Of course it's not just the low pay that is driving good people out of teaching; it's not even the combination of low pay, contempt from the community, contempt from school and district administrators who see master teachers as a liability (they would rather have beginning teachers whose tabulas are perfectly rasa and ready to be programmed with whatever new district fads the administration is pushing), and the fact that many children today are not pleasant to be around. Perhaps it's all this plus the reality that teaching is no longer a place for people with imagination. Creative people need not apply. Most don't.

The point of all this is that just at the time when we most desperately need quality teachers, just when our intellectual survival now demands men and women in the classroom who teach so well and make our children think so well that we'll have no choice but to pay that teacher the ultimate teacher's compliment condemnation to death by hemlock or crucifixion; just at the time now when families and all the other traditional institutions are abdicating their responsibilities in everything from teaching ethics to basic hygiene, abandoning the effort it takes to turn young savages into citizens; surrendering and handing these duties to schools… that happens to be the time when the schools lack the small but critical mass of brilliant, creative, and dedicated people who've always made the system work.

To compensate, teachers hang signs in their faculty lounges. The signs say things like "A teacher's influence touches eternity."

It may. It may. But take it from somebody who was in there pitching for eighteen years good teachers are invaluable, more precious than platinum or presidents, but a bad teacher's influence touches the same eternity.