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Charlie Abelmann is the director and producer of the short documentary English hustle all about the tutoring industry between the US and China. He's an educator with a background in research policy and practice. Earlier in his career, he worked at the World Bank managing education projects in a wide number of countries, including
China and Mongolia. He's also led public and private schools, and was the director of the laboratory schools at the University of Chicago while also having an appointment at that university as a lecturer. He currently is a filmmaker and an executive coach certified by the international coaching Federation, as well as an MA from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education. So you may be wondering, Where can I see English hustle, as we reach the second anniversary of the Chinese initiation of the double reduction policy, it's a great time to find and watch English hustle. It's really great. I have watched it myself. You can find it right now on Vimeo by searching English hustle. It's also part of the collection at New Day Films, which is aimed at
educational viewings. So if you're interested in showing the movie in an educational setting, look at New Day Films that's at New day.com That could be a viewing for a class or for our work group. The film will also be available through Public Library's through the canopy that's k n o p y app later in August. And finally, you can go to english hustled.org or contact Charlie Abelmann. at LinkedIn to learn more or discuss the film. Charlie is already working on his next
film. And he also does executive coaching. Charlie Abelmann Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.
Thanks for welcoming me.
You have a really interesting background you've gone from from leading schools and managing education projects for the World Bank, to most recently being a documentary filmmaker focusing on edtech and education. That's quite an adventure. tell our listeners about your background in education and what led you to making your film English hustle.
Sure. So I have a background in education, research, policy and practice. I managed education projects at the World Bank and then led private schools for the last 10 years. And I've always been interested in education issues in China and particularly issues around cultural exchange and global citizenship at the bank. I manage projects in China. I've helped kindergartens in Nanjing.
And I've been really interested in the influence of John Dewey, a well known progressive educator on his work in China. He went to China for two years 1919 to 1921. And I did a lot of work sort of trying to look at what was his contribution in China 100 years later. So all of that made me interested in China. And I was curious about this particular industry.
So this industry being the online tutoring industry, the Education Technology Industry,
right, so I started to be really fascinated by how many teachers outside of China were connecting with Chinese students. Many teachers in the US there were over 100,000, there were over 20,000 in the Philippines, and some sprinkled across other countries. And they were working with millions of Chinese students. And I was fascinated
by this industry. Because at a time of really bad US China relations, you had all of these micro connections happening between teachers and students, through platforms where they were entering kids homes, and those kids were entering the homes of the teachers. And I was really interested to try and understand what it was like to be a gig teacher, because there
were so many. And I was really interested in trying to understand how these relationships changed the teachers views of China if they did, and how did the relationships with students change their perspective of the world? So was this an industry not just about language, but also about cultural understanding? And it was the largest part of the EdTech industry. I was fascinated by the size of it and the fact that
there were no regulations. So I put on my researcher hat and did a lot of research and then I decided rather than publishing something, I really wanted to try and create a documentary film
And that film English hustle is you've given me a chance to watch it and preview it. It's absolutely fascinating. As you say, it focuses on, you know, a small subset of some of these non Chinese online English language teachers, both in the US and the Philippines, teaching English to
Chinese students. And going up to and then through the double reduction policy that vary to listeners of this podcast, pretty well known legal policy that was sort of designed to really change how online tutoring works entirely in the
country. So for those who might not be as familiar with this particular aspect of edtech, it's a really interesting one, give us a little overview of what Chinese edtech has been like over the last few years and why you chose to focus on this particular aspect of it for the film. Well, I
first focused on the teachers. And then the plot changed, because all of a sudden, in June or July of 2021, these new regulations came. So I was sort of given this incredible plot on a silver platter, which changed the nature of the film project. And what happened was really the largest part of the ed tech sector, which was after school English programs and after school tutorial programs in China, and the online tutoring
industry was regulated. And it was done by a for a number of reasons on the part of the Chinese government. But it really changed the lives of the teachers, it changed the lives of their students changed the lives of the employees of these companies. There were dozens of the companies. Some were very large, publicly traded companies like THL and new oriental, some were smaller, some were large, hoping to become public
companies like VIP kid. And I started to look into this industry and tried to understand who are the players? Who are the companies? Who are the investors? Where did the money come from? And how did it work? And I was interested in that, both from a sort of political economy perspective, but also from an educational perspective, what was the differences of the approach that some of these companies took, and how they worked with teachers and how
they worked with students? And as I mentioned, this all dramatically changed in July of 2020.
