Government still hasn't decided what "unqualified" means.

It drives me crazy how "unqualified" is used as a catch-all term to refer to teachers who lack the proper documentation, who lack teaching credentials, who have a criminal record, or who are simply Caucasian. The latest example of conflation occurs in a Korea Times piece from today about the possibility of requiring ethnic Korean teachers to undergo criminal checks and drug testing to get a visa.

``We understand hagwon (private language institutes) and after-school programs lack the system of weeding out unqualified teachers among those ethnic Koreans and foreigners holding visas other than E-2,’’ said Seo Myung-bum, director general from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

. . .

There are diverse ways to block ``unqualified’’ foreign teachers with F-type visas, the director general said. The ministry will revise related rules to require schools and hagwon to receive criminal records and medical documents from ethnic Korean teachers, he said.

. . .

However, the government has not come up with any steps to ease underlying concerns over unqualified English teachers.

Look, the requirements to teach English in Korea are: a 4-year degree, a passport from a select group of English-speaking countries, and in some cases medical clearance and a criminal background check. These are the requisites for obtaining an E-2 visa, which enable one to teach English at a private academy or a public school. These may be more or less negotiable depending on how thorough the school or recruiter is. A teacher who can meet these requirementst is "qualified" according to the letter of the law. Given these relatively low standards, handed down from the government itself, don't turn around and bitch about teachers who lack teaching certification, or post-graduate degrees, or extensive experience. Because there are practically no incentives in place for teachers who do have these extra garnishings, don't bitch about attracting teachers who pretty much don't have anything beyond the bare minimum. This particular article is talking about teachers who may or may not have criminal backgrounds or postive drug tests, but hearing about "unqualified" teachers again is like listening to your grandfather talk about that "colored" man running for president. Given the way those terms are thrown around, you have to wonder if anybody knows what they're referring to anymore.

The article goes on to mention the TaLK program, which recruited college students over the summer to teach English. One hand clearly has no idea what the other is doing, since over here they're bringing in students to teach where, reportedly, there are shortages, while in other places they're blasting teachers for being quote-unquote unqualified.

It's also worth repeating that Christopher Paul Neil, the man they mention in the article as being the inspiration behind the latest moral panic and visa regulations, was completely "qualified" by whatever definition you'd prefer. He had no criminal record, he had teaching experience, and even had teaching certification in his home country Canada. And please, can we get some articles calling for further testing on Korean teachers who are quote-unquote unqualified? I'm not even using "unqualified" to talk about the thousands who can't use English whatsoever. I'm talking about those who beat students and molest students yet who escape with little to no punishment, and in many cases are permitted to keep their jobs. When you read about a teacher given a warning for beating a student with a bamboo sword, for example, or getting a three-month suspension for molesting elementary school students, or getting probation for raping a student, you don't read about government officials blasting the whole demographic. If this constant stereotyping weren't such a tired topic, and one so fit to be ignored by just about everyone, I'd consider writing it up further.