What happens if no one complains, nothing changes as a result, and everyone just quits instead? You get the current situation, which has not even developed fully. Most of what you take for granted is because someone at one point in time complained about how things were and tried to change them. If you are good enough, force change, just quitting it is an acceptance that you lose your battle and you go on to select another, easier battle, in the hopes you won't lose that too. Nothing wrong with quitting, but I do find it wrong to smear those who complain about wrong things.

I've been hearing teachers complain about this kind of thing my entire life. To me, it seems like complaining isn't working. If anything, the issues teachers are facing are getting worse. This is because, I imagine, administrators know they can ignore the complaints and still get the output from the teachers at the given pay. If complaints don't hurt administrators, then they won't motivate change.

I think complaints can be useful in identifying a problem, but if your complaints have been made, just continuing to complain doesn't do anything. On the other hand, quitting, does two useful things. First, it takes you out of a bad situation letting you move on to a better one faster. Second, it helps brings the problem to a head. The administration can ignore teachers complaining, they cannot ignore teachers quitting. At some point they will have to resolve the issue.

>It's not like teachers are fired for being bad.

They are.

The exception tends to be at the poorest schools where the principals have trouble hiring and keeping teachers. When I was interviewing for teaching positions, I met with the principal for a school in South Central L.A. and the only question he asked me as, “do you promise not to quit before the end of the school year?”

Elsewhere bad teachers are fired, sometimes even in the middle of the school year.