The Future of ESL in Malaysia

It is no secret that 90% of teachers and owners of franchises may not be qualified to preside over your child's learning. The 10% who are qualified would cost too much for 90% of people to afford.

Despite the fact that I teach for a fee, I am against the idea of the commodification of learning. I hold one free consultation session for 1-2 hours, addressing the parents' / learner's needs and explaining to them how I would approach those needs. I am more of a coach than a teacher. The learning I teach is to empower the individual to have the confidence to pursue their own interests. For the older teens, the learning I teach is to prepare them for a future many cannot yet see in their minds. The tools I give them is the awakening of a critical mind, the acceptance or reclaiming of themselves, of the validity of their own thoughts and feelings. I also show them the 'common sense' way of learning which they have completely forgotten since they traded their own Intelligence for Schooling - the way of The Child, The Autonomous Learner.

90% of places make a business out of this exchange of information and knowledge. 99% of the time, not much information or self-perpetuating knowledge gets transmitted. In order to compensate for this real lacking, they 'brand up' their learning in two ways : Make it exclusive with big signboards, franchised names, advertisements in print, banners, etc. or turn it into a commodity where it is so cheap people can't seriously expect the Product to be accountable for results.

Franchises and centres WILL not work for both Buyer (parents) and Sellers (education owners) for several reasons :

(1) Apart from a temporary, in-service training situation, it is both unfair and impossible to treat capable, intelligent people as 'workers' or 'teachers' at a school/centre. The turnover rate can be expected to be within the 3 months to 2 years' duration. A Learning Centre with 'economies of scale' in mind MAKES ITS PROFIT by not paying a fair sum to the teacher who brought in the revenue. Paying a high-performing teacher more would constitute making them a PARTNER, in a way, within the Board/Management.

What this means for 99% of centres out there which depend on revenue from their business (either holding a franchise or own a centre) is that they are left with only one solution : to hire unskilled, incapable, unqualified, undriven, or questionable characters who would accept the hourly-wages. There is absolutely no way, 99% of the time, for kindergartens, tuition centres, franchises, to hire highly qualified and driven individuals - you know, the sort you want your children to model after? Parents are better off keeping their children at home and allowing them to have 'personal time' on their own rather than chaeuffering here and there to be taught by people who are not the sort of intellectuals we want our children to grow up to be.

(2) The market for learners is not made up of one homogenous, empty vessels demographic. Learning must be organic in order to be effective. It cannot possibly be manufactured. The people who lead and teach learners must be highly experienced and knowledgeable in order to be able to adapt to and customize learning for the learners they come across.

The variety of learning difficulties, learning experiences, multiple intelligences and scheduling commitments compound the fact that learners cannot get results if they are going to undergo a programme that, at its core, makes learning a Brand, Commodity and Scalable. But that is exactly the scenario 90% of people are paying for.

The future of ESL in Malaysia depend on Individuals who are both intellectual, driven and committed to results to teach groups in their geographical area with customized plans that matches exactly what the learners need. In order to be able to do this, they must have a variety of innate qualities and skills which must include an ability to diagnose a learner's background and having enough information and insights to be able to draw up / design a learning program that is both flexible and a rewarding experience for the group of learners.

ESL practitioners must be results-oriented. Real results are measured by yardsticks beyond paper-and-pencil exam scores or parrot-like oral exams. The Dawn is very, very near for the demise of English Tuition Centres / Language centres who are out of sync with what non-English speaking parents want. They have noticed that franchises, brand names and advertisements are meant to pull the wool over their eyes and that they actually CANNOT deliver results. The fundamental reasons why they CANNOT deliver results is outlined in this blog; reasons that parents suspect but have not publicly declared because they do not have insider confirmation. Well, here's the Insider Scoop!

To give an example of how out of sync these centres are, I'd use the example of the Penang British Council. About 2 years ago, they spent nice amounts of money insulting the intelligence of Malaysians, Penang people in particular, for our use of colloqualisms. NOTHING in the entire field of ESL training ASKS that non-native speakers speak with ONE TYPE OF REGISTER with A PARTICULAR BRAND OF ACCENT! Nowhere in the entire field of ESL debates the importance of perfect knowledge of ever-changing grammar rules or the need to insult non-native speakers on the way they enrich the English language with their colloqualisms. The theme of the last few decades is about learners achieving COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE where EXPERIENCE IS of UTMOST importance in making sure learners develop the confidence to receive and accept the learning of English in a positive way.

