(Erm, hullo folks. I wrote an article a few hours ago and posted it in the "Articles" section, but someone decided to delete it from there and repaste it here. It sounds a bit strange in this new context, but I suppose that if I repaste it as an article it will only get moved again, so here it is...)
It is hard to believe these days that there was once a time when leaving your country and heading out into the great unknown was looked upon as dangerously eccentric. When the great writer Laurie Lee visited Spain in the 1920s, he was one of the only Englishmen there. Things have changed so much since then that when, in the "gap-year" between high school and University, I chose to stay in London and work instead of travelling to India and Thailand, my decision raised consternation among my friends - especially those whose parents were paying both for their trip, and their subsequent University education. "You're staying where?" they asked me, "Where? London?" their bemused derision a carbon copy of the disbelief Laurie Lee reports as meeting when he announced that he was leaving Blighty.
The world is still slowly adapting to this utter reversal in the fortunes of overseas travel. It is constantly necessary to reconcile that old conception of the lone traveller as one of the "chosen few" with the reality; you will probably make just as many English friends in a foreign city as you had back home, if you stay long enough. Every time I meet a fellow English Teacher in Buenos Aires, I always notice a familiar ambiguous expression on their faces; genuine pleasure at meeting someone from the home country, mixed in with mild annoyance at the sight of yet one more invading their turf.
I have always thought that it must be that much harder for those who arrived in the days before mass tourism, who now find their niche in life corroded by the avalanche of new young upstarts from the home country, arriving in droves to teach English. Being one of these myself, I thought that I would combine necessity (the need to find a job after months of unsuccessful searching) with the spirit of scientific enquiry, and posted a message on the jobs forum of the online "BA Expats" community, asking for "advise" (sic).
Contrary to my expectations, first responses were heart-warmingly welcoming. I was touched that so many people cared enough to help me. But mixed in with this welcome were the sure signs that a nerve had been touched...and a very tender nerve at that. One of the first "veteran"s who responded limited himself to sniping attacks on my spelling, justified enough against someone purporting to teach English. Another old-timer voiced his conviction that I was "another of these early to mid-twenties" trying to "extend his adolescence" instead of getting "a proper job".
There was something strangely comforting about this attack. Being pounced on for daring to be young was just what I needed as I was mourning my twenty-fourth birthday, and a new crop of premature white hairs descended on my scalp. And it is not often that I am taken for one of the upper classes, either. The supposition that I was just "doing teaching" until I had finished messing around and could enter daddy's firm was a nice, if unfortunately untrue assumption. So too were the insinuations ("extending his adolescence") that my parents were supporting me, or that the definition of "enough to live on" meant "enough to party on".
As well as being one of the smart set, I also seemed to come across as something of an international criminal. Several of the forum members bemoaned my utter contempt for the law of the land, in teaching without a work permit...not knowing, of course, the hours I had spent back home trying to get one. During my research, I was eventually told that, as; (a) it is necessary to apply for your permit before entering Argentina (b) you need to be accepted by an employer before applying for your permit (c) you need to have a face-to-face interview before being accepted by your employer (d) you cannot have a face-to-face interview before entering Argentina...getting a permit is an impossibility. An impossibility, I was told, that the government acknowledges by making even those without work-permits pay tax. (Something that, truth be told, I have yet to experience.)
The attacks on my adherence to the law can best be put down to understandable ignorance, and perhaps the same excuse can be extended to the poster who demanded to know why, if I was merely "qualified" (as I had mentioned), and not actually "gifted" too, why I was wasting peoples time trying to teach. I have never thought of teaching as one of the fine arts, and had never realised that people would expect the accessories of talent and the muse in order to carry it out. I suppose it is quite flattering really.
It's not to say that being a gifted teacher (and I like to think that I am one) is not important. It is the assumption that is actually possible to get a decent qualification without being gifted. Fellow teachers will know exactly what I am talking about, having seen that inevitable percentage of their teaching course drop out after discovering that they don't have what it takes. It is the course that you take (provided that it is a decent one) that teaches you to get in touch with your talent. I'm sure that some of the many people I have met who tell me that they "are not technically qualified, but just have a natural gift for teaching, I suppose", might have a genuine latent talent somewhere - but in my experience they are all totally useless teachers. Employers know this, and that is why they pay no attention to your claim of a supposed "gift", sticking instead to the nitty-gritty of paper...and that was why I did the same.
This is all information that a non-teacher cannot necessarily expected to know, but still...it is only the TEFL teacher that can expect such searching analysis of their character. People who would never think to ask the guy who washes their car or does their gardening if he has a natural "gift" for the profession (he needs to eat, goddamit!) will unblushingly demand that a teacher is more than merely competent and well-qualified. It is all part of the rage of the ex-pat, something that I would not doubt feel too if I were in the same position. In fact, far from being offended by any of the (many!) responses to my original request for "advise", what I feel most is a deep empathy. We are all facing the same crumbling and ever-homogenising world, a world where there is no town without a Macdonalds and a gaggle of young tourists, a world where the word "foreigner" is ceasing to have any meaning at all...
. I ran into a kid in line that was working here as an English teacher in the Congresso area. There are too many schools in that area. Anyway he said that he was not making that much money and had to work evenings as that is where the market is for those students.