[bsder]

Oh, you mean high school.

In the US, at least, the answer is actually "Yes. You can even develop a passion for a subject and instill it into your students."

My father taught English almost 4 decades in a very rural school. No Child Left Behind had him quite concerned intially.

Until it came down ...

He laughed at it. "Flag poor students early"--okay, his grades were in Excel since he was terrible at math--sort, print, tell administrators to go away. "Need writing samples"--"I have two entire filing cabinets of writing assignments for this years classes. Which drawers do you want?"

Now, I have to avoid generalizing. My father did not teach in an inner city school (the area had brutal poverty--but probably less crime) where they were continuously under threat of being forced closed by the government. He also did not teach in China or South Korea where getting the piece of paper seems even worse than the US.

However, the US isn't as brutal on the "teach to the test" fronts as many other places.