The TEFL Scream

April 29, 2006

This is how I felt after reading that article “The Slavery of Teaching English”, which was linked to on Mark’s post, “TEFL Slaves”. I finished reading it about an hour ago and it created quite a stir in my home. First, I tried to read it to my wife, which was a mistake. The implication that this article alluded to my own personal anguish was a nuance entirely lost on her, as our two snotty flu-ridden kids were crawling on top of her, begging her to put on the Narnia DVD for the 10th time this week. How dare she!
After dismounting from my haughty pity pot several argumentative minutes later, I marvelled at my wife’s unwavering patience with my more selfish, egocentric facets of me. My reaction to this article is really the point; my future prospects as a white-collar worker in a western country are not.
I am still processing the truth of this.
Yes, TEFL is mostly a dead-end job. So is waiting tables. So is working at a mortuary. If you are smart, ambitious and tend to validate your self-worth through your work, then perhaps TEFL is not an exceedingly good career choice. But it can be, if you want, as some commenters mentioned on EFL Geek. But really, how many of us started this gig as a career choice? I certainly didn’t. And I admit that Alain de Botton’s statement “You become a TEFL teacher when your life has gone wrong.” was entirely on the money for me. And although I still hold on to the thought that teaching English is not a life sentence, I, like Mark, feel that

Teaching is important work, good work that can affect lives. Somebody has to do it, and as long as I am doing it, I’ll put my whole heart into it and do it as well as I can.

I have to admit though, that sometimes I can’t even hang on to that. I felt like that after reading that damn article. But perhaps a healthy change in perspective and a dose in humility are required. Would I condemn the “sanitary technician” for doing demeaning work? Am I so warped into believing that others can find meaning and happiness outside of their bread and butter, but somehow I can’t because I am better? Absurd.
There was a time when I thought that because I held a job that required a college degree, it made me smart–hoity-toity. Then I realized how dumb and short-sighted that was. Although it is still difficult for me to let go of the pre-concieved notion that the ability to flex my cerebral cortex is directly proportional to my worth as a person, I am making some headway. (I have no choice really, considering the percentage of it I fried in my 20’s.) Working toward this end, as well as becoming less of a tax on my wife’s patience is worth more than an MA in Linguistics, or even a higher paying job. Perhaps if I were teaching in Italy, I would feel differently…
The tools and materials needed to transform our lives in deep and meaningful ways are always there in front of us, if we care to look. But our eyes are closed, so often. Arrogance and self-pity are two sides to a coin, one resting on each eye, as if on a corpse…

I don’t know what else to write, so I look around absent-minded. And I see:

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. -Eric Hoffer

Posted in commentary, gray matter, responses