The need for an ethical framework for ELT

[Snow Lau]

How to make the following arguement?Graddol presents that the business environment of the next century will require global enterprises to meet three “bottom lines” : economic prosperity, environmental protection and social equity. Hence ethical, as well as environmental, values are likely to come under increasing public scrutiny and significantly influence customer loyalty.

[Tdol]

Some ELT chains are major corporations, so they will come under the same scrutiny as any multinational corporation, in theory at least. However, many ELT institutions are small, so I'm not sure that social equity will affect them so much. Do students really worry about how fairly their teachers are being treated? I've never really come across that. Customer loyalty seems much more down to things like results and enjoyment.

Also, ESL is very much a private industry, which will chase the dollar- schools are not very likely to set up operations for the benefit of poorer communities if they can open in a rich area and make a profit there. Nor, as private schools, can they be forced to. In my opinion, the ESL industry is likely to contribute to increasing social equity. Take this site- it presupposes literacy and access to the internet, which automatically excludes huge swathes of people. Though we don't set out to exclude, we exclude by the nature of what we do, even though we don't charge for it. Does Graddol present much in the way of evidence for this theory, or is it more of a wish list?