Education A La Food Chain

I’ve always wanted to teach (i.e. College). But, I know I still don’t have enough knowledge, skills, and experience to venture into teaching. I got interested in a job post I read from jobs.up.edu.ph. It says that AMA CLC Pasay is looking for English Teachers and IT Teachers. I really got interested considering that it is not that big University. I was then thinking that it could be a great avenue to gain teaching experience.

I got an email from them informing that I have a scheduled interview. I prepared for the interview – read English books, practiced, and even prepared for a possible teaching demonstration. Well, alas, all the excitement fell.


The interviewer (franchise owner) explained to me the process of hiring possible teachers. Pathetic, but she wanted me to recruit possible students (through House-to-House) and that whatever is the number of recruited students I get would determine my salary. What’s worse? During the second stage of the interview (yes, I reached the second stage done the same day as I don’t have a way out), the school director introduced to us (we’re in group then) their livelihood project for the parents of the students. F***K! It was a multi-level-marketing thing. I really couldn’t take it anymore and I never appeared to them.

This implies what kind of education this school offers. Oh yeah, they must be after the money as school is business. But looking after the profit is not the end-all and be-all of an educational institution. From the word itself – educational institution – schools should be after bringing good education. How can an institution like AMA CLC provide good education if the kind of screening they’ve for teachers depends on how many students he/she can recruit and how many parents can he/she recruit for the multi-level marketing?

They’d entice parents to enroll their kids in this institution because of the P500 money down and your child is already enrolled. They’d entice the parents because they can earn from the multi-level marketing opportunity. That’s not the point of sending your child to school.

Schools must entice parents to enroll their kids because of the kind of education that they could provide as well as its accessibility. You can’t simply send your child to a school that offers low tuition fee without thinking anymore of the quality of education.

These promotions of schools are caused by the Education a la Food Chain phenomenon. Given that educational institutions (e.g. AMA) are available for franchise, owners of franchise compete against each other in getting number of students. That’s why they’d come out with different promotional activities that don’t gear towards quality education. They are mainly profit oriented.

We’ve a highly competitive world. The only way our children can battle is by giving them the education they need. It’s not enough that our children have degrees. It’s not enough that they finished college. It still matters what kind of education they got from their school. Such will determine how long your children can compete.