I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic — it has no conscience

Great teachers are wonderful. They change lives. We need them. The problem is that most schools don’t like great teachers. They’re organized to stamp them out, bore them, bureaucratize them, and make them average.

Teachers are very undervalued for what they do.

A teacher seldom receives full recognition for his services during his lifetime, unless he lives to extreme old age. While the physician is often cheered by the gratitude of those to whom his skill has restored to health, and the clergyman receives the affectionate thanks of those whom he has guided and comforted, and the successful lawyer is supposed to be burdened with plaudits and fees,—the teacher has to do mainly with those who are too immature to understand the services which he renders and to appreciate the self-denial which is manifested in much of his care. His pupils are too little acquainted with the world to compare his acumen and his learning with those of others; they cannot sympathize with him in his ambitions and difficulties and task; they may not feel his strong desire to go on to the acquisition of new knowledge.

We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers' raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don't make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching tomorrow's future or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren't they too stupid to be teaching our kids?

I don’t think we give kids enough respect for what they understand.

With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.

Teachers teach because they care. Teaching young people is what they do best. It requires long hours, patience, and care.

Teachers should prioritize the well-being of their students, as it is the pupils who suffer most when teachers neglect their teaching duties.

We need great teachers out there because people need great role models. It’s one of those things that you look back and think about those really great teachers that we had and some who … didn’t make an impact on me and I think we learn more from them of what not to do. But, nowadays, I think the respect factor has to be added back into the school system and that comes from at home. The respect for teachers should be there. Education and healthcare are the two most important things if you think about it.

You have to remember children are not usually very interested in what their parents do for a living.

Children in this country are receiving virtually no education. Even in the so-called private schools, where they are paying so much, the children are taught extraneous things and in the end donʼt receive a good education. The teacher-student relationship is poor, affecting teaching and learning.

You have not reared him to care what others do, or think, or say. How then should he care for education, for is that not the study of what others care about?

teacher flight from the challenges in such schools — violence and disorder, truancy, lower school readiness and English-language proficiency, less supportive home environments — means that students in these schools get a generally inferior education. Many teachers in poor schools today are doing a heroic job, driven by idealism, but in a market economy the most obvious way to attract more and better teachers to such demanding work is to improve the conditions of their employment.