Education Quote by Charles Schumer

Schumer’s line is a small piece of political aikido: it praises teachers while quietly indicting a system that treats them as convenient punching bags. “Exalted” isn’t accidental. It reaches for a civic, near-sacred register, framing teaching as nation-building work rather than just another job in the public sector. Then he snaps to “picked-on,” a playground word that does strategic work of its own. It’s deliberately plain, emotionally legible, and it recasts policy fights over pay, unions, testing, and “indoctrination” as something closer to bullying than debate.

The intent is coalition politics with moral varnish. By elevating teachers symbolically, he signals alignment with educators and their unions without immediately naming the messy specifics (budgets, collective bargaining, standards, or culture-war flashpoints). The subtext: if teachers are being “picked on,” someone is doing the picking. That “someone” can be tailored to the audience: austerity-minded legislatures, anti-union governors, parents’ rights activists, or a media ecosystem that turns classrooms into a proxy battlefield.

Context matters because the phrase lands in an era when teaching has become a stress test for American governance: chronic underfunding, politicized curricula, pandemic-era burnout, and a widening teacher shortage. Schumer’s formulation also draws a boundary around legitimate critique. You can argue about outcomes, he implies, but you can’t morally justify scapegoating the people asked to hold the social fabric together every weekday morning. The line works because it converts a complex policy ecosystem into a simple ethical contrast: honor versus harassment.