What the TEFL Industry Can Learn From Facebook’s Botched Apology
"We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it.” These are the famous words that have the whole world smirking. Why? Because we already know it is complete and utter garbage. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg and his team threatened to sue the news outlets who first broke the story is bad; that they’ve known about this “breach of trust” since 2015 is ludicrous. You see, there seems to be a trend happening as of late where big companies are losing our precious information to hackers, sitting on that knowledge, then crafting some poor excuse for why it took them so long to let the rest of us know.
Whether we want to admit it or not, our digital activities are far more profitable than oil and gold, combined. Data mining is big business with billions of dollars on the line. In one of my most favorite films, Ex Machina, Nathan - a wonderfully disturbed tech-genius who has created a search engine conglomerate that oversees 94% of all online searches - remarks: “Here’s the weird thing about search engines. It was like striking oil in a world that hadn’t invented internal combustion. Too much raw material. Nobody knew what to do with it.”
Protecting yourself is an anxiety shared across many occupations.
Well ladies and gentlemen, the future is here, and Cambridge Analytica has shown just how that “raw material” will be turned into an internal combustion engine. But what does this have to do with TEFL and why should you care?
Teaching English abroad has always relied on the honor system, sort of like we rely on Facebook to do the right thing when it comes to sensitive data. A typical experience for someone at the beginning of his or her ESL career abroad is one where a small, private school hires them. Contracts are normally drawn up with basic details and maybe a more binding agreement will be written in the local language - terms of which you have no idea even resemble what you've signed up for. The teacher simply hopes that what is written in the two contracts is both fair and accurate. Problem is, this is where they often run into trouble.
Far too many times, myself and others, have encountered situations where schools will say just about anything to get you on that plane. Once you have arrived, and find out things are not as they had been promised, what can you actually do? You’ve already given up your job back home, maybe sold some things, and probably spent a lot of money to get there.
A fair amount of language schools know that once a teacher arrives in their country, there is little they can do to fight back against any injustices they are facing- either because they don’t know the language, the local laws, or don’t have the cash (or the courage) to forfeit their salary and look for something else. This situation happened to me in my first post in China, ten years ago. I was lied to about everything - from what I would be paid to my days off and even who would be taking care of my visa. In a matter of months, I had spent all of my savings (over $8K!) just to survive. But I couldn’t do anything and was too proud to go back to the States. So I endured for four months until I was able to score a job at a localization company.
The company I worked for, ABC English, is no longer around. They were a nightmare company to work for, and word spread fast. They tried to turn things around, but too little, too late. We are in an age where you can get information on just about anything - in any country. Sure, some of us have to be pioneers for the rest, but there are fewer and fewer companies who can sweep under the rug the untold grievances their employees have faced.
Zuckerberg is openly mocked for his insincere apologies.
As is the case with Facebook, ESL institutions and programs will face intense scrutiny at the behest of public influence. Bungled apologies will become memes that capture the eventual demise of the company. Having lived and worked in China for over eight years, I saw this disturbing practice of luring in teachers with grandiose lies only to threaten them if word got out (or if teachers attempted legal action). But there seems to be a small, but significant shift in these practices that I hope will continue to work in favor of both parties. It boils down to good, old-fashioned honesty.
When I peruse websites looking for real experiences of people who have worked as English teachers abroad, I almost always come across two schools of thought regarding the less-than-desirable teaching posts. Either the writer is livid because they were coerced to teach in a place that was nothing like they expected and they are trying to warn any, and everyone who will listen never to step foot in that school. Or there is an honesty with the reader about the school’s circumstances and working conditions, which makes the school seem more genuine; a sentiment you could agree is more positive than negative.
If you dug into the outrage against Facebook, you would find a similar logic: “If they had just told me when it happened, I could have protected myself sooner. I wouldn’t have been as angry and distrusting as I am now.” And with celebrities and high-profile CEOs leaving the platform or openly mocking Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has a long and arduous road to redemption that could have been less daunting - had they handled the situation with honesty rather than tyranny.
Lesson learned from Facebook’s botched apology? You can’t strong-arm your way to altruism. Being open with your constituents about your inadequacies grants far more respect than contempt.