Dear members, colleagues and friends,

You‟ll forgive me I hope, if this month I jump on my soap box or hobby horse, whichever analogy you prefer! Conferences. Yes, those places where we go to see our stars, hear our heroes and meet our mentors; those grand meetings where you can soak up the knowledge with a dry towel, it oozes out of every available attendee.

And maybe you’d like to speak, give a paper or a workshop because the theme is right up your alley. Perhaps you are young and enthusiastic and have some ideas you’d like to share or maybe you’ re old and jaded like me but still think you have something to offer. Good on you, in either case. You might find yourself on the same platform as some of the people you’ve heard of but never actually met. Excellent.

So you write an abstract. You have friends check it, you pore over it well into the dead of night(s) changing a verb here, a preposition there and finally your work, which will represent you to an August panel on the other side of the world or in the next city, is ready and you email it off.

A week or two later you get a reply saying something along the lines of: “Thank you for your submission, we’d like to include your interesting talk: The Nature of Teacher Voice Tone and its Influence on the Brain Patterns of 12 year old Learners of Aramaic as a 6th Language In order to secure your place, please pay the conference registration fee as soon as possible.”

What? Excuse me? Did they say I have to pay? You mean I give my time, experience and brain power, I pay my own flight, I pay my own accommodation AND I have to pay a conference registration fee?

Now this has long been a bugbear of mine, that universities and other institutions can expect speakers to pay their conference fees when they are contributing value to the conference! Without them, there would be no conference other than plenaries! It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious – it’s serious because these teachers and researchers are spending money they can mostly ill afford to give of their time and experience. I find it nothing short of  scandalous. Not so very long ago, I turned down an invitation to speak at a certain university (on the history of pronunciation teaching, one of my areas of special interest) for this very reason!

Now you may say “Put your money where your mouth is Mr H” well, I did. I used to organise (admittedly small) TESOL conferences at the university where I worked, not only were the attendance fees tiny but we managed to pay and / or waive registration fees for all speakers, big names and unknowns. Sometimes the big names would forego their fee, which I found very generous and in the proper spirit of the occasion. And still we made a modest „surplus‟, the interesting euphemism which places of higher education use for „profit‟!

So my question is this: if universities exist to promote learning, why can’t they make it best practice to, at the very least, provide speakers free attendance? In fact I think speakers should be paid or have their travel and accommodation paid but, baby steps!

We just need to change the model, that’s all.

Happy teaching and learning!

Steve Hirschhorn

Chair of Gallery Teachers Membership Committee.