The Exhaustion of the American Teacher

[Reader Rabbit]

6. Not stupid, just susceptible to emotional blackmail.

Teaching, more than any other profession, is open to the "If you really cared, you would {insert questionable demand here}." People get into teaching because they care. Thus, they are more easily manipulated into giving up their experience and expertise for nothing. Unfortunately, it's part of the culture, as someone up-thread mentioned. Teachers who work strictly to contract hours are disparaged as "clock-punchers"—most often by their own co-workers, who see themselves as "better" than that.

As long as this "martyr" mindset exists, American public education will never improve.