AN ECONOMIC MIRACLE

Brazil is, we are told, currently experiencing something of an economic miracle, finally making progress towards fulfilling the massive potential it has always harboured. Economist speak feverishly about all kinds of economic indicators that make little sense in the lives of ordinary people, and the country is held up as a beacon of hope in an increasingly grave global economic meltdown.

Various companies have wasted no time in jumping on the bandwagon, notably Johnny Walker, whose TV ad, "Keep Walking, Brazil" depicts Sugar Loaf Mountain rising into the form of a giant, to the disbelief of onlooking cariocas. "The giant is no longer sleeping", the caption reads at the end of the spot, which may sell a few more cases of whisky, but is about as detached from reality as it is possible to be without employing psychtropic drugs for those at the bottom of the food chain - such as TEFLers.

In many ways, TEFL is a perfect capitalist model. Charge students as much as you can get away with, pay teachers as little as you can get away with, and sit back and admire your burgeoning bank balance. Those entrepreneurs who started language schools in Britain in the sixties are largely, if not millionaires, certainly very comfortably off. And with qualifications to become an EFL teacher basically amounting to a certificate completed in a month and a minimum fluency in the English language, there is no shortage of eligible candidates to form the academic staff of these illustrious academies of learning, a fact which of course forces down wages due to the laws of supply and demand.

Venture abroad, and things are even more laughable. Most language school owners in Brazil, for example, are franchisees, many of whom have not the faintest grasp of the language they are meant to be offering. Drawn in by promises of untold riches, they take the language school model to the extreme, showing little concern for results (which are often indiscernible, as discussed previously) except those of a financial order.

The experience of a Brazilian friend of mine illustrates this point perfectly. Eager to earn a little extra cash, and having lived in Australia and taught English over a number of years, he approached a language school in a neighbouring town with a view to picking up a few classes. The owner, a thankless shyster as it turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, met his enquiries with enthusiasm. "Come and participate in our two-day training course," he enthused, "so you can learn about our unique methodology." My friend asked the obvious question of how much he could expect to receive per hour. "Don't worry about that now," the owner insisted, "we can iron out the details after you've done the training." In other words, my friend was forced to do the training to find out his salary - reluctantly, he agreed, taking two days unpaid leave from his regular job to listen to 9 to 5 claptrap, twice.

Much waffling and stalling later, the owner revealed the hourly rate, as if he were announcing the winner of the latest series of Strictly. Only this time there was no ticker tape or delerious studio audience. "I can give you my maximum rate (for experienced teachers only) of eight reais per hour", the tightwad intoned gravely.

I won't bore you with what that equates to in pounds, dollars or euros. Suffice it to say that, at a school of the same franchise, my friend formerly received twelve reais an hour - and that was fully a decade ago, in 2002 - factor in inflation, and it probably represents more than a 50% pay cut.

Truly a miracle of economy.

GREAT TEFL WASTERS I HAVE KNOWN - JASON

Continuing my occasional series on Great TEFL Wasters, allow me to cast my mind back to Jason, a typically chirpy Londoner I met whilst teaching in Italy. As with most London lads, he fancied himself as a bit of a player, with just fashionably long curly hair and a cocky patter that veritably flowed off the tongue. He was unique in that, during the whole time I knew him, I only ever heard him employ one adjective for a myriad of situations - the brilliantly versatile "unnatural".

When I once pointed out a rather fetching female to him in a nightclub, he whined, "Cor, strike me, that's unnatural, innit?" Another time, I invited him to stop in a bar for a coffee, to which he responded, "Coffee? Nah, I don't drink coffee, mate, it's unnatural, innit, coffee?" His profuse perspiration I'd noted on a not particularly hot day was explained away with, "Yeah, I've always sweated a lot, it's unnatural, innit?" And so it went on.

Unnatural was applied to express size, degree, likes and dislikes, surprise... you name it, it was unnatural in some way. I thought it brilliant - unnaturally so, perhaps. There was an economy in his technique I found truly compelling. Apparently, so did his students, who followed his lead and could be heard describing the rain not as torrential, or heavy, but "unnatural-uh".

One day I met him at the school, and he was looking very sorry for himself. He'd just broken up with his Italian girlfriend. He didn't go into details, but I've often wondered whether he hadn't suggested they do something "unnatural" in the bedroom. Or summat.

I think this may well be his twin brother...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnE0Z5GnFus

TEFL'S ICY CLAWS

My recent absence may be explained, if not justified, by my having moved to the warmer climes of Campinas, pronounced "Cam-penis", which pleases the 12-year old inside my shorts. Leaving my in-laws peering wild-eyed over the parapet of their own lunacy, bless 'em, we have left them to their lectures and bickering, finally transferring our worldly possessions to a place of our own, a move which has been a modest 9 years at the planning stage. If I'd known that would happen, I'd still be drinking lunchtime pints and eating scampi in the Dorset Soldier in Corfe Mullen of a weekend and trying to get excited about football on a big screen.

Our worldly possessions have been packed, unpacked and carefully arranged, we await the arrival of our new sofa, dining table and chairs and TV stand unit thingy, netting has been strategically placed in front of our eighth-floor balcony and windows to prevent our 1.5-year-old from practising skydiving, though she does seem determined to push at least one item through the gaps in said netting, most recently the TV remote control. If I am deported for reckless endangerment or failing to restrain a child, it won't be for lack of foresight.

