So, to wrap up: rather than bring the highest marginal tax rate back to what it was in the 1990’s, we need to bring teachers’ abilities to negotiate their own livelihood to the 1890’s.

(Teachers,) I don’t know if you’ve been listening, but you’re destroying America. Look at you, with your chalk-stained irregular blouses from Loehmann’s, and your Hyundai with its ‘power steering’ and its ‘wind shield.’ I guess bugs hitting you in the face doesn’t cut it for ol’ Mr. Chips. Mr. Holland? Whoever the Dead Poets’ (Society) guy was?

Three months vacation every summer. Special textbooks with all the answers in them. And who outside of Google employees have both a cafeteria and a gymnasium at their workplace? Don’t think we don’t know about those shiny red apples you get day after day after day after day…The point is this: the greed that led you into the teaching profession has led to the corruption of it.

We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort.

And that is why we write.