Yeah, you know, before we go further, I want to dig into a lot of these factors with you. But you gave me the chance to preview the film, it was absolutely fascinating. Where can others who are listening to this podcast see the film, I'm sure people are curious about that before we even get into all the amazing details, right.
So I've submitted the film to a number of film festivals. And I'm excited that it's been accepted at some. So that's one form of showing the great news for me is that I'm going to be part of a collection of films called New Day. It's a cooperative that's been around for 50 years with 140 filmmakers. It's a collection of documentary films, all on social issues, the co op really values telling stories about positive change. And the co op is also linked to canopy
films. And canopy is what you can access from your public library or your university campus. If you're a student or a professor, and access films for free, it tries to democratize film. So one access point will be new day and the other will be canopy. And until the film is in those two places, it's really through festivals are following what's happening through the website, English hustle.org.
All right, so that's through New Day, and canopy films, when it's finally there. Hopefully, that's very soon, or maybe even by the time this podcast is live, but until then people are gonna have to try to find it in their local film festivals. I do recommend people, you know, our listeners look it up and is very relevant to everything we think about in edtech.
Another thing there is an opportunity for any of your viewers who want to think about sponsoring a showing either if it's at a large ed tech or small ed tech company with a discussion or if they're at a university and want to sponsor a showing again with a discussion about the film in the issues. That's another possibility.
Anybody out there who is particularly excited incensed any kind of strong ideas about this particular subject that's, you know, gig teaching online tutoring English language learning, and of course, the cultural exchange between China and America or the double reduction policy, please, you know, get in touch and we'll put the contact information in the
show notes for this episode. So you mentioned a number of different edtech companies that are featured in the film including VIP kid, which was you know, until recently at Big Ed Tech unicorn, consider it was one of the fastest growing tech companies ever. There are a bunch of other English language providers like gogo kid and you could name probably list a whole bunch, as well as these Chinese education giants like new
oriental and THL. I'm curious, you know, as you were creating this film, were these companies and their CEOs or their representatives open to speaking with you or being on film about their experiences of this very dramatic moment in time.
So I really wanted the film to try and include all perspectives so I reached out to a number of the companies both Public and non public in trying to gain access to senior leaders to be interviewed on record. And it was very, very difficult. They were very reluctant to talk, some were willing to talk off record, no one was willing to be filmed. And it was really
difficult. So what I did with the film was go to public record and be able to show some of the founders, the founder of 51 Talk, which works primarily in the Philippines, and Cindy me who works with VIP kid. So they become a character in essence or subject of the film. But it's through other interviews that they had given in different
places. And in the case of Cindy, me a really powerful message that she recorded to give to all teachers who worked for the company, about the dramatic changes that were happening, and that their income and their livelihood would change, because of the regulations that came into effect.
Yeah, it's really powerful to watch some of these companies first, on the meteoric rise, you see all these events, these like amazing corporate events, where people are like, these companies are everywhere we're doing so well, we've taken over the whole world of tutoring, you know, really celebratory, and then suddenly, this policy comes into place, and the tone completely reverses. And people are just caught totally off guard, then people were not willing to be on
camera for this. I can imagine some of the reasons it's a very tricky political subject. What else was difficult about making this film at this time with a, you know, Chinese government, that's really, I have a lot of different strong opinions about this particular issue.
