McDougin's House Of Stuff

Source: nickthejam

Source: nickthejam

Source: nickthejam

Healthcare seems to be all over the news, partly due to privatisation and cutbacks here in the UK, and also “Obamacare” in the US. It’s got me thinking. There’s some very serious ethical consequences to trying to turn a profit from the healthcare industry.

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The Space Between: English+ in Gunsan.

keseral:

This happened to a good friend:

English Plus (English +), Gunsan, South Korea

Here is a list of things which happened in the two months I worked for English+
1. I was not paid for the first week I worked for the school because this was a “training week”. I received absolutely no training. I received a list of classes but no information about the class size, the ages of the students or their levels of English, or teaching materials.
2. I arrived at the school with another teacher. He was told to teach from textbooks. When we arrived, 5 of six classes had textbooks. By the time we left, all but one class had finished their textbook. When a class finished their book, my colleague was told by the director of studies that she would order new ones. When it became clear that this wasn’t happening, he was given directions to a bookshop and instructed to go and buy more himself. At this point he had been a teacher (trained in teaching English to adults) for 6 weeks, and was not in a position to be writing a syllabus.
3. After our “training week” I was given newspapers to teach from. I was told that I would receive new newspapers once a week, and proceeded to use the newspapers at a rate which would mean they would be finished after a week. A few days later I was told that I would receive new newspapers once a month. A month later when I asked when I would get new newspapers, I was told they would get there in a few days. From that point on whenever I asked I was told they would get there “tomorrow”. I eventually received newspapers 6 weeks after the first ones had arrived.
4. About a month in to being at the school, I was abducted by a stranger and physically and sexually assaulted, and left an hour outside Gunsan. After walking back to the city in the middle of the night, and managing to contact the police and sitting in a police station where nobody spoke any English, bleeding, for around an hour, my director of studies (Jennifer Hwang) turned up. The first thing she said when she saw me was “Teachers should not cause things like this. It brings shame on the school.”.
5. A few days after being abducted and attacked the director of studies called me in for a meeting where it was explained to me at length that my being attacked was damaging to the reputation of the school and that dealing with the police was an inconvenience to her as she was busy running her other business.
6. Our director of studies told me that there had been complaints about my teaching. She then told me that she was too busy to answer any questions I had, and I should e-mail the previous teachers instead.

Please re-blog this as much as you can, this should not happen to anyone else.

(via kaleidoscopeinmyview)

(via kaleidoscopeinmyview)

Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (Star Trek 2009)

(via lokis-army)

fuckyeahpsychedelics:

“Avengers Assemble!” by Melissa Smith

(via thelookingglassgallery)

(via tastefullyoffensive)

(via lokis-army)

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

We’re not a team, we’re a time bomb

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lizbethanne:

I love everything about this.

(via pearliebird)

Something which has bothered me is how any book by default is assumed to be good. A source of knowledge and insight, and generally makes any kid better by getting them to read. Yet computer games are assumed to be by default bad, leading to obesity, laziness, and violence, despite what the game is actually like.

I can’t help feel that both mediums are very similar. Both are general something you do sitting down. Both of course have good and bad examples. You could compare Twilight to Brain Training to argue games are better for your intelligence, or you could compare a classic like Catch 22 to a game like Duke Nukem in an attempt to argue all games are drivel.

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