Tuesday February 14, 2012

katsu78's past comments

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    katsu78

    **Kwaabish- "What incentive is there to try to earn more money"

    I've never in my life met anyone who would give up on having more money because it would be taxed at a higher rate. Would you give up a raise just because you will be taxed at .5% more? Ridiculous.

    "Why can't we just have a system where everyone is taxed at the same rate?"

    Because taking x% tax from someone who makes $20K a year is far more punishing than taking the same x% tax from someone who makes $2 mil a year. Flat tax rates are inherently unfair.

    Posted in: U.S. House plan boosts taxes on rich to 20-year high

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    katsu78

    Stereofreak~

    I think experience is more valueable than qualifications, too. However the eikaiwas aren't retaining experienced teachers, nor are they providing much incentive for qualified teachers either. I don't agree that the atrocious minimum-effort teachers are dwindling- in some areas I see them increasing.

    The lack of incentives in Eikaiwa for committed, qualified, or experienced teachers means that the people who have those qualities don't stick around.

    If they want quality teachers, they need meaningful pathways for growth within the company for the teachers who prove their abilities.

    Article Unavailable

  • 0

    katsu78

    weatherjp-

    I don't think it's fair to accuse Terrie of being a shill on the basis of what's written here. I think he's just trying to approach what is a structural problem of the entire eikaiwa industry in the country (with roots spreading everywhere from public school systems to cultural identity to simple geography) with an overly simplified business manager's frame of reference. And I don't think that's accurate. You cannot take your average eikaiwa employee (essentially untrained, teaching 6-10 classes a day, earning 250K/mo down to as low as 180k/mo with almost no other benefits to speak of) and conjure up some clever management paradigm that will squeeze that teacher into working harder for you and getting all their students to sign up for privates.

    Eikaiwa is marketted as a gap-year holiday, compensated like a Wal-Mart cashier, and expected to be as professional as a Fortune 500 company and as dedicated as a religious missionary. It just doesn't work. The only way eikaiwa will change in Japan is if they fundamentally break the structure of the companies. They have to realign so meeting student needs is on top, meeting teacher needs is priority 2, and the managers are assitants who justify their skimming off the revenue by the organizational skills they bring to the company. You will find thousands of students across Japan taking English lessons from teachers in coffee shops where there is no manager. It may not always be efficient, but it works. You will not find anywhere in Japan an operating school with management (even managers who took Psych 101) and no teachers.

    Article Unavailable

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    katsu78

    For example, right now the marketing focus of most schools is on cheaper lessons and variations of private lessons and smaller classes. This is all well and good, but smaller classes are not cheap to do, so using simple Psych 101 theory, it would follow that popular teachers should be trying to convince their students that better quality learning means more one-on-one teacher time, and thus higher fees. I appreciate that many teachers may not see themselves as salespeople out to extract more value from their students. However, if some enterprising CEO could come up with a strategy that allowed popular teachers to overcome this reluctance, then with the right in-house training and incentives, that school could be pulling in much better margins and therefore grow more quickly.

    Yeah, there's a lot more to "quality learning" than one-on-one time with a popular teacher, and Terrie not getting that goes a good way toward explaining why he uses GABA as a measure of the industry as a whole.

    The whole problem with the big language schools in Japan is that they use teachers essentially as unskilled labor. All the companies value is the foreigner who can get Japanese people to pay for lessons with a slick presentation- not teachers who can actually teach. And because there is a huge supply of people who are happy to come over and teach without any TESOL qualifications or experience so they can have their little Japan vacation, they have no incentive to change.

    People become market leaders by delivering quality, not just having a manager with a snappy strategy he picked up in Psych 101. Until the big language schools are prepared to demand quality from their teachers, and pay for that quality, the market will stay split between a bunch of largish mediocre schools and a bunch of tiny decent schools.

    Article Unavailable

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    katsu78

    The Emperor is held on a very short leash by the IHA, and it seems he is prohibited from ever saying anything controversial about anything. For him to oppose these nationalist groups, while I think it would be admirable, would surely be shot down (hopefully not literally) quickly by arguments that by Japan's constitution, the emperor is not allowed to be involved in the country's politics. Such arguments have been used before to quash Imperial opinions on how succession should be handled absent a male heir.

    Attacking the average Japanese person for allowing these groups to exist is wrong-headed, and Liddel's accusations of cowardice are about as clear racism as anything the Black Vans spew. The people whose job it is to stop these groups is The National Police Agency. That they don't is just more evidence piled on the heaps of ineptitude we've already seen from them. When will Japan demand that their police do their jobs?

    Posted in: It’s time for emperor to rev up his own sound truck

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    katsu78

    I don't mind if it's got a religious element, but if it's on the front page of JAPANToday it really should at least even tangentially relate to Japan. Does the editor here just not screen articles, or are they that hard up for content that they'll accept ANYTHING? I could blog about my roast beef sandwich if things are that bad for them, if they'd like. At least I could somehow relate my meandering thoughts to the country that is the entire reason for this website's existence.

    Posted in: Religious right AWOL from the real war

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    katsu78

    Why is this even on JAPANToday?

    Posted in: Religious right AWOL from the real war

  • 0

    katsu78

    "I realize that is extremely difficult for some people to think outside the box."

    This sentence reeks of arrogance that I find almost impossible to describe. This is the sort of thing that an competent editor should have cut from the get-go. This is the sort of arrogance that should pretty much preclude the writer from ever being published, ever again.

    Posted in: U.S. presidential candidates 3 peas in a pod

  • 0

    katsu78

    Very bad new design.

    Article Unavailable

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