My Chinese Teacher's Salary is SO MUCH LOWER THAN YOURS?

This particular furphy has been around since I have ever been to China. Though it seems to have dropped out of usage lately, I was reminded of it recently. I'm also reminded of how inadequate the usual replies are. Oh yeah, well, your Chinese teacher has, has, dammit, they have security and citizenship and they can buy a house, an', an', *huff*, *huff*, just do your homework kid!

It occurred to me today that I might know an actual answer, or at least have another verse for the same sad song. And it goes a little somethin' leik this (in the tune of "Supply and Demand"):

Nationally, there are so many more Chinese professors than foreign teachers. Furthermore, the demand for academic adequacy has been so much lower than the demand for English proficiency that not only do good Chinese professors get ignored and hardly paid on their merits, but crappy native speakers get hired as if they were teachers. And these conditions persist even today to the point that, were foreigners in a whiny mood, they might opine of how this or that crappy native speaker is paid so much more than all my actual qualifications and experience say *I* should be paid.

The institutional complaint still bothers me, though. Your institution sucks so much and you do so little about it that now you're justified in complaining about foreigners? Change your own damn society, you freaks! Leave me out of it!

/deported.

You take a pig. Put a dress on it. You and I know it's still a pig but to the many parents and institutions here, its a ballerina.

Don't let reality hit you on your way out

Unfortunately the new supervisor of the foreign teachers at my school is soooo jealous of us. So anytime we complain about anything he comes back with "well you earn more than us and work less" and stuff like that. It makes for the worst, most passive aggressive relationship. And we (as foreign teachers) have nothing to do with it! During one argument we tried to justify ourselves (our universities abroad were more expensive, we were sacrificing a lot living abroad, we have a unique skill set, etc) but he clearly wasn't having any of it and I realized it wasn't helping. I don't think there is any way to convince someone who feels that way to change their minds.

But if he wasn't upset about that it would be something else I think. I think it is just a tool to point out peoples pettiness and what-not (because the former supervisor had no problem with it, and tried to get us extra pay if she could. She understood there were benefits and pitfalls to being a foreigner in china. But she was way more emotionally mature than our current guy.)

Haters gonna hate.

Snort。。。a most derisive snort。。。Yeah， our salaries may be higher。 Work less my ass。 A majority of the Chinese teachers I  see in action slavishly follow the suck-beyond-measure Beijing Press produced text-books， read out loud from downloaded PPTs and their idea of doing class prep over the holiday is。。ummm。。。oh yeah， not doing it at all。 As I see it， I get paid less than I am worth。 Also， I do not step into a class-room and proceed to read from a downloaded PPT and then inform my students that putting plural s on clothes is grammatically correct。

Yeah, the big mistake is imagining it to be personal or individual. The condition is structural, ffs. What I want to know is, why, how, do local staff and administrators not know this. How do they personalise their relative lack of better conditions and yet avoid turning on the people who provide that lack? This approach nearly guarantees unchanged conditions.

Iggerant, is what it is.



Then again, I didn't know to talk about it in terms of supply and demand until literally today, so...

.... and then inform my students that putting plural s on clothes is grammatically correct。

Quick fix for that: The next time a student says it, hand them a piece of chalk and have them write what they said on the board. I'm pretty confident that they will write "clothes" correctly.

What is happening is that their Chinese English dictionaries tell them to pronounce the "th" /ð/ in clothes, but their "th" comes out sounding like "ss" /z/. It's a pronunciation issue not a grammar issue. They know "clothes" Is an uncountable noun.

Tell them it's ok keep the "th" silent and to pronounce "clothes" like "close". Point out that it makes them sound stupid if they try to pronounce the "th"/ð/.

Practice: "Close the door when you take off your clothes."

Problem fixed.

There's just no comparison and the sour grapes from some Chinese teachers is often just xenophobia and pent up anti-foreign resentment with little basis in reality. Our salaries are higher but we have practically none of the benefits that a regular public school teacher has. They might have salaries but the school will provide them with a subsidized apartment that they can purchase at a very low cost. They have good pensions and good insurance, and they have tenured positions so they have job security.

Not to mention, the opportunities to collect bribes and kickbacks from the parents are enormous, for teachers and administrators alike.

Plus? Good Chinese teachers can make very close to a foreign teacher salary. I knew a physics teacher in Beijing who was pulling in 15k a month at his regular gig and still getting other jobs on the side. The Chinese teachers at my current school make about 5k-6k a month, which is less than us foreign teachers, but it isn't chump change either, not in Kunming. The regular public school teachers are the ones jealous of our teachers, Chinese and foreign alike, but most of the regular school teachers wouldn't last a day in the international department.

