Education Quote by David Ogden Stiers

There is a blunt, almost throwaway cruelty to “High school music teachers... nobody makes a living off it,” and that’s the point. Stiers, an actor who spent his career inside institutions that monetize talent, is needling a culture that loves music as an ornament but treats the people who teach it as expendable. The ellipsis does heavy lifting: it mimics the pause before a punchline, the beat where an audience recognizes an uncomfortable truth. It’s not a policy argument dressed up as a quip; it’s a line delivered like backstage realism.

The specific intent reads as deflationary. “High school music teachers” evokes the most earnest version of artistry: pedagogy, adolescence, band rooms, the long, patient labor of turning noise into discipline. Then comes the shrug: “nobody makes a living off it.” The phrasing collapses an entire profession into economic futility, exposing how quickly respect is translated into salary. You can hear the implied contrast: we’ll pay for spectacle, celebrity, prestige. We won’t pay for the pipeline that produces it.

Subtextually, it’s also about status. Music education is framed as a “nice” calling rather than skilled work, feminized and moralized in the way caretaking jobs often are. Stiers’ actorly sensibility matters here: performers understand that the arts are a labor market with winners, gatekeepers, and a vast underpaid support system. The line lands because it’s both an inside joke and an indictment: the culture applauds the concert, then stiffs the teacher who taught the first scale.