Married couples who quarrel bitterly every day may really need each other as deeply as those who appear to be desperately in love.
Why administrators are respected and schoolteachers are not: An administrator is paid a lot for doing very little, while a teacher is paid very little for doing a lot.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the disparity in respect and compensation between school administrators and teachers.
Edward Abbey's quote draws attention to the contrasting levels of respect afforded to school administrators versus teachers. It suggests that although administrators receive significantly higher pay for what may be perceived as minimal work, teachers, who dedicate immense effort and commitment to their students, are often undervalued and underpaid. This statement critiques the system that prioritizes financial compensation over the meaningful impact that teachers have on education and society.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a faculty meeting discussing budget allocations, this quote could be used to emphasize the need for better support for teachers.
More from Edward Abbey
All quotes βI love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.
If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace.... The rest is only hearsay.
Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
Similar quotes
I don't ask other actors questions. I think that's too intrusive. I just watch. I don't want to be constricted to an idea of what acting is by anyone else. I want to take my own education.
The proudest moment for [a teacher of leaders] is seeing not what students learn but what they do.
Sometimes you buy a book, powerfully drawn to it, but then it just sits on the shelf. Maybe you flick through it, the ghost of your original purpose at your elbow, but it's not so much rereading as re-dusting. Then one day you pick it up, take notice of the contents; your inner life realigns.
In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching.
One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.
Students often have such a lofty idea of what a poem is, and I want them to realize that their own lives are where the poetry comes from. The most important things are to respect the language; to know the classical rules, even if only to break them; and to be prepared to edit, to revise, to shape.