An LJ reader has sent us a letter from the Kanagawa BOE stating that all foreign teachers will have to re-apply for their jobs. The reader offers the following comments. -Shawn
All Kanagawa PFT's are losing their jobs as of March 31st. Ostensibly the reason is that the Kanagawa BOE is having trouble finding enough teachers to fill the positions it has. Also, this "on the job training" stuff is tough. Too difficult for the poor folks at the Kanagawa BOE.
Update February 23, 2006. Interac has been awarded the ALT contract for Kanagawa.
Why is Nova a sub-standard place to work? Why should you make the decision not to work there?
The Primary Cause of all Evils: The Basic Rules of Supply and Demand
When a commodity is in ample supply, it comes cheaply.
Virgin employees are drawn from an overseas supply that in many ways the company views as being inexhaustible. Fresh blood (predominantly in the form of young and naive University graduates) is what keeps the wheels of Nova turning. The absurd work conditions that teachers have to endure can all be linked backed to this one crucial fact.
Four years back I was looking for a new apartment in Osaka and visited my local agency. The agent asked me where I wanted to live and how much I wanted to spend and then pulled out a catalogue of pictures and floor plans. I picked half a dozen locations that looked reasonable and showed this chap my selection. The next thing the agent did gave me a bit of a wake up call. He called the landlord for every location I'd selected and began to ask if they accepted foreigners. My pick of half a dozen suddenly became one and the agent went into a speech about why they don't accept foreigners.
You would think that friends would stand next to you, help you and support you in creating a new school. They would be there to help out with lessons and handing out flyers...but what the hell do you do when they start giving students lessons of a different sort...I don't wanna come off sounding like a NOVA manager or anything like that..but what would you do!?
Well, if anyone has a contract horror story, tell me if mine doesn't stand next to the worst of the worst. I swear, I have never had any feelings of wanting to cause bodily injury to anyone, but after being put through the shit that my boss put me through, I was ready to put a weapon of mass destruction up this guys @ hole and have a whole slew of weapon inspectors follow. Even to this day, I think I would gladly give up a months salary for one shot at him "wanna know why"read on.
I remember that before coming to Japan I researched the eikaiwa thing in depth. I visited all of the discussion boards and Web sites and became a pro-active member in the mass of verbal diarrhoea that is CyberSpace. And what I saw was a bunch of sissy-boy fuckers who couldn't cut it on their own and needed their mothers to administer a bit of hand action occasionally for them to get through life. I thought that the horror stories and propaganda were a big joke. How pathetic can grown people be?
