Random Quote
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III
Drink coffee! Do stupid things faster!
---- unknown
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
You are the Solution
Steve Schertzer, writes a long piece about teaching in Korea. It’s very long and I do not want to comment on the content right now, but encourage readers to discuss the whole of it.
Is that too difficult to understand? For some it is. For some people, these solutions are frightening. Why? Because it shifts the responsibility for change from others on to you. Foreign English teachers here in Korea, and elsewhere, are so quick to blame their hosts for just about everything. Especially for the fact that they hate change or anything that smacks of change. People love the status quo. That’s nothing new. Yet these very same foreign teachers that bemoan that fact on open forums, are themselves extremely reluctant to change, whether it be their attitude or their way of doing things. Many forget that they’re not in Kansas anymore, and demand that their hosts adapt to them rather than trying to find a middle-ground where a reasonable compromise can be reached. If many foreign teachers are the problem, (and they are), then they are also the solution.
Read the rest: You Are The Solution: What Foreign English Teachers Don’t Want To Hear
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Wednesday Aug 8, 2007 at 08:58 PM
Public_Service_Announcement | Teaching | ESL_in_the_News |





Katie wrote 113 words on Friday Aug 10, 2007 at 01:57 PM
This is interesting - of course I haven’t worked in Korea, but parts of it are relevant anywhere. To choose one of these…I guess I would ask if his suggestions seem like practical ones? He’s probably right that in situations where teachers feel they are exploited, their own continued decisions play a role in that. But at the same time, it seems like the individual teacher has more to lose than the school by, say, refusing to do something, especially if there is someone else who will.
In any case, it is an interesting read and probably shows that the situation is more complicated that a lot of people take it to be…
Alex Case wrote 101 words on Friday Aug 10, 2007 at 09:41 PM
I must admit I skimmed and scanned a little reading this, but he seems to contradict himself a bit. He starts by saying the Koreans are not the problem, how the teachers respond is the problem. And then he lists lots of problems the Koreans are causing…
Just one more contradiction that stands out. Does he really think bullying is something easy to solve? Try telling that to the Japanese and Korean kids who commit suicide to escape from it they should just stand up for themselves. Maybe he has a similarly simple solution to war and world hunger as well…
Alex Case wrote 36 words on Saturday Aug 11, 2007 at 05:08 AM
My only other suggestion would be that his arguments might be a bit more practical and persuasive if he organised his idea with clear, titled paragraphs
TEFLtastic blog- All the truth that’s fit to teach- http://www.tefl.net/alexcase
Sean. wrote 32 words on Saturday Aug 11, 2007 at 05:19 AM
Alex,
You are up quite early on Saturday morning. The Daves Cafe Thread has turned into three pages of people saying basically the samethings both you and Katie have already addressed here.
Alex Case wrote 31 words on Saturday Aug 11, 2007 at 05:25 AM
I know, can’t sleep from the heat and the noise of the cicadas!
So, the moral is never any need to go to Dave’s cafe- just read TEFLlogue, TEFLtastic and EFLgeek!
Sean. wrote 1 words on Saturday Aug 11, 2007 at 06:30 AM
Indeed.
Katie wrote 25 words on Saturday Aug 11, 2007 at 03:56 PM
Haha - good call. But if I hadn’t followed that link, I would have missed out on a fine debate about Kansas at the Cafe!
Protmeal Man wrote 63 words on Sunday Aug 12, 2007 at 03:24 PM
Steve Schertzer is a throroughly discredited EFLer so ashamed of his occupation that he constantly hurls fistfuls of mud at all who suround him. A social pariah in Busan, Schertzer’s only respite is taking sex vacations in Thailand where he briefly experience feelings of love courtesy of the the locals who will do anything for the money he makes “teaching” English in Korea.
Alex Case wrote 38 words on Sunday Aug 12, 2007 at 08:21 PM
Hmm, I can see how the preachy tone of the article/ blog post could get some people riled, but I’m not sure how relevant his love life is…
TEFLtastic blog- All the truth that’s fit to teach- http://www.tefl.net/tefltastic
Sean. wrote 54 words on Sunday Aug 12, 2007 at 08:41 PM
Protmeal Man - accusing others of taking sex vacations will not be tolerated on this blog. I know nothing of Steve other than his post I linked to and am not interested in the status of his social life in Busan. Keep to the merits of the discussion - personal attacks are not allowed.
Protmeal Man wrote 103 words on Monday Aug 13, 2007 at 12:59 AM
EFL GEEK, before putting Steve Schertzer’s inflammatory writing up for comment, perhaps you should do some research into what the fool is all about and and the war he has been waging against EFLers and Pusan Web. Schertzer not only takes sex vacations to Thailand but has been a strong advocate of EFLers watching child pornography. Sounds like tripe I know but a quick search of Pusan Web’s forum archives will indicate otherwise. An email to the publisher of the Thailand-based EFL site which publishes his demented raantings will also confirm what Schertzer is really all about. This idiot does not need encouragement.
Alex Case wrote 44 words on Monday Aug 13, 2007 at 08:13 AM
If he is such an idiot, it should be easy enough to attack his ideas and leave his personal life alone. A similar argument in the classroom would be:
Teacher “Why won’t believe my grammar explanation?”
Student “Because I don’t like you/ your lifestyle”
Protmeal Man wrote 25 words on Monday Aug 13, 2007 at 08:29 AM
Yes, of course Alex, I forgot ... Steve Schertzer is not alone in his love of Thailand and celluloid viewing matertial in Korea’s EFL world.