So I had a sensitive topic. And then I also was surprised with the arrival of COVID. So those two things presented real challenges to directing and producing the film, I was able to gain access to teachers, because there's so many of them, you know, someone didn't want to be in the film. But I was able to find some great subjects, both in the US one digital nomad who works from Malaysia and then moves to Thailand, and then two Filipino
teachers. I also wanted to try to gain access to some of the Chinese students and their families. And I have one student and one mother in the film, and I wanted more, but they were really, really reluctant to be filmed. And it was, again, a very sensitive topic. And one, particularly after the regulations came into effect, where they talk to me off record, but they wouldn't be willing to be filmed. In my case, because of COVID. I did the directing in Thailand and in
the Philippines remotely. I had a great crew in both places. And I was with the subjects by zoom, working with the cinematographers, and talking to the subjects and building trust and building the relationship. And while the local cinematographer is filmed and directed by zoom,
it's really interesting. It's such a global story, as you mentioned, it's not only just between the US and China, although that's an enormous back and forth. But all of you know, Southeast Asia, a lot of different countries sort of get involved with this, because for one thing, there are a lot of English speaking expats in these countries, and there's a lot of English speaking people in various countries that are able to do this kind of work.
And it's actually very lucrative work compared to other work they might be doing or correct me if I'm wrong about that. But I, that's my understanding of it, or at least relatively lucrative work.
It's interesting, it's a differentiated market. So there were some companies that were charging parents a premium price for a one on one class with an American teacher. There were other companies that were serving Chinese students in group classes with a Filipino teacher at a much, much lower price point. Filipino teachers on average, were making about $2.90 an hour, and us teachers, on average, were making between
around 18 and $24 an hour. So that's the difference was transferred back down to the end consumer in China in terms of what they were paying for their classes for their children.
One of the things that I found particularly compelling about the film as you go through some of the history of why English is so you know, what, it has been such a hot topic to learn in China, why parents are willing to pay these premium prices, as you mentioned, just to have their students have access to native
English speakers in America. And it sort of goes through this this roller coaster of you know, during the Cultural Revolution, it was demonized, and that people considered learning English almost like a betrayal
of Chinese identity. And then, you know, over the last 1015 years, as China has has really opened up, it became a standard, it became sort of the language of of internationalization and parents were willing to pay a big percentage of their of their income to make sure their children had access to this type of learning. I'm paraphrasing here, but you've been really deep in this. It was really you had interviews with professors.
Tell us a little bit about that roller coaster and it is such an interesting story.
Sure. So one of the goals of the film was to set a historical record and be able to look at what's happened recently, and place it in a historical context. And that context is one where, depending on the decade, China has either really embraced its international relationships and welcomed English learning, or it's been an environment where English really was not allowed at all to be taught. And I think what happened with the double reduction policy is really
historical. So I wanted to place that in the context of both the times when English was really welcomed, and the times when China really closed its doors to the rest of the world, and discouraged if not prohibited access to anything in English.
Yeah. And it's really has gone back and forth. So how do you contextualize this moment where Xi Jinping basically says, Hey, let's not do this type of English language learning that has happened? I mean, we'll talk about some of the reasons but do you see it as you know, another chapter in that story of sort of back and forth relationships?
Yeah, I do think it's a really historical moment, and one that is going backwards in time towards a period where, you know, nationalism, not just in China, but around the world is changing policies in terms of how
countries interact. And one of the ways that this is affecting things in the context of China is making it you know, less important to learn English, private kindergartens can't teach English, you know, English is being taken off of some exams at the primary school level, there's almost no homework in primary schools, in some cases, for good reason. So people aren't necessarily studying English there. So there is a
turn away from English. And interestingly, at the same time, if you look at things in Taipei, you know, Taipei shortly after the policy, you know, opened a new English language TV station, you can see sort of a difference in terms of, you know, Taipei's continuing, opening up and wanting to be a thriving democracy connected to the world, including the English speaking world, and China at the same time, making it much more difficult for any company who wants to be providing English
either in a format of online learning, or a format of after school programs that children would physically go to.
You know, over the last few years, there's been major changes partially because of COVID, partially because of American politics in the number of Chinese students coming to the US for higher education, which was very high for quite a while and has been going down pretty severely over the last
few years. Do you see that as a related trend is a is part of the thinking here that by sort of trying to keep students from learning English as young children, it sort of keeps the brain drain, it removes that appeal of really sophisticated Chinese learners, you know, going abroad for higher ed.
