Page 20 - ELG1706 Jun Issue 448

COMMENT .

Why Tefl

needs the

right kind of

troublemakers

Professionalising language school management

will help reduce the number of dubious teachers
attracted by a sector lacking regulation, says
Melanie Butler

I school managers sniffing. ‘You can never enthusiastic, well-behaved young people
first came across the name Seamus
trust a teacher who goes running to a
who are instantly replaceable. Who cares
Ruddy in 1986. As a freelance journalist
union.’
in those pre-internet days I spent much
if they can actually teach anything? It is
of my time in the BBC World Service
But if they are running to a union, you
some school managers have towards
News Library searching among the news can be pretty sure they are not running precisely the lax unprofessional attitude
clippings held in a special file entitled guns. Active militants may use language teachers and teaching that makes EFL so
‘Britons in trouble abroad’. teaching as an easy cover, but they are attractive to people looking to cover up
Quite a few of the Britons in trouble likely to keep as low a profile as possible. I their past or hide crimes they are planning
turned out to be Tefl teachers. Around half for the future.
were the troublemakers, drug mules mostly, A troublemaker, And foreign governments let them in.
trying to scrape together the plane fare Pretty much any native speaker of English
home. I can hear language will do for some schools. Two-day Tefl
I remember a couple of convicts on school managers certificate? That’s fine. A degree from a
the run and at least one teacher wrongly university which doesn’t exist? Never mind
accused of murdering his wife. Seamus sniffing. – we’re too busy to check your references,
Ruddy’s story stayed with me; not the only You can never trust we’ll take your word for it. Don’t know what
Tefl teacher to disappear without trace – a verb is? Here’s a course book. As long as
murdered teachers are nothing new – but a teacher who goes you’re white and willing to work ridiculous
the first one I came across that seemed to hours for peanuts, we’ll take you.
have been ‘disappeared’ by terrorists. running They are cannon fodder – indeed, cannon
Now, thirty years later he is back in the to a union fodder who can find themselves caught
news again as what are presumed to be his up in real wars. The EFL teacher Brian
remains are discovered in a French forest. Keenan was held hostage by the Lebanese
The press coverage of the Ruddy story then worked for a year with a teacher of Italian militia. International House principal Philip
suggested he was in Paris undercover and who was the very model of the quiet, calm, Padfield was killed by them.
involved in gun running. But the picture hard-working professional that language Remember the teachers in Kuwait
emerging now, reported above, is of a left- schools dream of. The last I heard he was captured by Saddam Hussein in the first
wing intellectual who tired of Northern still in prison for the crimes he committed Gulf War and used as a human shield? Or
Irish militant splits and went to Paris to as a member of the terrorist organisation the teachers airlifted out of Libya by the
escape them, and became involved in the Red Brigade. South African special forces but only if they
fighting for language teachers’ rights. What many language schools around the had the right passport?
‘A troublemaker,’ I can hear language world want is an unending supply of cheery, Among the cannon fodder there will
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