Kill All the Language Teachers

The reality of an English teaching military contract in Saudi Arabia is this: Secondary to the materials, the classroom discipline, the salary, compound life etc is remembering first and foremost that you are in an environment where officers, warrant officers and NCOs running the schools are often true believers; they believe they are not only training and disciplining a language school's student body, they believe they are training soldiers who happen to be temporarily assigned to a language school and who are each and every one a soldier for Allah and King. The reality is that while in the west soldiers are trained to fight for their buddies, defend their flag and uphold the virtues of their country, in the Khaleej and especially in KSA, these grunts are being trained to fight for Islam in one guise or another. Some may see that this includes defending the monarchy; others may feel just the opposite. The latter may be more intersted in learning how to shoot straight than the former. For the past year and a half or so, there have been Saudis security forces fighting Saudis who may have previously been trained by the security forces; there is an honest to goodness shoot-to-kill low intensity civil conflict happening now. There are also (by some estimates) about 1,000 Saudis, many of whom I am sure were trained by the military, in Iraq trying to take out American and British soldiers. Trying to maintain a form of discipline, a common esprit de corpse within the ranks must be a catch 22 for some of the brass running the language schools. I imagine that the maximum effective range of their respect for men--non-Muslims at that, who have chosen to become teachers that is doing women's work--is zero. Perhaps a few years ago, the mission of the ground, sea and air forces was to fend off those rascally Yehudis or an Iraqi invasion. The mission has changed. Teachers planning on going should know this: you either learn to kowtow to the brass, and know your place in the food chain where students are concerned, indulge your employeers with a little bowing and scraping or look for other work. I specifically refer to military teaching jobs and how in the last 18 months or so a palpable schism must surely be resulting in some morale problems for Saudi brass. The mission has changed, but who knows what that mission is anymore. The pressure must surely be on the top brass and as with any military organisation, the excrement rolls downhill. At the bottom of that hill, just beneath privates and new recruits are foreign instructors from the west. I will be moving back across the causeway in the fall and will teach in a government tertiary institution. Personally I will give any military posting in KSA a wide berth at this moment. In May, when King Fahd was taken to a Riyadh hospital, the country went on alert, all military leaves were cancelled, martial law seemed imminent.