On top of that, the British Council Penang makes it a point to insult Chinese parents who have money to pay. I was one of these parents. It is as if they are somewhat exclusive or superior simply because they are housed in some colonial building where pigeons crap a lot around. One parent I met even told me that, upon entering the place at 4:45, she was asked to leave, even when the sign said they close at 5pm. She said she had come all the way to pay the following semester's fees but the front-desk employee told the security guard to show her out. The other parent told me, the woman said to her, "If you can't come back another day, then your child simply doesn't come here for English classes. If you're so insistant, you can go somewhere else."

This is truly the attitude of the British Council, Penang. Many years ago, I went there to try and sign up for the CPE exams. A year or so after the first time, I went to sign my daughter up for English lessons. I was treated in equally rude ways both times so I believe the tales of parents who have complained about British Council Penang to not be exaggerated.

Many people know that non-profit set-ups like foreign societies depend almost exclusively on grants from their Western governments, grants which are getting harder and harder to come by and coming with higher and higher expectations of accountability on how the money is spent. They ARE DEPENDENT on fees collected from their language classes to sustain significant parts of their operations, namely, the salaries of staff members who choose to insult the intelligence of the paying-public. There is no point complaining to 'upper management' because there is no such thing as upper-management. Centre managers are employed on a contract basis, ranging anywhere from 1-2 years. They were hired more for their willingness to accept the contract than their superior management and educational backgrounds. These foreign hires do not plan to spend the rest of their lives climbing a non-existent corporate ladder working with a pseudo-NGO like the British Council. Despite the fact that some universities in the UK can offer lifetime experiences to students who can afford it, education in the UK is generally suffering from its own decline from elementary to university level. It smacks of naivete to look to the Colonialists to solve our economic/tangible benefits of learning problems.

It is no secret to language practitioners that foreign societies often take unqualified people to stand in front of their classes. This is because the fees have been accepted upfront and the date for the class to start is drawing closer. In order to not have to refund any monies, they plunk anyone ...seriously, ANYONE, even caucasians whose first-language is NOT English and who have not had any prior experience in teaching or related fields. They obviously do not have the luxury to do a background check. Which foreigner in need of a paying job in Malaysia would be willing to come all the way, stay for a few weeks after the interview while his employer gets a reference check confirmed from his/her last employer? And if I were a foreigner, how willing would I be to spend thousands of dollars on flight ticket and accommodation just to come for an interview in Malaysia for a job that pays so much less than in neighboring countries, in a country that has a cost of living much higher than neighboring ones at the same time.

When enterprising, driven, honest, committed people see all of this, they will realize that language centres are not competition AT ALL. In fact, it is BECAUSE of how badly language centres and franchises have screwed up that the market is now ready to reward people who already have the diamond and jsut needs the polishing to shine.

Current and future ESL practitioners should not quit their jobs and become a teacher if they think they can get rich. No one can get rich nowadays being a Skilled Professional. The economy today simply doesn't allow that anymore. The economy also doesn't allow mass-scale education to benefit any longer. But if they are willing to settle for a fulfilling vocation, lots of fun and humor, time to read and space-out or write and travel, own lots of accountability and become a more committed, driven and passionate social-capitalist in return, then the future is extremely ripe for Individuals who can offer the market what franchises, brand names and foreign bodies are incapable of. I am not even optimistic these large centres can change. The premise of their problem lies exactly in their business philosophy. These franchises or foreign counterparts cannot reform fast enough due to the nature of their existence. Bureaucracy glues all their parts together like industrial strength adhesive. Rather than taking a good look at how they've been treating their market, they continue to spend money in roadshows and promotions trying to reel in as many naive customers as possible. Rather than respecting the needs and intelligence of the market, they continue to insult us with bigger and bigger claims, signboards and cut-out coupons.

We live in a world where the old order of authority and conformity to a faceless name or brand is rapidly breaking down. Only those who are small enough are quick enough to respond and make money from the market. That is the future of ESL in Malaysia.