I mean, it might be the attempt in senior officials, but I don't think you change the demand of the average Chinese citizen who's trying to do the best by their child. And they really see education attainment, as part of that both being able to be successful in secondary school, make a transition to higher education, if they can find a way to study overseas. You know, COVID has definitely hampered the ability
to study overseas. I think, starting to reverse itself, you also see more and more Chinese, you know, taking advantage of other types of programs. Thailand, for example, offers an education visa. So you see a lot of parents who are moving to Bangkok, putting kids if they can afford it, in an international day school in Bangkok, gaining access to English in a way that's easier and cheaper than imagining trying to get your kid to the US or the UK or Australia for access to
English. It's such an interesting in sort of peek into this part of the ed tech world, this sort of interconnectivity and the education world that we don't really get to see that often from the US. I have to ask, given this, this is an ed tech
podcast. You know, one aspect of your film that's really interesting is that it focuses as you say, on these gig teachers, we sometimes we call them sort of teacher foreigners, who really instead of teaching in traditional schools, they make a living through informal teaching, such as online tutoring for private companies, and doing it with Chinese students was was a humongous option for many, many teachers.
I believe one of the teachers in your film has five or six of her own kids who she homeschools on top of her online work, another teacher is trying to fund the you know, ability to emigrate if I'm remembering correctly, and you really spend time, you know, looking into the lives of some of these teacher foreigners. I'd love to hear your take on that move towards gig teaching. You know, aside from this Chinese reduction, do you see a move for more teachers as in your role?
As a, you know, head of schools to more teachers sort of stepping away from traditional classroom teaching, and instead sort of leveraging ad tech platforms to teach in informal ways,
right. So I see sort of two significant trends. One is a trend towards, you know, use of AI in a way where you don't depend upon direct human capital and interaction, and the other in part fueled by social emotional learning and the importance of connection, deriving a demand for more and more programs that offer, you know, an in person tutor face to face or online.
And what this gig economy showed, is that there's a lot of teachers a who are willing to take second jobs, working for an ed tech startup or an established ad tech firm, to be able to do additional work with students at odd hours to make
extra income. And you also see a large number of individuals who are willing to forego the formal job of being a teacher and find a different way to serve students as a tutor or as an online teacher, working for a company or being entrepreneurial, and finding a way to directly connect to students without a third party middleman. And what's interesting is that some of these firms were really pushing
on both of those. So VIP kid, for example, invested heavily in AI, you know, they were hoping to mine all of their interactions with students to develop better tools for language learning, that would not use in person instruction. And at the same time, continued with, you know, a model where they were charging the premium price for access to a tutor. And obviously, the AI solution can democratize access to learning.
But it really lacks the human component in the area of language learning, while you can have access to language, which you don't have access to sort of a meaningful relationship that fosters and influences the perspective of the teacher and the perspective of the student, to gain greater cultural awareness through their interaction,
that combination of you know, the artificial intelligence serving some democratizing access and serving some of the core needs
for students. And then that human relationship serving others has been really a through line of this AI era, we've seen tutoring companies that focus on, you know, really struggle with is with the balance of these two things, because one obviously, not only cost much more, but it also has much more operational lift, right, the difference between putting an AI chatbot where you can ask a question, and it'll just give you the answer. But and it's, it's just all computerized,
versus the kind of high touch. I mean, in this film, these some of these teachers have, you know, they have backdrops, they have puppets, they have all these props, they know every student's name, they're building these really, I mean, more than know their names. They know what they like they build years long
relationships with them. So that combination of that deep human touch and the relationship, which we know is incredibly effective, plus the scalability of AI feels like a lot of people are trying to find the perfect brew that puts these two together in a way that doesn't bifurcate the market that doesn't create a substandard product for people who can't
afford it. But I'm not sure if that that's where it's going to land, do you think there's going to be a combination that will actually be able to democratize education that does have relationships.
So I think there's a role for both, I think AI has the potential of democratizing some access to language learning, with the real limitation that it doesn't necessarily lead to deep, meaningful relationships that promote global citizenship or cultural competencies. And I think you want to be able to have human to human interaction to build relationships, because that's what influence is one understanding different things about their own culture and learning about another culture.
I think part of the question is, what's going to be the outcome if some students only have access to AI, and others have access to more direct human connection? And what's the implication for equity of those different outcomes?
