I enjoy comparing the rates of English teachers in the city and those of teachers in smaller towns here in China. I really think it says a lot about not only how much money people have on hand, but how much their felt needs are worth to them.
In the city, foreign English teachers can pull a premium price, even when their mother tongue is not English at all. In a more rural-based town, rarely can you find a foreigner that can sustain an English teaching position. What can we learn from these two situations? Well, not that I am in a position to preach on the topic, but here are some of my thoughts these past few days.
I just have to shrug my head in shame when I see "English teachers" in the city that are neither English, in any sense of the word, nor teachers. Granted, a few are actually trained teachers, but when I cannot even understand what they are saying in English, having spoken this language and known people who speak many different varients for a long time, I really start to wonder how out of balance the race for English has become.
Now, that is not to say there are a bunch of trickster teachers out there that do not care about anyone or anything. I know very well there are some very helpful and talented teachers here in China.
Taken as a whole, though, it seems English teaching has become a comfortable job for many in China's cities. The Chinese have a voracious appetite for English and pay prices that often have nothing at all to do with the quality of the teacher or how well or fast the language is learned. That much, many of us have seen. Recently, though, I have seem more of the dreary plight of English teachers in smaller towns.
I could liken the economic mindset of small towns to the video disc industry. There is little chance you could actually find a legitimate movie in many towns, and the vast majority of movies are on VCD instead of DVD. I just have to laugh when I see those VCDs: they are so far down the chain of copies that the picture quality comes across in squares (you could not rightly call something that large a pixel any more!) and the sound is muffled beyond understanding. But they are cheap!
And that is all that matters. Quality is not really a concept. It is all about money. Even when these small towns have a native-speaking, trained teacher, they will not think of paying any more than they do for the Chinese middle school English teachers who sometimes give adult classes on the side. They are trying to buy a blockbuster DVD at the same price as the 10th generation VCD of some early-80s Hong Kong movie!
Folks in the cities want the English and are willing to do what it takes to get it. Plus, learning English from a foreigner, even if you do not really learn much, is a status symbol in itself. English they have not, but money they have!
In the cities, English is the felt need. In the smaller towns though, I think people cut to the chase: money itself is the felt need. "English would be nice, but not if it releases me of too much of my true felt need."
