"I think teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession"
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Schumer's admonition that teaching should be an exalted profession, not a picked-on profession, captures a tension at the heart of American public life. Exalted evokes the dignity society claims to attach to those who shape the next generation. Picked-on evokes the reality many educators describe: public blame for systemic problems, micromanagement through mandates and tests, political crossfire over curricula, and compensation that lags the complexity of the work. The point is not mere sentimentality but a diagnosis of incentives. When a profession is revered, talent flows toward it, autonomy and trust are extended, and the culture frames its practitioners as problem solvers. When it is scapegoated, attrition rises, cynicism grows, and the work narrows to compliance.
The phrasing also flips a schoolyard image back onto the adults. Picked-on is how children describe unfair treatment. To apply it to teachers is to suggest that those who guard civic formation are themselves being bullied by budget cuts, culture wars, and shifting policy targets. Exaltation, by contrast, need not mean pedestalizing teachers beyond critique. It means building structures that match rhetoric: rigorous preparation and mentoring, time for planning and collaboration, pathways for growth, and pay that signals public esteem. Countries that consistently produce strong outcomes often start by elevating the profession and trusting trained educators to exercise judgment.
Context matters here. The remark arrives in an era of teacher shortages, pandemic fatigue, and polarized debates that turn classrooms into battlegrounds. The stakes extend beyond educator morale. Children absorb what adults value. If society treats teachers as expendable or suspect, it teaches a lesson about knowledge and authority that undermines learning itself. Exalting teaching, in practice, means deciding that the everyday work of helping a child read, reason, and belong is not a political prop or a budget line to trim, but a central public good worth dignifying and defending.
The phrasing also flips a schoolyard image back onto the adults. Picked-on is how children describe unfair treatment. To apply it to teachers is to suggest that those who guard civic formation are themselves being bullied by budget cuts, culture wars, and shifting policy targets. Exaltation, by contrast, need not mean pedestalizing teachers beyond critique. It means building structures that match rhetoric: rigorous preparation and mentoring, time for planning and collaboration, pathways for growth, and pay that signals public esteem. Countries that consistently produce strong outcomes often start by elevating the profession and trusting trained educators to exercise judgment.
Context matters here. The remark arrives in an era of teacher shortages, pandemic fatigue, and polarized debates that turn classrooms into battlegrounds. The stakes extend beyond educator morale. Children absorb what adults value. If society treats teachers as expendable or suspect, it teaches a lesson about knowledge and authority that undermines learning itself. Exalting teaching, in practice, means deciding that the everyday work of helping a child read, reason, and belong is not a political prop or a budget line to trim, but a central public good worth dignifying and defending.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teacher Appreciation |
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