Little bit of a I mean, a huge question. And I think something we all are really responsible for thinking about at this moment of sort of AI Ascendance, one aspect of the film that was also really interesting in terms of relationship building was how surprised and heard and sort of these teachers were when they suddenly lost access to all of their students after you know, some of whom they had worked
with for a long time. And basically, as the platform's got up pretty much banned at Everything went down very
quickly. I just wanted to read a quote just speaking of the sort of suddenness of this policy, a quote from a really good New Yorker article about this moment that I know you can add so much color to so let me just read it for a moment, quote, would caught everyone by surprise was the suddenness and the severity of the government's decree, in curtailing private tutoring, the government seemed to have multiple goals, rein in unchecked capital in the educational system, relieve
pressure on overworked students and parents address the sluggish birth rate under the premise that less money spent on tutoring would mean a greater incentive to have babies and impose greater ideological control on students in general. And quote, so much, you know, social engineering so much in their in your film really talks about a couple of these reasons, break these down for us these, you know, what do you attribute the double reduction policy to?
And which of these reasons do you think was most important for the Chinese government? Or was it a combination?
Right? So I think the New York article is great. And I think those four points were all at play. I think there was a fifth point at play to which you didn't mention, which is equity, which is some had access to these programs, and some did not. So if you weren't someone who had a disposable income, and you couldn't afford after school, or you couldn't, you know, afford access to an online teacher and raised equity issues. So those five issues have all been thrown around to sort of explain, Well,
why did this happen? I think the suddenness of it was probably driven by the fact that this was the largest part of the ad tech industry, multibillion dollar industry, with no regulation. So the reining in the unchecked capital resonates. The second I think, which really is critical for China is the birth rate and this concern, and this feeling like is there a way to try and encourage families to have more than one child, knowing that a lot of disposable income is spent on education and extra
services? Whether or not government can really change the demand of parents to be spending on their kids? I think it's a real question. You know, the ideological piece in terms of a time when you know, relationships with the West and English isn't necessarily valued or wanted is at play as well. So I think the New Yorker is right in sort of flagging the author, all four of those points, as well as equity. I think there were other ways the Chinese government could have approached
this without doing it. So suddenly, and it's suddenness that really shocked so many teachers. And you know, some companies did close overnight, like gogo kid. So you know, hundreds of 1000s of kids all of a sudden lost a connection to someone they had a relationship with for months or years. And that was really, really
difficult. What is interesting is that when you look at this period of time, a lot of people were surprised, you know, two of my characters who I really got to know quite well, they weren't surprised, like they actually had been recommending and suggesting to teachers on their platforms, diversify, diversify, diversify, you don't want to teach just students in China. And both Kim and Lexi, the two subjects in the film, were really consistent months ahead of this, about that message of
diversification. And it points to the fact that, you know, really getting to know what's happening with canaries in the mine, in terms of the people who were involved on the ground, as far as insights to changes is really important, because it's practitioners, not just policymakers or researchers who have the insights into what's happening in the education industry.
And one of your characters actually had a YouTube channel or maybe created it after this. I'm not sure all about helping other people who do this for a living navigate the sort of complexities of it, it was the online teacher did something like that.
Yeah, both of them had very active channels, online teacher dude was advising people on different kinds of companies. And Lexi had worked for over 10 Different companies, and shared her knowledge and experience on a large community of practice. That was all about
diversifying your practice. And as soon as the crackdown happened, both of these subjects became, you know, their time was really wanted and demanded, and it was overwhelming for them because they had all of these teachers who hadn't diversified wanting advice on if I can't work in China. What do I do? What are the other options? And how do I continue to be a gig worker working with students if I can't work through a Chinese company?
Yeah. It's really interesting. It makes sense that their advice was, you know, a little Cassandra Riley considered very prescient in that moment when everything fell apart and they're, you know, people came knocking on the door asking because they been thinking about it for quite a while. It's really, really interesting. And again, very interesting coincidence that these were some of the teachers you had already been following without knowing that the double reduction policy was out on the
horizon. It's amazing sort of coincidence.