Next time you hear a line like that, ask them, very innocently, why their employer doesn't value them more. It is not the fault of the foreign teachers that most Chinese teachers are easily replaceable.

Snort。。。a most derisive snort。。。Yeah， our salaries may be higher。 Work less my ass。 A majority of the Chinese teachers I  see in action slavishly follow the suck-beyond-measure Beijing Press produced text-books， read out loud from downloaded PPTs and their idea of doing class prep over the holiday is。。ummm。。。oh yeah， not doing it at all。 As I see it， I get paid less than I am worth。 Also， I do not step into a class-room and proceed to read from a downloaded PPT and then inform my students that putting plural s on clothes is grammatically correct。

Yeah, pretty much that.

I've seen more than a few Chinese teachers do their thing and it's f'n sad. They almost universally scribble a bunch of crap on the board and the kids have to copy it verbatim.....and it was likely already written in the book anyway. Homework? Write the same thing again 5x. Writing things again and again is not education. The students come to believe that whatever the book says is correct and the teacher likely won't accept questions since often they are simply unable to answer them. The book could say a chair is a vegetable and they'd believe it and perhaps try to correct you if you said otherwise. Critical thinking with Chinese characteristics. Any halfway educated person who tries even a little can out teach many CT's.

Working and being physically at work are not the same.

I'm sure it's been gone over here a thousand times but also....it's not uncommon for CT's to earn far more than the average FT. A few private classes that the students are 'encouraged' to attend....a hongbao here and there, a huge bonus near the holidays, assorted benefits...blahblahblah.

Not to mention, the opportunities to collect bribes and kickbacks from the parents are enormous, for teachers and administrators alike.

I once went into my office during the summer, a few weeks before class started and saw my supervisors supervisor selling paper to one of those recycler guys. I noticed in the piles of final exams and paperwork, the paperwork of the foreign teachers! "Ah, so that's why they require copious amounts of paperwork e-copy and printed out," I thought to myself. 

Be careful. When some people don't get what they think is what they should they can get downright nasty.

Good Chinese teachers can make an absolute killing, most people whose English is good enough to teach it properly don't seem to go into teaching though, even at uni and public school, most of the Chinese teachers seem to be at a pre-intermediate level of English and yeah they get those certificates at university

Foreign teachers are ridiculously underpaid, the salary range when you look at jobs here is the same as when I first came to China in 2009, some of  these schools make an absolute killing. I think the way that we are discriminated against as rich is what is really going on in all of those 'Morality and Communist Thought' lessons that they are made to study at school and uni. China is a poor country because of imperialism, this means that you have to put up with crap and blame the 'other', even in the big cities where there are so many ridiculously rich Chinese and so much money dripping out of everything in the centre, you still get that idea that we are the rich ones in their poor country

A CEO makes millions per year. Are we upset or just jealous. Most of these guys bring the company tens or hundreds of million dollar contract. Chinese schools get students regardless, but what makes them shitloads of cash is not the average Chinese teacher. They sell our face.

I've seen some very good Ch teachers. Of course some lousy foreign teachers too. Overall, we put more into a normal class. The good local teacher parlays their skills into money. Sorry about the way things turned out for the crappy incompetent teacher. Not my fault you stink and I'm good, I work at it.

Also as mentioned, there are loads of stuff we don't get; job security for one. We can be dropped, ripped off, etc with no recourse. So pardon me if the only thing we get which is money is more than what you get

I still don't get it, really. It's a gambit? As in:

I shall concentrate on the literal number you foreigners get as it is larger than the one I get, and if you can be encouraged to concentrate in this narrow way too, obviously you will fork over something of value to me, such as my face or your money, because the shame is all yours now.

I used back in the day to hypothesize that where personal identity is a matter of or at least subject to group affiliation, then individuality in a strict sense asserts itself as, basically, steamrolling. People push until they reach a hard boundary as opposed to having some internalised, generalise rule of boundaries that you don't intrude too far on.

 

I still don't get it, really. It's a gambit? As in:

I shall concentrate on the literal number you foreigners get as it is larger than the one I get, and if you can be encouraged to concentrate in this narrow way too, obviously you will fork over something of value to me, such as my face or your money, because the shame is all yours now.

I used back in the day to hypothesize that where personal identity is a matter of or at least subject to group affiliation, then individuality in a strict sense asserts itself as, basically, steamrolling. People push until they reach a hard boundary as opposed to having some internalised, generalise rule of boundaries that you don't intrude too far on.

We also have our values and so on that we learned at school that we were taught were universal but are in fact very Western or even Anglo Saxon maybe and also incompatible with other cultures. Ours don't have the racial/nationalist thing like the Chinese, but the closed mindedness here isn't a million miles away from what you'd hear at home from a lot of people who go along with it (intelligent people as well)