call centre? No degree in languages? Sorry, no room. Got a talent for making clothes but no piece of paper to prove it? Better do it as a hobby. Good at art? Don't bother if you've not been tutored by Rembrandt's grandson's wife's daughter-in-law from her second marriage. Road sweeper? Not if you haven't been to community college. When you look through the jobseekers' websites these days it's really depressing. People can't do anything without the right papers.

It makes you wonder - my father left school at a very young age and went to work in the print business: Daily Express, of all places, where he was typesetter. That means he put together the pages of the newspaper using his hands, picking out the letters from the selection of metallic blocks in the Gutenberg days before computers put an end to it all. He designed the front page too. He couldn't do it these days - you need to go to journalist school and learn all the software they use. Fair enough, but it's not rocket science. I know sixteen-year-olds who could pick up the skill in an afternoon. But no - you need to PROVE you can by coming out with at least four years at university.

If Ernest Solvay, the father of Belgium, born in 1838, had been around in this age, he would never have got out of the factory floor. Despite not finishing university due to illness, he developed the ammonia-soda process (later the Solvay Process) for the manufacture of soda ash. That's sodium carbonate in solid form to you and me. He worked in his father's chemical factory until 21, and four years later opened his own factory in the Walloon industrial belt, second only to England's regions of mass production. He went on to open up plants in the UK, the US, Germany, Austria, and at this moment in time there are 80 plants worldwide. The Solvay business is even now listed on Euronext in Brussels.

He became rich through patenting his products, which, very reminiscent of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, he used for philanthropic purposes. One of his pet projects was the establishment of the "Institut des Sciences Sociales" (ISS) in 1894. He also set up the International Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. In 1903, he founded the Solvay Business School, now a part of the Free University of Brussels (VUB or ULB). Eight years later, he started several high-ranking conferences which bore his name. Marie Curie, Max Planck, New Zealand's Ernest Rutherford and even a young Albert Einstein attended. He was elected to the Belgian Senate twice, and was in the cabinet in his later years.

Can you imagine that happening today? Except for the kids of the élite, that is never going to happen any more in the Europe being created for us today. If you're good enough, if you have a talent, if you're someone with a dream but don't need to be re-educated, why bother? Cut out the middle bit and get on with it now. For example, the British Council in Brussels does not hire staff to train professionals in the English language without the CELTA qualification or equivalent. I and many of my colleagues have degrees in language, as much as 20 years' experience, and work within the highest authority in the European Union, but that is not enough. To work for them we need that piece of scrap paper with the right words on it to prove we paid a thousand euro for their course. THEN we'll be let in.

But to be frank, many of the very best language trainers don't even have degrees; they are good enough because their enthusiasm and down-to-earth ways carry them much further to satisfying their clients or students than most CELTA-qualified people, because those with the papers are a lot more complacent - they think they've got it, because they're "qualified". I don't see the British Council ever winning the right to give courses in the European Institutions, with thousands of students in the classes per year, if they persist with their Old English Gentlemen's Club mentality. And long may it stay that way. We don't need snobs in the New Europe.

We still need, though, to tackle those who persist in the need for qualifications to do certain jobs where diplomas are unnecessary. Over half of all Belgians are doing jobs below their level of education. Many admin workers are frustrated because they worked their socks off to end up making photocopies for their boss. Job ads for simple positions ask for so much in someone's capabilities and job experience that I wonder if they actually find someone. Or if the job is real; not a phantom advertisement to make competitors curious, or jealous.

Let us go back to Ernest Solvay, who despite his ideas of French linguistic supremacy and class separation, also was the first to offer his employees work contracts to include time off and an early form of social welfare, unheard of at the time. He single-handedly saved Belgium from disintegration after the First World War. We are losing out on people of his magnitude through blindly pursuing the policy of suffocation of the undiploma'd. And by keeping SME employment taxes high, but that's another matter.

The Solvay Process:
1. CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2 The calcium is heated to get CO2
2. 2NaCl + 2CO2 +2NH3 +2H2O -> 2NaHCO3 + 2NH4Cl
3. 2NaHCO3 -> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2

The ammonium can be recuperated by doing the following:
2NH4Cl + CaO -> 2NH3 + CaCl2 + H2O
This process uses almost no ammonium, and the leftover is CaCl2, Calcium Chloride.

But unfortunately, we can't accept this as fact any more because Mr Solvay didn't have the correct qualifications.