A few things about retirees teaching English here
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Ref: "We can benefit from English-speaking retirees," Letters, yesterday.
As a retired English instructor and a foreigner, I appreciate the idea of recruiting pensioners from abroad to teach their language in Thailand. Unfortunately, there are a few problems.
First, the Immigration Bureau would not be happy with the notion of waiving the “no-work” requirement for a particular segment of foreigners living here on retiree visas. Bureaucracies don’t like to make exceptions.
Second, many people labour under the delusion that any native speaker plucked from Khao San Road is qualified to teach English. Not so. It requires some training, including a grasp of grammar and the ability to explain it.
Tip: You can tell if a candidate knows his grammar by asking him what a gerund is. If he can’t define it, ask him to use one in a sentence. If he can’t do that, ask him to define a participial phrase or use one in a sentence. If he can’t do that, ask him what the difference is between a phrase and a clause. If he can’t even do that, he’s out.
Third, most of us foreign retirees are old and ugly. Thais want their teachers to be young and good-looking, like the young Brad Pitt. Not old and ugly, like Uncle Fester.
There is also the question of senility. You don’t want a teacher who will always be drooling and falling asleep in class, or tripping over his cane as he hobbles to the bathroom to empty his colostomy bag.
If these obstacles could be overcome, then enlisting foreign retirees to teach English would not be a bad idea.
S Tsow
