I see no reason why anyone who was brought up speaking English should feel any guilt as a result. Speaking English in today’s world is a desirable skill. Clearly, there must be significant demand for English teachers if wages are as high as they appear to be. As a corollary, Vietnamese students (or their sponsors, be that family or government) would not pay significant amounts of money for English language lessons if they did not believe themselves to be gaining equivalent value in return.

Not every country is as developed as America, or the western world in general; this is simply the state of affairs of our world today. I fail to see how going abroad, living in a less developed country, and teaching English to willing, paying students could in any way be interpreted as exploitative. I know and have met a number of people who were born in Vietnam (or whose parents were) and who came to America seeking a better life. I’ll go way out on a limb here and say that an American citizen (even in modern Obamunist America) is waaaaay freer than their counterpart in communist Vietnam. Teaching Vietnamese kids English seems like a great opportunity to me: good pay for the teacher in exchange for the transference of valuable skills to the consumer.

Think about the alternative. If the four of you had not gone to Vietnam at all, would your students have been any better off? Of course not. They gained immense value from their interactions with you, as they will from other English teachers (assuming they are able to find/afford other teachers).

I commend you guys for the time you spend teaching English in Vietnam, just think about how you helped to open the world, even if just a bit, to whole classrooms and conference rooms of Vietnamese kids and businesspeople. Think also about how your experience of the world was broadened by many a cheerful 100%!

I guess ultimately I am curious how Dan came to the conclusions he did and if anyone feels differently about what it means to teach English abroad, especially in a communist country.

Cheers,
–Travel Fiend

It’s tough to see Dan go; he has definitely brought balance and a different perspective to bear these past weeks and months. As much as I like this last episode, I must say that I wholly disagree with Dan’s take on what was referred to as “neo-colonialism.” I do not have experience teaching English abroad, although I have traveled to countries much less developed than the western world and seen situations that appear to resemble Vietnam rather closely.