Chekhov speaking to Gorky about teachers

He [Chekhov] suddenly fell silent, coughed, glanced sideways at me, and smiled his gentle, kind smile which was always so irresistibly attractive and evoked especial and keen attention to his words.

"You find it boring, listening to my fantasies? But I like talking about this. If you knew how much the Russian village needs a good, intelligent, educated teacher! Here in Russia he needs to be given certain special conditions, and this should be done as soon as possible if we realize that without broad popular education the state will collapse like a house built of badly baked bricks! A teacher needs to be an actor, an artist, passionately devoted to his work, but in Russia he's a laborer, a badly educated man who goes to teach village children with the same enthusiasm with which he would go into penal exile. He is hungry, ignorant, frightened of losing his daily bread. Yet, he ought to be the most important man in the village, able to answer any questions the villagers put to him; so that they recognize in him a force worthy of attention and respect, and no one dares to shout at him, humiliate him as now everyone does: the village constable, the rich shopkeeper, the village priest, the local police superintendent, the local school patron, the village elder, and the official with the title of school inspector, who does not concern himself with improving school education but only with scrupulous adherence to district circulars. Is it not folly to pay a mere pittance to a man who is called upon to educate the people--you understand?--educate the people! It should not be permitted that such a man is obliged to dress in tatters, shiver from cold in damp, drafty schools, breathe in the fumes from a broken-down stove, develop laryngitis, rheumatism and tuberculosis at the age of thirty. It's a shame on all of us! Our teacher lives for eight or nine months of the year like a hermit; he has no one to talk to; he becomes dull from loneliness, lacking books and entertainment. And if he sends for his colleagues, he's accused of unreliability--a stupid word used by the crafty to frighten fools! It's all revolting--the abuse of a man who is doing enormous and terribly important work. You know, when I see a teacher, I feel embarrassed by his timidity, his shabby clothes; I have the feeling that I am somehow guilty of the fact that he is so poor--honestly."

Anton Chekhov and His Times compiled by Andrei Turkov. 1995. Page 151-2.