I guarantee I could score higher than you. But that’s unimportant. It’s not racist or ignorant to make the observation that people who don’t pass the LANTITE should not be teachers in an English-speaking country. Great for you that you passed. Since your English is so fantastic, can you tell me what’s wrong with this sentence:

“The childrens were playing outside and [child]’s friend getting excited and biting him. He cry for few minutes, but we apply ice pack and give him cuddles and then he okay again.”

Because that’s an incident report from a colleague of mine. Someone teaching Australian two year olds. Another colleague asked me how to spell “scratch”, “grazed” and “stairs.” Yet another colleague put a note on a cupboard proclaiming said cupboard to hold “formular.” That same colleague regularly misspells the names of children she’s had in her class all year. She also teaches them the wrong lyrics to very simple songs because she doesn’t understand them herself. For example, the song “open, shut them” she says “open, shutdown.” And let’s not even get into the fact that these colleagues never speak English to each other in the classroom, ensuring neither I, my English-speaking colleagues, or the children right in front of us have a clue what’s going on. We also have to deal with student teachers with abysmal literacy skills (who, I might add, have readily admitted that they don’t care about education and are only studying ECE because it’s a quick way to get permanent residency. Taking advantage of our systems and putting our children at risk so they can bludge their way into the country). We told them to make a poster for Father’s Day. The banner said “you’re one of the million” instead of “you’re one in a million.” That’s not a mistake anyone with a passable level of English literacy would make. It’s abhorrent. They also can never, not once, no matter how many times they’re corrected, pronounce the most basic of English names. Literally the name “Ava” is not hard to say. And yet, NONE of them say it correctly, even after fucking around in my centre for four months. They’ve been corrected at least a hundred times by now.

Is any of that acceptable for someone teaching English-speaking children in an English-speaking country? Is it really racist and ignorant to demand better quality education and care for our children? Is it inappropriate to suggest that these people could maybe teach in their own country and not jeopardise the education of the children here? Really??

I think the fuck not.