[summer]

In all fairness, there are also some very good teachers working very hard -- but, truly, in other situations, one must have a very high threshold for working with very incompetent people in education. If you don't have that ability to put up with A LOT OF CRAP, better to leave it to those jerks who run the system, because they will never quit their jobs, no matter what. Either you have to get stressed out and lose your health, or find a way to pretend that all that you see and experience is just a mirage in certain situations. (And, some people are better at pretending than others!)

[sageb1]

Some of my best friends were teachers. They thought they were actually going to be able to teach. They were blind-sided by two things. Middle class moms entering the workforce en masse, which meant that teachers now had to try to raise the children, not just teach them. And the NEA, which gleefully saw its opportunity to take over our children's upbringing from the cradle. Good teachers got caught in the middle of this.

Ironically, I remember, as a member of the PTA Council in our area, having to fight to Have a "Teacher of the Year" award. The older, tenured teachers said, "ALL teachers are teachers of the year." Well, no. Many were substandard and fought the idea of being compared with each other.