The National Center for Education Statistics has reported a dramatic drop in the reading and math scores of 9-year-old students. This is not surprising.

We can surely blame this decline on school closings due to COVID19, but I am inclined to think that COVID is only a part of the problem. This Fall very many states report a virtually desperate shortage of teachers. Some states are even reducing required credentials for teaching just to get some warm bodies into their classrooms. So we have to ask why the pool of well-prepared teachers has dried up.

Who would want to be a teacher? Interference by mindless education bureaucracies and by special interest groups; the lack of cooperation and even antagonism of parents; indifferent students, undisciplined students, violent students; growing national anti-intellectualism and hostility towards learning and expertise; popular view of teachers as, to use Trump’s word, suckers and losers.

Why take on a job that society does not really want to have done, or, at least, to have done properly? Idealism, also an object of contempt in our society, can carry one only so far before constant frustration and obstruction drain away all enthusiasm.

Our society depends on two groups to fulfill two of its paramount needs, on teachers for education and on police for law enforcement. Both groups are targets of contempt, both groups are badly underpaid. Both groups contain some incompetents who cannot be removed because there is no one to take their places.

It’s time for us to provide greatly increased support, financial and moral, for teachers and policemen, or America will slide more quickly into decrepitude.