IMO a culture developed in the US in the past few decades - I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint when but it's been within my professional life in IT - that we s

IMO a culture developed in the US in the past few decades - I would be hard-pressed to pinpoint when but it's been within my professional life in IT - that we should minimize any activities in a work environment that do not have a direct tie to revenue. The result is that professional development is all but non-existent unless you do it on your own time. The US is scrutinizing its education system right now. Unfortunately, we're looking for simple answers and pinning blame on teachers when the problems are more systemic. My neighbor is a visiting professor from Germany. His wife is a teacher in grades 5-8 in Germany. My wife and I had dinner with them a while back. They made the observation that blaming teachers took place in Germany about 10 years ago. When all was said and done the problems were more systemic, they were corrected, and the system is considerably better now in their opinion. Hopefully we'll follow suit.