'Teachers should just say no to cheap talk and lip service'

"Teachers get lots of lip service, misty-eyed declarations of admiration, and cloying tributes," Rick Hess writes. "These blanket hugs are ritually offered up to three million plus teachers, without qualifiers or challenges. ... These platitudes are the junk food of speechmaking. They seem insincere, like the empty words of car salesmen (even when they're not). But there's a bigger problem. This isn't how we talk to professionals. It's how we talk to Cub Scouts or T-ball players, because we think they're cute and too fragile for tougher stuff."