Quick rant of my own
Maybe I don't spend enough time on gun forums (as if), but if anyone thinks the boys in blue complain about nobody understanding their jobs and not appreciating them, look at how often government school teachers complain: low pay, parents don't care, low pay, no respect, low pay, too small of pay raise this year, low pay. Did I mention government school teachers think their pay is too low? They don't get paid for all the time they work in the evenings (as if very many professionals manage to only work 40 hours these days).
Like cops, government school teachers tend to enjoy very strong union protections. In places like NYC and California it is beyond insane how hard it is to fire bad teachers. In NYC they literally have a building where really bad teachers show up and just sit all day. They are too bad to let into a classroom, but it can take years to fire them. So they get paid to sit around reading newspapers or playing cards all day.
Like a bad cop, a bad teacher can ruin a lot of lives. Not through unjustified force. But consider on what happens to a child who doesn't learn math or reading because of a bad teacher. Even if fundamental skills are gained, if a child learns to dislike learning he has been handicapped. A warped view of history won't cripple a person quite so much, but certainly limits potential. (I freely admit that poor parenting is probably a far more common cause of lack of learning than bad teachers. But I'm not paying parents to parent; my taxes are paying teachers to educate the rising generation so they can be productive members of society.) The teachers' union tends to advocate for policies and laws that increase demand for teachers, even to the exclusion of what may be good for the classroom learning environment of the students.
Of course, teachers rarely want to trade their time away from work or work schedules with other professionals. They don't want to trade their tenure for my "employment at will" status.
"Folks, you spent 12 of your most formative years attending public schools. You spent at least 4 years in college studying for the job. You had to do a student-teaching stint somewhere along the way. Were you really shocked by the working conditions and compensation package?"
Interestingly, teachers at private and even public charter schools rarely have the same "abused spouse" kind of attitude and don't complain nearly so much as many of the teachers at regular public schools do. And I almost never hear firefighters or EMTs complain about their jobs.
Charles