“Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. It is an act of making deceptive and false statements to convince someone of untruth. Disinformation should not be confused with misinformation, information that is unintentionally false. Unlike traditional propaganda techniques designed to engage emotional support, disinformation is designed to manipulate the audience at…
A few days ago we announced the pleasing news that The British Council, already in Medan, will be opening schools in Jakarta and Surabaya too, opening around March 2015. This will provide another respected, reliable alternative to unscrupulous local operators such as TBI (PT. Titian Buama Ilmu) or (even worse), Rumah Bahasa, a rogue school…
One of the issues we have raised in recent weeks is the rampant age discrimination which is evident in TBI job ads, and even on the TBI website itself. Worryingly, their very own website stated that they were only interested in interviewing managers who were 35 years or younger. When it comes to service staff,…
I was teaching Business English the other day to a Pre-Intermediate class and I came across a reading passage on ‘The Quality Circle’. This is a common term which is thrown around in business books these days and no doubt it is already last decade’s news on the corporate training circuit. But like most of…
One of the greatest lies pedalled by the TBI authorities is that working in their schools is a good idea for your career. In reality, working for TBI has long proved to be one of the biggest mistakes that you could make. Whether you are a teacher or a manager, again and again TBI has…
In recent days we have reported that Anita Pasaribu has been replaced as SM of TBI Kelapa Gading after less than a year. She followed work-shy hypochondriac Nugraha (Nunu) who casually admitted to the whole staff that he didn’t like being school manager because it was a lot of work and he was “basically a…
This week we brought you the story of how the first ever “TBI” online learning course, “Islands”, was in fact copyrighted to Pearson-Longman, the respected British publisher who is also the owner of Wall Street English. We also revealed that TBI, with typical duplicity, has been claiming in their “Islands” blurb that they “have been…
One of the most insidious problems that I encountered while working at TBI was the prevalence of what psychologists call “magical thinking”. While this thinking was less in evidence at the wretched TBI franchise schools, which had mostly had years of disappointing sales and low student numbers to cure them of their illusions, it was absolutely…
July must have been some kind of month in TBI Jakarta and Bandung as a large chunk of their existing staff all headed for the exit door simultaneously. And we aren’t just talking about a few front-desk staff here. Multiple key positions were all vacated in a matter of weeks. They were 23 separate job ads we…
A few days ago we reported that TBI has done yet another major back-flip on one of their treasured policies, unofficially ending the disastrous “Indonesianization of management” policy. As we have shown, as late as 2009 all of their Group schools were managed by expats, and by early 2012 none of them were. This change…
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