Commodification of English Teaching as a Service

For many future English teachers, the first step is to get evidence that they have the right mind and skillset for instructing students. For many countries, their claim to be fluent in the English language, based on their nationality, cultural background, or visual looks, no longer suffice. With ever-tightening visa restrictions for English teachers, what used to be high-paying summer jobs for students from the world's best English language universities are now reserved for those with the right papers, in the form of diplomas, certificates, and training results, to show know-how in the art of teaching.

But as countries tighten their visa requirements for a high-demand industry, there has come into existence a whole new way to get those prospective teachers the paperwork they need. With the advent of online learning programs and websites, it has never been so easy for supposed accredited programs to move online, exchange some money for a remote learning program with the flexibility to cater to busy schedules, and end with an official-looking certificate useful for visa applications. Streamlining online education has made giving teachers their teaching certificates something that takes a matter of weeks.

The fact that teachers can now get teaching certificates issued remotely on the cheap is quite ironic given that those teachers, once armed with the right papers, would go physically around the world and interact with students, in person, in their home countries. Many English teachers teach precisely because it avails them the opportunities to live adventurously in the remotest corners of the world while earning a good paycheck, be where they have previously only seen online. The fact that their first step to that globetrotting career is being students in online certification programs done in front of their computers, is amusing, to say the least.

Perhaps the fact that the teachers are being certified by digital programs is prescient in that it is a harbinger of the entire teaching industry of the future. For schools around the world, paying English teachers to relocate physically is expensive no matter how much the teachers claim to be able to live on a shoestring. The costs are mounting more than ever as demand for flights outstrips their supply in the aftermath of COVID and the war in Ukraine leads to inflation everywhere. For schools seeking to teach kids English, online programs are looking ever more attractive than bringing in people across international borders.

Teacher certification programs are almost reflecting the new ways schools, their students, and their parents think about English classes. whole modules are devoted to the types of online English classes, how to run them, and what hardware to get so that the teacher looks professional in front of the small screen. Strategies are outlined to make sure teachers stand out to employers, as unlike in physical schools, online "school" administrators and students can easily switch from one teacher to another without expensive physical relocation fees.

The resulting commodification of teachers as gig workers, not attached to a physical place, but mere replaceable figures in online marketplaces, will outlive the unusually high prices of the COVID + Ukraine war era. A generation of youths that grew up being educated with online programs will have less familiarity with in-person teaching and feel less immediate need for it. And if students and their parents do not care about being physically present in front of flesh-and-blood teachers, those who look at the P/L of educational institutions would happily reduce the cost of hiring teachers from faraway lands.

Of course, some educators will argue the benefit of physical interaction in the non-virtual classroom, where transmission of knowledge is not just in the English language but also in skills of "socialization." They may see the lack of social interaction among students, both with teachers and amongst themselves, during online learning courses as a large social cost to these students as they eventually have to handle teamwork in their later educational and professional careers. The resulting pressure to return to physical teaching will ensure that not all globetrotting English teachers will disappear.

Yet, online education will also not disappear, and the identity of "teacher-as-a-service" has already been cemented among a new generation of learners and employers. Instructors not bound by the physical space of their employers will be more flexible in their work schedule, but also more precarious in their relationship with educational institutions. Some day, a new generation of English teachers will look at their predecessors with pure jealousy. Whereas teaching and learning used to be about going to new places and meeting new people in real life, more and more in the future will just be bobbing heads on the computer screen.