Money, Money, Money

Oct

by Richard

Thanks for all the support from everyone over the last couple of days. I don’t say it often enough, but I really do appreciate all the great support people give. Thank you.

It sort of seems that the message behind Genki English and the reasons I started it have got lost as things have grown over the last couple of years.

Before I started Genki English, elementary school English in Japan was in real danger of either becoming just like Junior High where the kids hate it because they are bored to death, or simply a year full of “fruit basket” where the kids are taught how “different being Japanese is”. Love it or leave it, at least now there is an alternative. It’s not perfect and it’s not finished yet, but the stuff usually works in motivating the kids to learn.

The thing is that too many teachers seem to thing they should get access to everything for free. If you’re a volunteer teacher in a volunteer project then I can understand that, and I do my best to help teachers out in those situations. But very often the complaints come from teachers who are being paid very well to do their lessons, but they expect me to make everything without being paid.

Now I tried that for the first two years and it wasn’t fun. And I am very lucky and very grateful that I can now pay myself and employ people and pay them for the huge contributions they make to Genki English. I guess the thing is that people don’t realise just how expensive a project like this is. Just keeping the website alive and making sure it comes up in the search engines is pricey in 2005. But the major cost is in the continued development. There has been so much new material put on the site over the last year, and there’s a lot more to come. But it all costs money to produce. Which is fine by me, because that’s the way things work.

I guess the thing is balance. I personally pay myself less than most ALTs, and I try to give as much back to people who have bought the materials by putting extra stuff in the CD Owners Club. But I’ve also been trying to keep as much stuff free on the site as possible as well as supporting the free kids’ shows and teacher workshops. If I thought in a purely business frame of mind, I’d cut all that out and move all the site content into the CD Owners Club. But that sort of goes against what I’m trying to achieve. The only reason I do this is because I can see the difference it makes. When I was a kid I hated much of school because it was so boring, so I want to at least give the kids the chance to learn in a fun way.

If I was in it for the money, believe me, I’d quit the hard hours I work now and do Real Estate full time!