The irony of all this is that, as our costs have risen considerably, it appears an imminent return to TEFL is on the cards, but this time, it shall be different. I've calculated that if I can get 4 students to study 2 hours a week at the rate I plan to charge, this should cover our monthly food expenses at least.

Inside our gated compound surrounded by machine gun nests, there are 4 blocks of flats, each boasting 14 floors with 4, 3-bedroom flats on each (a total of 224 flats). If each contains at least 2 adults (no children please, for all that's sacred), that's around 450 potential students - and I just need 4 to think it's sophisticated to have a native-speaking private English teacher and I'm in the black.

Mind you, when I started a school with my friend Bert in Alumínio, I confidently predicted that, if only 1% of the nearby factory workforce of 5,000 wanted English classes, we'd have 50 students right off the bat - we quietly closed one year later having reached a peak student body of 12. But this time it'll be different - from now on, TEFL shall no longer be my master, but my mistress - albeit a fairly overly made-up and coarse one who you probably wouldn't want to take to the Henley Regatta.

More live news on my TEFL comeback as and when it happens! (Distant cheering/sobbing).

IS IT REALLY SO STRANGE?

The trouble with family visiting from the old continent is that they leave you in a worse state than they found you.

Since mother and middle sister left, I've found myself exploring a morbid fascination for YouTube interviews with Morrissey, wearing my late father's sports jacket around the house and pining to, of all things, go rambling (here, crossing somebody's land is likely to land you with a cap in your harris at the very least).

Heaven knows I'm miserable now.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, CTEFL

There is something deeply tragic about the TEFL school staff photo that to this day haunts my dreams. No offence to those being snapped, but it isn't hard to recognise the silent desperation hidden behind the wool ties, the sensible clothes, the pained haircuts. Normally, those involved are a motley crew aged anything between 20 and 65 - those at the younger end of the scale are still fairly normal looking, for the years haven't yet taken their toll. They entered TEFL due some kind of wanderlust, or maybe just some kind of lust, judging by the number of Tesco Value lotharios I have come across over the years.

I remember a particularly smooth teacher of Italian parentage who used to descend on Bournemouth of a summer fancying himself as a modern day Lord Byron, entrapping doe-eyed latinas and chaperoning them to the beach at night, which, he claimed, was "guaranteed to get them in the mood". Probably not surprisingly, his popularity with women was inversely proportional to his popularity with male colleagues, and he always seemed to pop into pubs alone, only ever ordering a half and taking a quick tour of the beer garden, presumably to check out the new arrivals. He probably didn't mind being shunned, though, he was the Julio Iglesias of the Poole/Bournemouth conurbation. I remember one of my colleagues once dismissively snapping, "What's he got? He hasn't got anything," to which I pointed out that nor had we, but at least he was gettin' jiggy wit it on a regular basis, unlike at least three of us.

It's desperately hard to be flash in TEFL. I once led a rather fetching young Brazilian back to my bedsit, only to leave her outside the door as I went in first to throw all the jumbled clothing into the wardrobe, collect up the dirty crockery and put it into the sink and shut the partition doors that cunningly hid the kitchen area. The look on her face when she entered made it clear that her live-in maid had larger quarters and the climate of nicely simmering romanticism came to an abrupt end as she crunched across the crumb-strewn carpet to make a polite exit to a hastily called taxi. Why hadn't I gone into advertising, I thought wistfully as I waved her goodbye from the bay window that was jammed open.

Also to be found in the average TEFL school photo are the thirty-something women, who are genuinely relaxed and cheerful because they are already married to a barrister making a six-figure salary and with two children in a Montessori school. They beep their horn brightly as they pass you in the rain of a morning in their BMW and you unsteadily take one hand of the handlebar of your bicycle to wave back at her from beneath your oilskins.

Then we come to the 35+ men, their masculinity drummed out of them by 15 years at the TEFL grindstone. They are bleak and dispirited as the realisation is beginning to dawn that they've spent the best years of their lives on intellectual factory work, with little discernible result, no transferable skills and absolutely no financial security to show for it. Look carefully at the photos and you'll notice their eyes can no longer smile, like people who have had their house repossessed six times in four years. Sometimes literally. Rather than looking into a camera lens, they appear to be staring transfixed into a morbid oracle that shows hazy visions of what their life will be like ten years from now.

The saddest photos are the ones where the school insists on the male teachers wearing a necktie, a marketing ploy as pathetic as it is transparent, the assembled misfits looking much more like defendants queuing to appear in court on shoplifting charges than a group of dynamic language solution providers.

These beaten early-middle-aged men are thrown into sharp relief by the last type of TEFL teacher, the token retiree who pitches up now and again to take a break from golfing, bowls, the Rotary Club and Tory party fundraising, all in the company of a rather tart ladyfriend. I once worked with a retired Royal Navy officer who must have been sixty-five if he was a day, and who, whichever country you mentioned, would comment, "Ah yes, I nearly married a [ENTER NATIONALITY HERE] once. Striking girl..." He told students that it was wrong to say "OK" and it was only correct to use "alright", much to everyone's bemusement given that it's the most widespread utterance in the English language after "Coca Cola".

Or maybe it's the other way round.