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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Dave's ESL Cafe


Is dear old Dave Sperling as respectable as he would have us believe? He seems to post hundreds of jobs with little regard for any form of quality control. How many of you poor shafted teflers have been posted to god-forsaken schools worked to death while old Dave pockets the advertising revenue?

Do let us know the juicy details so other poor suckers can avoid the places.

WIKIPEDIA the objective and free online internet encyclopedia have two articles about Saint Dave:
1. A Wikipedia search on "ESLCAFE" reveals the following little gem .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eslcafe

Remember this isn't the nasty old blacklister up to mischief, this is a totally objective analysis so you can't say you haven't been warned. Don't believe me? Look it up yourself.

Criticisms Dave's ESL Cafe has come under fire in South Korea as well as other locations for placing the interests of schools that advertise on the website over the interests of teachers, even in cases where the schools had displayed a history of chronic teacher abuse.

As far as the forums are concerned, periods of relative peace are usually short-lived as the members' personalities will flare up and create flaming wars. This results in extremely heavy handed moderating, which only fans the flames.

Examples of heavy handed moderating include the deletion of threads that are critical of the website, mention any other competing ESL websites, the thread that lead to the establishment of this wikipedia article, and any others that the moderators deem unacceptable.

Some of the long time posters on the forum will ridicule and insult newcomers, or even lie about their experiences to make themselves appear more grandiose in the eyes of forum members.

While there is good information to be found on the website, it is important to always remember that Dave's ESL Cafe is primarily a profit oriented business.

2. A Wikipedia search on "DAVE'S ESL CAFE" informs us that: "Dave's ESL Cafe is a privately owned job search engine for English as a Second Language (ESL) jobs around the world. Hosted in California by Dave Sperling, it was one of the first job boards for overseas English teaching jobs to be created. Revenue is derived from advertising from small and medium-sized private language schools, mostly in Asia.

While, local employment offices for positions in one's home country are subject to adhering to local labor laws and other laws, overseas jobs posted on Dave's ESL Cafe are not. Therefore, quite often, fraudulent businesses advertise teaching positions which do not comply with labor laws even in the host country.

For example, by law, it is mandatory in Japan that an employee be enrolled into the Japanese government's health care and pension plan (shakai hoken); however, since it is an overseas job, a Californian Internet job board has no fear of being sued for advertising a job that violates Japanese law. Therefore, advertisers can misrepresent job conditions such as pay, holidays, health insurance etc....

Although this Internet job board does provide a forum to discuss jobs, advertisers may demand posts critical of their particular school to be censored or completely deleted. Moderators of the forums are not required to have any experience or training in labor issues, and often are unaware of labor law standards.

Similar Internet job boards exist for ESL jobs which have similar censorious behavior such as GaijinPot and the tesljb-l listserv."

Inspector McHammered of the Lard
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why does Dave seem to pull so many posts? There seem to be so many threads that just disappear without trace.

Anonymous said...

Visit the Sperling backlash page at www.myspace.com/sperlingbacklash

Inspector Mchammered of the Lard said...

Interstingly the search on Wikipedia on january 10th revealed heavy censoring for the second search Dave's ESL Cafe. Heavily neutered it completely omits the last two paragraphs:

"For example, by law, it is mandatory in Japan that an employee be enrolled into the Japanese government's health care and pension plan (shakai hoken); however, since it is an overseas job, a Californian Internet job board has no fear of being sued for advertising a job that violates Japanese law. Therefore, advertisers can misrepresent job conditions such as pay, holidays, health insurance etc....

Although this Internet job board does provide a forum to discuss jobs, advertisers may demand posts critical of their particular school to be censored or completely deleted. Moderators of the forums are not required to have any experience or training in labor issues, and often are unaware of labor law standards.

Similar Internet job boards exist for ESL jobs which have similar censorious behavior such as GaijinPot and the tesljb-l listserv."

These juicy paragraphs have been replced by a bullshit link to a Japanese teachers Union, most of which is in Japanese and therefore as much use as a dead ferret.

I smell something fishy and it isn't sushi.

Anonymous said...

It's Dave's dead ferret!

Anonymous said...

This one is also worth checking out, though it's been a bit quiet lately:
http://dave-sperling.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

The first wiki article has been deleted.

