Ministry policy misguided
I was dismayed to read that a Ministry of Education official said that since "English is not a native language of the Philip-pines and India, Filipinos and Indians speak English with non-native accents" ("Ministry cool to teachers from India, Philip-pines," Jan. 21, page 1). The inference is that these countries were not suitable places from which to hire English-language teachers.
One could very well say the same thing about learning Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan, but to do so would be a big mistake. Taiwan remains one of the favored destinations for learning Mandarin, and I had excellent teachers at National Taiwan University.
Taiwan is such a good place to study Mandarin precisely because Mandarin is not the "native" language, and so it was necessary for the government to invest heavily in training teachers. These are the same type of policies implemented by the colonial governments of England and the US in both India and the Philippines.
Today, many of the most celebrated writers in the Eng-lish language are Indians. Phone banks in both India and the Philippines handle customer service and telemarketing for US corporations (using American accents). The educated elite in both countries speak English as their first language and are often unable to communicate in local languages -- just as many Taiwanese can no longer speak the languages spoken by their grandparents' generation.
It would be easy for the ministry to hire people based on their linguistic fluency without basing this on country of origin. In fact, country of origin is not even a guarantee that a job candidate will have a good accent. Not only are there more than a few Americans whose English is far from standard -- proper training in the field of English-language education is as important, if not more so, than mere fluency.
If the ministry is determined to bring in native-speakers to teach English, they need to have hiring practices that will enable them to pick the most qualified candidates regardless of their country of origin. Otherwise they will be no better than the many cram schools who continue to turn down qualified Asian- and African-Americans because they only want a white face in front of the classroom.
P. Kerim Friedman
New York City
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