I had a weird thought today: the Taiwanese school system makes them lazy. Sounds like a contradiction in terms, but here me out. They get SO MUCH schooling, SO MUCH homework, SO MANY test and BUXIBAN on top, that they're constantly tired and jaded, and just want to do the bare minimum of whatever they're asked to do. They don't want to think too much, don't want to write too much, want the answers given to them. "Shwei bien" is good enough.

This carries over into their adult lives - driving cars, parking, making stuff, and so on. There's little appreciation of quality, or desire to produce it. This means when they're shopping, they buy the absolute cheapest. And education is just another commodity to them. It's contradictory, because although they want their kids to go to the best schools, they still want to pay the least amount to get through, instead of focusing on quality and ensuring they get through.

When we teach TOEFL or other advanced English, we run into students who don't want to learn. They don't want to do quality, and don't seem to realize that the Western system is quality based, and the TOEFL test is quality based. They just want to learn the bare minimum - the words and questions that will enable them to scrape through.

I'm thinking that Loretta's statement of "improve yourself, improve your students" and GIT's one of wanting a BMW but wanting to pay for a Skoda are very closely related. They want a BMW but are Skodas, and have Skoda mentality...

And it all starts with too much schooling.

Am I talking completely out of my arse here? I realise of course that this is not the case for ALL people ALL of the time.

Thing is Taiwanese knows that schools suck here, too much work and no quality and some parents I had talked to felt like they were paying schools (I mean public school) for nothing. Thing is nobody seems to have a desire to change things here, instead of doing something to change things (which is possible if you persist!) they either try to leave or just "take it". Lots of Taiwanese vote with their feet it seems, when a chance comes to send their kids abroad they all do it. It seems everywhere it's like this, lots of work but lack of quality but quality isn't really encouraged it seems, because your performance is based on amount of hours spent at the office rather than quality of work done at the office. Sales seems to be an exception though because as long as you make the grade they could care less how you work.

So I could use advice on the tutoring thing. I have been approached by a few neighbors asking if I had interest in tutoring their kid in math and english a few nights per week. I currently am legally employed as an Engineer and am wondering if there is a way to legally offer this service without compromising my current ARC.

Never heard of anyone having any trouble doing private tutoring. Just don't meet in cram schools.

I have a home office to hold meetings in so I won't have to be near the cram school!

Legally you can't offer private tutoring but if you are careful and don't piss anyone off (because they will hold the rules against you if you do) and you should be fine. Also don't do it regularly if you know its something you ain't supposed to do. There's a saying in Chinese, if you walk at night often, you are bound to run into a ghost.