[jasonrr]

I think I understand what you're trying to say here, but the comment about presidents in war time is really throwing me off. A president is an actual person who has done "things". My opinion of the president is informed by my knowledge of those things, so, when asked my opinion of the president, I can answer. The survey question you compare it to is essentially the equivalent of asking "Do you like the idea of teachers?" If you were to ask people about the teachers in their district or their child's teachers, you would likely get a very different spread.

That's not to say that teachers don't enjoy a good deal of prestige, but I think it is safe to say that the survey you are using here may overstate your case for just how popular actual individual teachers are with their respective communities.

[mnemonicsloth]

I think we're probably in agreement here. I wanted to use the president-in-wartime reference to parallel the fuzzy attitudes about teaching that you're objecting to. We'll rally around the flag regardless of who the president goes to war with, and if you ask people about teaching, and they'll tell you they love teachers because teachers love their children... while the reality is that teachers are just as human (and yes, just as venal) as everybody else.

There is one angle I'm not probably not seeing. I don't have kids myself, so I don't know what it's like to leave a child in the care of strangers for seven hours a day. You might have to ascribe positive motivations to those people to keep from going crazy. But then I think about how much unhappiness one incompetent teacher can inflict on a child, and that really gets my hackles up.