I am trying to help a Spanish friend find a job in Thailand. I see that many schools advertise for NES teachers while stating only a handful of nationalities are eligible. Some schools do advertise for Non-NES as well, and yet others for teachers from the Philippines. However, though often the Filipinos are fully qualified, they are offered less than half the money NES teachers can get for similar job roles.

I find it hard to believe that AJARN condones this type of overt inequality of pay. I should refuse to advertise "jobs for Filipinos" if they cannot offer the same rate of pay as for NES, since most of them have near-native abilities anyway! Someone should agitate with the government of Thailand to stop this sort of reverse colonial racism.

My friend is Spanish, trapped in Bangkok. She has been trying to find a job in Thailand since March, and yet she only got a couple of interviews in all that time. Despite being fluent in English with only a trace of an accent, she has little chance of landing a decent job. I find it very strange that this double standard exists. If individuals have demonstrable language skills, they are not allowed to show them to the schools.

As I understand it, there is no formal law against hiring non-native speakers, but many schools make the pretentious claim that there is actually a "law" stating that they "must" hire only NES for job roles. This is patently false, and Ajarn is condoning this twisted, racist vision, for what end I cannot conceive.

You should actively criticize schools and the government for promoting discriminatory and racist practices that take no account of the actual abilities of potential candidates. But it doesn't disturb white people like us, does it? Why should we care about the rights of people different from ourselves if our own privileges reign supreme?

BTW: I have also noticed, particularly for job postings at universities in Thailand, many of them contain strict and VERY narrow age requirements for local Thai people, like "must be between 30 and 35 years old. What is this? Why do the Thai people tolerate such bizarrely narrow and ageist limitations!? Who would ever want to live in such a squashed society of patriarchy, racism and ageism?

David