Anonymous said...

if anyone is serious about creating a wiki page on Dave's ESL Cafe, you have to follow Wiki's guidelines. Be objective up top, reference the fuck out of it, and add your criticisms below--but include clear references.
Learn how to play the game and then you win... if you play to win then even Dave's ESL cafe cannot get rid of the entry!!!!

Anonymous said...

in fact, dear sandy, wiki may be the place for you and A KEY PLACE to pursue THE MISSION. By referencing to articles in reasonable publications in print or online, or government sites, the ENEMY can't get rid of it. If you search 'wiki' and 'coca-cola', you'll see how their efforts didn't work--a model for your mission... Wiki was noted as a 10 top info source in America at least I believe.

Anonymous said...

Here is one thread running on SaigonESL.com (http://www.saigonesl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=165) that is starting to get going. When are people going to realize that the people at Dave's equate more to a gestapo than anything a real teacher would want to be involved with. At least one country's ESL teachers are out of Dave's oh too feely grasp.

Anthony said...

Surely it's not Dave's responsibility to do a background check on the companies posting ad's on his website. So pull ya head in and get over it...

R3G Studio said...

Due to high inconsistencies by the management on a daily basis, supervised by Dr. Chanyapad Jungwongworapad, going until systematic avoidment of the standard Thai norm for receivement of salary and all other official paperwork by Kammanee Language School’s management, I’ve been advised to stop all affiliations with the people involved within this organization in a polite and correct way but as soon as possible, with the reasons being; their actions could, on various levels, be harmful for my further professional career and on both financial and personal situation as already been shown during visa requests for my family, my grant and my Master program admission requests where they were unable and unwilling to show any of the requested necessary paperwork to both the Embassy in Bangkok and various European Universities henceforth my positioning counselor concluded that their shown attitude is due to unlawful conduct, scamming all possibilities on their path including their clients, government officials, their own staff and are knowingly internationally discrediting the Thai government, law and educational system, and themselves while Dr. Chayapad Jungwongworapad, holding a PhD in psycho-analysis, showing her abilities in the most dishonorable and unpleasant way imaginable misusing one of the most vulnerable service sectors to do so.

Anonymous said...

Extradition treaty for owner and management Kammanee Language School in Thailand?

The ESL community works together with Dr. ******* **** ** ****, Dr. ******* ****, Dr. ******** ***********, U.N. Interpol, E.U. and E.U. Higher Education Commity, to start the indictment on defence Dr. Chayapad Jungwongworapad, Kammanee Language School and all affiliations will be under investigation by Interpol inteligents as assigned by The ESL community works together with Dr. ******* **** ** ****, Dr. ******* ****, Dr. ******** ***********, U.N. Interpol, E.U. and E.U. Higher Education Commity joined affort, starting 2009 for missusing authoritarian status, discrediting ESL sector, National and International Law by questionable ethics, therefore is considered to take a stand for all in the above mentioned sectors as action are deminishing the credibility and will have long-run social implications that can be avoided doing so.

The extradition request is currently under inquiry and E.U. duriscriction on Thai soil for full cooperation is led by the U.N. ambassador of Thailand and as accepted will start in the International Court in The Hague in 2011.

intlgal said...

Please visit http://dontworkforenlischool.blogspot.com/

Beware of ENLI School of East West Studies...I WISH I had been warned!

Read the blog. DONT WORK THERE!!!

Twinmaster said...

Dave's ESL is the classic story of good intentions gone bad. Mr. Sperling is now the CEO of a money-making machine. It's big business, running on profits rather than principles. The moderators are smug, ass-wiping puppets, but Sperling is pulling all the strings!

Twinmaster said...

Dave Sperling started out with good intentions, but he's created an empire that is now being run by underlings, PR puppets who smugly moderate the forums with the primary purpose of protecting their CEO's money-making machine. Job postings are big business and any greedy corporation puts profits before principles. The biggest problem with the site is the way the forums are managed, where totalitarian censorship and snobby pecking orders rule the day. As Chuck Heston said, "It's a mad house!"

Anonymous said...

Has anyone noticed that its always the same old employers on the international job list and that jobs are only a few a day now? Maybe he has peaked.