Yeah, that's one of the fun things about trying to do a documentary that you know, what you plan, you have to be flexible. And, you know, it changes. And I hope I've created a film that raises awareness for viewers gives people a new insight allows people to gain new perspectives, and will be a historical record in the long term of a piece that's different from traditional journalism in sort of showing and conveying in human narrative form. What happened to these four teachers?
Yeah, I mean, the human emotion is very clear from the teacher side, and I'm sure it was there, you know, 10 times as much with the millions of Chinese students who'd lost access to this type of learning. You know, within weeks, there was also an economic major economic impact to China on this. So you mentioned it was the biggest part of the EdTech
industry. And there was a terrific class central report that we'll put a link to in the show notes that basically, you know, listed some of the ramifications, it was $100 billion, wiped off of China's education market cap, like instantly, it completely shut down all future investments, it took China from being one of the fastest growing tech markets to zero to absolutely nothing. Since the policy, a million jobs
were affected. I mean, we saw numbers like new oriental, laying off 60,000 people and THL laying off 90,000 people. I mean, we can't even wrap our minds around the sizes of companies like that in education in the US. companies went bankrupt overnight, Wall Street English, given that this is such a strange, I mean, given the sort of shoot yourself in the foot economic impact of this, I'm curious, do you think that the Chinese government was
surprised? I mean, they seem like these were all by design, but I'm sure they didn't want a million Chinese people to go out on, you know, to lose their jobs based on one policy. What do you think has been the effect, you know, within the Chinese ecosystem, let alone Chinese edtech. Companies like this is just it's like getting a bucket of water thrown over an industry that's growing? What do you see
as the future of this world? And you know, what would be a sequel to your film that would sort of follow the next step here?
Well, the policy wasn't drafted by people in the Ministry of Education. So I don't think the people who were drafting the policy, were necessarily thinking about all of the ramifications of what could happen. And the government had to sort of move quickly, because there was social unrest from all of these unemployed
folks. So they tried, for example, to create some mandates for government schools to give priority to hiring some of these people who had lost their jobs, to run after school programs, the idea being that they could democratize access to some of these special programs by having them as part of the after school. But there wasn't money that was put in at the scale needed to, at any point, sort of create an equivalent or parallel system now being delivered by
government schools. So they didn't plan well, relative to thinking about the fallout for the employees of Chinese companies. You know, I think, at the macro level on the US side, you know, Gallup came out a few weeks ago with a poll about Americans views of China. And it's about 15%, only that have a favorable feeling towards China, that's down five percentage points from a year ago, you know, prior to 1989, that was in the 70s. You know, so this is a time where perceptions on China
are not at a high. And if you think about these individual teachers, they had a really great taste of the country in terms of their relationship with students and their families. But their view of a government that all of a sudden dramatically changed their livelihood, many of them had never experienced or imagined something like that happening. So you know, their own feelings about China, I think changed as a result, most likely of the double reduction
policy. There's plenty of people who are still trying to figure out, you know, how to get into the China market, and honor the innovation that's coming out of China, particularly in AI, as it relates to you know, what's happening in edtech.
It's so interesting seeing the sort of intention and the results, they feel very mismatched to me, because the intention is when you say, you know, equity, the Chinese government didn't want people to have unfair advantages based on their social class or, you know, relieving pressure on overwork students, or trying to reduce the cost of for parents to have more children like those don't necessarily sound like you know, the various reasons they're certainly social engineering, but when you say,
you know, they probably didn't expect a lot of these economic and sort of social results that that makes a lot of sense.
One of the ironies is that One of the companies 51 Talk, which focuses primarily on the Philippines is still doing pretty well. They have call centers, they have teachers working from home, they're still teaching. And it's not clear whether regulators are just sort of closing their eyes to what's happening with, you know, the Philippine supply of online English against the companies that were really depending upon North American
teachers. And that's sort of one of the interesting things I discovered.
Do you think that's sort of tied to that perception of social class access, you know, of companies like Wall Street English shutting down, but the Filipino companies, which, as you mentioned, tended to be larger groups less costly to families, maybe they willing to overlook them? Because they don't feed as much into that narrative of inequity?
Yeah, or going back to your four points from the New Yorker, that the ideological messages coming out of the Philippines aren't as feared at the relationships that come from North America features.
