If a doctor, lawyer or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn t want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some concept of a classroom teacher s job, wrote Donald D. Quinn, himself an experienced teacher. Faced with this daunting situation, some teachers tire of catering to individual needs and striving for professional excellence. A teacher is like a candle which lights others in consuming itself, wrote Giovani Ruffini in an early description of teacher burn-out. The proper role of the school is to prepare the mind for lifelong learning You do not have to look as far as the slums of New York to see where social trends have added to the already-heavy burden borne by teachers. Broken homes, teenage promiscuity and drug and alcohol abuse are common in nice middle-class neighbourhoods too.
Parents are often too apathetic or busy to meet their parental responsibilities.
Problems of youth that were once dealt with at home have been dumped into the schools. In a materialistic society, young people have their attitudes shaped by a commercial pre-packaged youth culture which encourages precocity and contrarity towards authority. Materialism also permeates parental attitudes. Specialized competence and success are all they can imagine. In this spiritual vacuum, it is often left to the teachers to instil higher values.