ELT in Brazil

I’ve been working as a freelance teacher, teacher educator, materials writer and basically anything that pays, piques my interest and is not inherently immoral for some time now. Working freelance often means you have no team to count on for anything. You are the CEO, CPO, CKO, the sales department, human resources, accountant, and, last but not least, your very own marketing team. Differently from professionals who are employed by a company who may or may not use its larger entrepreneurial machine to boost these professionals, when you are self-employed this means that, at least most of the time, you will be doing your own promotion. This leads to the ugly cousin of other-promotion: self-promotion.

I say ugly cousin because self-promotion is often frowned upon. However, if you are working on your own, it is every man, or woman, for themselves. Say, if you are an editor of a big publishing house, the publishing house and the work you do there are likely to be enough promotion since it is in the company’s interest to boost their employees so they reach more people and build authority in the field. It is common, for instance, to have the chief editor of a big publishing house as a major speaker in a conference.

Alas, what are self-employed professionals to do if they do not have a team to boost them and can’t boost themselves at the risk of coming across as cocky, a lime-light hogger, or a fame-seeker? Why is it that when your company promotes you that is entirely fine and righteous but when a self-employed, teamless, marketing-skills deprived, single-handed-business handler engages in the only form possible for promotion we frown upon the endeavor? What is this professional supposed to do? Allow the ones backed by big corporations to soak in the market’s glory while they are smothered by huge marketing teams and the shallow, short-sighted, judgment of others?

I beg to differ. As a self-employed teacher myself, and very obviously biased towards this cohort which I am part of, I believe we ought to analyze the case of self-promotion from a moral perspective to find out when and where self-promotion crosses the line so we can rationally push back this kind of criticism.

From a Machiavellian perspective, for instance, whatever promotion done by the self would be justified if this led to more power and more limelight to the self. This is a clearly flawed perspective which openly disregards others for the sake of personal, and solely personal, gain. From this flawed perspective we can state that self-promotion which serves itself from others simply as a means to an end and justifies it based on the end to be one of crossing the line. People are not instruments to be used solely for the benefit of one person or a couple of people. Duly noted.

From a Kantian perspective, if self-promotion happens through an action that sees people as both an instrument and an end in themselves, that action is deemed moral. The reader ponders, “Bruno, can we use people as instruments? Even though we see people as an end in themselves alongside it, doesn’t this sound immoral or manipulative?” You are right to question that, it sure sounds off. Allow me to illustrate though so we can see eye to eye. Imagine the relationship between a teacher and a student. If you are a teacher this will be an easy exercise, if you are not, think about your relationship with your clients and the analogy will work just the same.

Onto our analogy. The teacher teaches the student. For the student, the teacher is an instrument. An instrument is something used for an end that is not itself. Simply put, a hammer is an instrument because we use it to nail parts together. The end is nailing parts together and the hammer is the instrument used for this end. Back to the teacher – student relationship. The teacher is an instrument of learning for the student. Students want to be able to speak English and the teacher is a means to achieve just that. Because we want our students to see us as an end in ourselves too, we charge a fair price, not more nor less than we believe our work is worth, but a fair price. By paying this fair price, treating us with respect, being punctual with the classes and doing their part, students show us we are not only an instrument, but also a person with a life of our own. If you’ve been teaching for some time you have, unfortunately, met a student who treated you solely as a means, an instrument. This student was often rude, wanted to pay you peanuts and might have even told you “I pay your salary” – meaning they think they own you just as something they paid for and bought. This is a clear case of a Machiavellian rationale and is, in a Kantian perspective (and mine) immoral.

Now, notice how we can invert the analogy and look at it from the teacher’s perspective. The teacher who sees their learners only as an instrument of making money might tell students “I don’t care whether you learn or not, my salary will come at the end of the month regardless.”. If you have been a student you might have, again, unfortunately, heard this from a poor example of a teacher. On the other hand, if a teacher sees their learners as (a) a means of making money but also (b) an end in themselves, this teacher will care a lot whether or not their learners are developing and growing. Because this teacher sees their learners as people with an end in themselves as well as an instrument of making ends meet at the end of the month, this teacher will go the extra mile to deliver the best possible learning experience to their students.

Of course, one could argue that we don’t have to, necessarily, see others as instruments but only an end in themselves. Is that really possible, though? When you take a flight somewhere, you are using the work of many people, from the ones who designed the website where you bought your ticket, to airport staff, pilots, and everybody else involved in this as an instrument. I find it hard to think of an existence which is entirely independent from others and self-sufficient. We are born without the means of surviving on our own and it is only because we employ the work and attention of others as instruments to an end that we make it to adulthood. Sure, you can also do charity expecting nothing in return aside from personal satisfaction but isn’t that also an expected end? Additionally, when a person expects you to do work for them without getting anything for yourself, not even exposure or personal satisfaction, isn’t this person asking you to be an instrument and only an instrument to them? “Isn’t it ironic?” – as Alanis would say.

From a utilitarian perspective, the right thing to do is based on a simple principle: the more people positively affected by the action, the better. When deciding where to build a new public hospital, for example, a utilitarian-thinking government will choose to build it in the most demographically-dense neighborhood, thus achieving the happiness of the most people. If the process of self-promotion positively impacts 30, 40, 100 people, according to utilitarians, this would be a moral action and the right path to be followed.

In conclusion, if the self-promotion being done is one that sees others as instruments and – necessarily – as an end in themselves and if it positively impacts several people in the process while also serving the purpose of the self-promoter (notice how negative the connotation for this word is), this self-promotion is moral. We have also analyzed how unfair it is to expect self-employed teachers/trainers/writers to not self-promote or to self-promote ‘just a little’, since this is the only kind of promotion these individuals can engage in without having to count on the goodwill of a mega corporation to back them and boost their careers.

Now speaking (writing?) exclusively to other self-employed professionals out there. Do self-promote. If you do not promote your own work, if you do not show your work, the chances of you having the career you dream of is very slim. There is no one out there to do this promotion for you. I mean, there might be if you have amazing friends and good connections, but notice that for you to even have good connections you will have to get your work out there. Make sure your self-promotion does not harm anyone and, if you can, help a bunch of people in the process. And if someone tries to tell you that they dislike your self-promotion, tell them to go argue with Kant and mind their own business – because all you are trying to do is mind and grow yours.