One of the things that you've mentioned that I thought was so interesting, and this will be our our last question, even though there's so much more to discuss here. Well, you didn't answer my sequel question to either. So I'm gonna get to
that. But you know, when you talk about that ideological piece, you know, there is something a little bit strange, if you really back up and think about it, about millions of your students in your country, let's see, if you're the Chinese government, getting these lessons, you know, daily, or weekly lessons from individuals in other countries that have totally different cultures that have totally different, you know, ways of looking at the
world. And for China that has such a, tries to keep so much control over their citizens access to information and to the internet. You know, the idea of there being this sort of back channel where kids are constantly learning from American adults, I can sort of imagine they might see that as ideologically threatening, they have no idea what those people
are teaching. And, you know, this comes from you, you I've heard you talk about this, I'd love to hear you, you know, flesh that out because it is a really interesting take. Yeah, I
mean, one way to look at this is, you know, China operated well over 100 Confucius Institutes in the United States that were based primarily at American universities. And now there's, you know, just a few dozen that are left. And the United States started to get very worried about the Confucius Institutes and what they were doing. And they had Chinese teachers in the US who were working with
American students. And it became politicized in that universities were told, in some cases, that they wouldn't be able to receive federal funding if they continue to have their Confucius Institutes. So sure enough, Confucius Institutes at American
University started to close. So when we think about these relationships, and how governments, you know, behave, it's not just China that did regulatory action that affected these relationships, the US government took actions that really discourage the success of Confucius Institutes operating in the US that we're also promoting cultural understanding, and, you know, learning about calligraphy and Chinese art and Chinese
language. And that's been a backward motion as well, you know, so I don't think these two things are necessarily unconnected, when we look at what the US did and what China did.
Yeah. So what would be the sequel to this film? What is next,
I would love to do a sequel, if any of your listeners have ideas for funders, let me know, sequel really would be in part trying to learn what's happening now. So the demand hasn't changed. And if the demand hasn't changed, how are families working to access English
Learning? Is it through AI? Is it through independent contractors like Tim, is it through other learning materials, and getting a sense of the impact on Chinese students and families and trying to gain more access on the China side, which would be very difficult to students and families to understand what they're actually doing outside of their government schooling.
So that would be part of the SQL and then also trying to understand the impact that this had on some of those workers that were laid off or the impact on schools that all of a sudden were given mandates, but not necessarily resources to implement those mandates. So it would be for me a great story to continue to follow. It requires resources and time and negotiating access, all of which I'm, you know, certainly
contemplating. Doing I'm also looking at some other ideas for other films related to education, that are also of interest to
me. Makes a lot of sense. That would be very interesting to see where all that demand is going when the supply and the solutions just dry up overnight. So you've mentioned artificial intelligence a few times on this podcasts, it is obviously core to what is happening in China in lots of different ways as it is starting to be around the world.
What do you see, as you know, some of the most exciting trends in the EdTech landscape right now you can mention AI, but I want to hear another one as well, this is my new role, because everybody wants to say, AI. What is happening in AI? And what else do you think we should all keep an eye on?
I mean, I'm really interested in general, how education platforms are able to connect people to people, you know, what are the ways that someone who's learning French, who wants to practice French, can do that with someone who's, you know, learning English and wants to practice their English and they have a relationship with each other? And what kinds of platforms allow for those
relationships? What kind of platforms support, you know, interesting pedagogical practices for, you know, individual teachers working with a student working with groups of students in blended learning types of ways? What's the role of peer learning all of those questions that are about the human relationship, and how technology can support that so that it's a flat world, and it doesn't really matter, you know, where your teacher or where your tutor or where your colleague is
located? I find really interesting.
Yeah, and that innovation of those platforms that allow that kind of direct access is really underlying this entire section of the EdTech industry, that this was focused on the idea of Chinese family, being behind this sort of information wall, being able to talk to, you know, a teacher in Texas, who's teaching them all sorts of things about vocabulary and English, it's just kind of a miraculous aspect of the internet, that we can use for education.
