With all due respect to your friend...I take issue with that statement. There are a lot of dedicated, intelligent, caring and loving teachers out there who are trying their utmost to educate the students in their charge. They can’t help the chaos in the classrooms or the lack of parental interest at home or those dictating what they can teach, say and how to grade. They certainly work for pennies with no respect and no help.
God bless the dedicated teachers. They deserve all our help, respect and understanding and...I applaud them.
This fellow came from teaching at a magnet school in Montgomery, AL, to teach at a pubic high school here in Tennessee. The change he saw was all too obvious, especially with the local administrators. Some of the stories he has about teachers and administrators he's experienced would curl your hair. He is well aware that there are quite a few good teachers trying to do a good job. He's also acutely aware that our public skools are a mess. As such, he sends his child to private school, making tremendous sacrifices to his own existence to do so. He's very aware of the lack of parental interest. However, he's also confronted daily with teachers and administrators who do the minimum to get by, and, by his estimation, that is about 50% of them he has encountered....hence the saying he uses you find so much displeasure with.