Many Americans often do not know that when they call to a call center of an American company, they actually talk to an employee based in India. Call Center companies try to train up their workers in India to imitate American accent so that US customers cannot know that they are from India. These Indian workers also take American names when they talk to US customers.
This is not a new thing but what is new is that an American company, Socratic Learning Inc., pretended that its teachers were from Texas when they were based in India. The New York Sun reported:
“For the past year, more than 2,000 city schoolchildren have been interacting with online tutors who haven't gone through criminal background checks, an investigation has found.
The 250 tutors are based in India but claimed they were in Texas. They were hired by a private company, Socratic Learning Inc., which the city contracted last year to help children in 44 struggling public schools under the federal No Child Left Behind regulations.”
I visited the website of Socratic Learning Inc. and found nothing about Indian teachers. So, it is clear that the company is not interested to reveal that many of their teachers are based in India.
The interesting thing is that some Indian websites reported the event in a bit different manner. For example, Times of India wrote:
“Socratic' CEO Raj Sobhani told ToI that the company complied with New York State’s background check requirements, including getting the fingerprints of teachers employed in India (who went to police stations there to have their prints certified). The FBI in the U.S then endorsed that the print did not match any criminal records.
But there was a catch. Not only did the NYC insist on teachers being physically present to have their fingerprints recorded, but they were also required to furnish social security numbers. "How can foreign tutors produce U.S Social Security numbers? The whole system simply puts a crimp on distance learning," Sobhani said.”
The funny thing is that this report of Times of India failed to mention that Socratic Learning Inc. did not inform the authority that they have hired tutors based in India. I am again quoting from The New York Sun report:
“The company's Web site advertises its primary service as "online one-on-one tutoring with highly qualified college degreed instructors." Last year, the department reminded the company to send a list of its online tutors but it never did so, the report said. Outside providers of tutoring services are required to submit a list of their employees to an electronic database maintained by the Department of Education, which then conducts the background checks.
In November, an official from the education department's Office of Personnel Investigation, Carmela Cuddy, advised Socratic Learning that it would not grant security clearance to any staff members who didn't have Social Security numbers.
Department officials said they weren't aware the company had tutors based in India until an investigation into a separate matter was launched in June.”
DNA India has identified this matter as “setback to a growing field of outsourcing”. Well, I really do not agree with this view. Socratic officials should have informed the authority in the first place that they were hiring tutors from India. Pretending that they were from Texas was not a smart move.
At the same time, I feel that more and more US companies will adopt similar tactics like that of Socratic. In the end, I feel that the American consumers must take some responsibility from this event. Many of them only care to get a service at a cheaper price. Naturally, Indian workers can provide it.
We can see this issue in a very logical way keeping the
repercussions in mind.
Why NCLB : Among other reasons, below average teaching skills,
poor dedication
of most teachers, largely a lack of accountability in the school education system
seem to be obvious.
I'm sure there must be statistical evidences for all these factors before a big
fund was allocated under NCLB.
Now that we've identified the symptom,
we've to find a long term solution .
The objective is to help this school going generation reach above certain academic performance
levels so that their future is not left to fate.
Among many choices we've:
1. Give them the best academic inputs no matter where they'd come from
( India, China, Costa Rica or any other country on this earth because the issue is
so critical to the success of these hundreds of thousands of children)
To the good luck of these children, this solution has become so very easy
because of the internet and availability of better teachers in other nations.
or
2. Give them the teachers from the same country because some law doesn't permit something xyz ( social security no.etc.)
Are we not ignoring the fact that most of the teachers need not be blamed as they are also products of the same school education system.
Now, either we keep the law inflexible and let the future generations go down the drain.
or
keep their future lives in mind as a firm objective and bring in a small change in the law, if necessary.
Above all, Imagine a scenario when these kids grow up with below average academic performance,
don't see anything worthwhile for themselves in the society, look back and realise that there was an opportunity
for them to be taught by better trainers but their political environment came in their way.
Whether they'd forgive the system and what would this frustration lead to?
I leave the rest to the guesses of readers.
Posted by: Kamal Wadhera | November 7, 2006 2:29 AM | Permalink to Comment