I'm also really, you know, interested in concerns about how this all plays out in developing countries, you know, When access is more difficult to technology, you need to operate with low bandwidth. And the question being, you know, who's going to be supporting the interventions and the designs in the ad tech space that are gonna be of benefit to really, you know, students that are the most disadvantaged by their family income, or by where they live in the world?
It's a great point. And, you know, we've talked to a number of tech entrepreneurs on this show who work in Africa, or the Middle
East and North Africa. And one of the things they mentioned is that, you know, the standard wisdom for quite a while has been if you want to do things in that space, and really reach people, you have to make it text based or low bandwidth, or, you know, as you say, you know, Khan Academy has a version of itself that can work in really, really, you know, areas with very low
connectivity. But if you know, that human relationship, and actually being able to talk to somebody in real time and see their house and see their kids is actually core to what tutoring and learning should look like, well, that's not that easy to do if you only have text or low bandwidth. So it's a really interesting tension that I think we all will all have to see, you know, how we can remedy it from our edtech jobs. You know, last question here. What
is a resource? You've been at the World Bank, the World Bank libraries, like the World Bank bookstore is one of my favorite places in the world? What is one resource that you would recommend for somebody who wants to learn more about any of the topics we discussed today?
I think it goes back to my observation that the knowledge of those who are doing the practice should not be dismissed. So you can read research reports, you can read, you know, things from OECD or
the World Bank or UNICEF. But I think it's really interesting to find the people who are at the front line, either with education, innovation, who are blogging about it, or individual teachers, or educators who are talking about their work, and gain the perspective of the sort of end provider that's representing the frontier, you know, so the Indian teacher, is now the frontier, or the entrepreneur who's trying to find a new way of connecting as the entrepreneur. I learned so
much for this film. By watching literally hours of online content developed by teachers about their work, I was able to understand the differences of the pedagogical design between magic years and gogo kid and 51 talk by listening to teachers about what they were doing. And if we're really going to be focused on teaching and learning and outcomes. I think being really close to the end user, the student and the deliverer, the teacher or some platform is really important.
Terrific point really, really interesting. And maybe we'll talk about getting a couple of links into the show notes to some of those channels, if they're on YouTube are accessible in other ways. That would give people a little bit of that frontline access to how the end providers are thinking about this because it is a huge world with 10s of 1000s at least people all informing each other and teaching each other. And yeah, a world that I think a lot of us do not have any idea of
how it works. So that's terrific suggestion. And we'll work together. I know, you know, online teacher dude is the one that I comes to mind or, you know, Miss Lexie, but I have a feeling, you know, a lot of different ones. And we can put some of them in the show notes.
Great. The other thing, making the film available, um, you know, again, really excited about being part of canopy and new day, I'm also really putting a lot of energy into how do I reach a Chinese audience because I really love to let Chinese families have a perspective on this industry. From an outsider, the film has been created with Chinese
subtitles. And there's lots of challenges to having documentary film scene in China, as you can imagine, particularly ones that have segments about the cultural revolution. So censored or Uncensored, I'm trying to learn about the avenues to get this
film seen in China. And if any of your viewers have ideas, you know, I would love to hear from you, you can contact me through the website, English hustle.org, as I try to really use the film to promote dialogue, discussion, and more, you know, cultural understanding. And that really depends on reaching an audience. That's global.
Absolutely. So you know, throughout this episode, there have been a few really different, really specific and interesting ideas about how you might get involved as a listener, you can, you know, fund Charlie's next film, you can run a session where you show it, you show English hustle in a private space to other two people and sort of host a showing, you can connect with new day or canopy films to go see it as well or kind of be in libraries to see it as well, or get in touch with him about what
the sequel might be and what else is going on in this amazing world. And finally, what he was just mentioning that you can connect and help figure out how to get this shown in China. If any of those strike your interest, please, you know, get in touch you can find him at English hustle.org. Or you can come through me as well. Charlie Abelmann English hustle about the Chinese ad tech and tutoring industry that rise and fall with a very human perspective. It is
a really cool film. I definitely recommend listeners, find it wherever you can. And thanks so much for being here. This is a really unique and fascinating interview for us.
Thanks so much and thanks for the work that you do. I really enjoy listening to your your shows.
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