There was a time when standing up for public school teachers in the United States was not merely acceptable behavior, it was actually the cultural norm. We gave our teachers accolades in the public arena, hoping that our efforts at demonstrating our united esteem might somehow make up for the low pay we afforded them. Those days are long gone now. Speaking up on behalf of teachers almost automatically provokes a response from an assortment of folks who would prefer that we keep the focus of our national education conversation on failing schools and rubber room teachers. They have their reasons, those in the chorus screaming “Demonize them!” There are the education entrepreneurs who are engaged in deadly-serious business competition against the public schools. They want–need is a better word–public schools to sit in ill repute so that the school chains in which they hold a financial stake may expand. There are the voucher folks who need the public school teachers to be bad enough to justify bundles of public monies (preferably with no strings attached) being thrown over the ivied walls of private schools. Some home school advocates cheer any bad press concerning public schools. I’m not sure why, but it may have to do with public schools being constitutionally disallowed from favoring the home team’s God. There are the union-busters who really don’t like teachers’ unions and want them to go away. The “bad teachers can’t be fired” line is a vital armament in their ideological arsenal. There are those who resent the fact that the worst-performing schools in America are reserved for minority populations who have been historically denied equal opportunity in every aspect of American life. They blame teachers perhaps because the politicians disavow responsibility. Or maybe just because they have seen more than their share of bad teachers. Over and again, the harried American teacher is collateral damage in a wider ideological war. I’ve known lots of teachers. Some were bad, some were okay, some were solid. And some were absolutely lights-out American-hero-on-a-daily-basis phenomenal. We don’t do enough to protect the good ones in the popular onslaught. We don’t usher them to safety before we carpet bomb our public schools with unhinged vitriol. Someone gave the green light to beat the candy out of bad teachers like so many pinatas, and now a bunch of idiots in blindfolds are swinging away at our education system’s fine china too, for good measure. The great thing about preaching the “bad teachers” gospel is that you can base an entire public speaking career on a handful of bad teacher anecdotes. Even if the percentage of bad teachers is lower than the percentage of doctors who hack off the wrong limbs in surgery, there will still be lots of bad teachers about whom tenacious slanderers may tell stories–ideally stories in which they magnify every gory detail.