The slavery of teaching English
The job is tedious, the salary appalling and the prospects nil. Sebastian Cresswell-Turner laments that 'no one with a scrap of ambition' would choose to teach English as a foreign language
12:01AM GMT 17 Jan 2004
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Signora Pazzi shifted her bulk in the leather armchair, adjusted the position of a chunky gold bracelet on a fat wrist, and switched off her smile. "So what I want from all of you in 2004 is massima disponibilita, massima flessibilita and massima professionalita," she said, surveying the desultory band of English teachers assembled in front of her the morning after the school's Christmas party.
She paused to let the message sink in. "Any questions?" We stopped doodling, daydreaming and sizing up each other's hangovers, and a few of us made vague mumbling sounds.
Maximum availability, maximum flexibility, and maximum professionalism . . . It was, of course, a preposterous demand. We all knew it, and so did our boss, who, sitting there dressed in a startling orange outfit and covered from head to toe in expensive gold jewellery, looked exactly like a large nesting hen.
None of us called her bluff, however. How could we? We were beggars, after all - the lowest of the low.
What this shrewd signora, who spoke not a word of the language she so profitably sold to various ministries and corporate clients in Rome, actually meant, was: "OK, you pathetic bums, this is the score. I'm not promising to give you any work at all, and if I do give you the odd hour here and there, you'll be paid peanuts . . . but, all the same, I want you to be fully available for anything and everything. Plus, you're all going to pretend that you are immensely privileged to be doing this grotty little job. Geddit?"
