How surprised I am to hear that the teaching profession in Portugal has deteriorated, too. In the US the profession no longer attracts the best and the brightest. I was a teacher for 22 years and a principal of a rather large elementary school for six years until I retired. I can honestly say that it was a noble profession in my time. Unfortunately, that is no longer true. The stress, long hours, lack of respect within the community, the decline of the social structure, broken homes, drugs, poverty, COVID, as well as the refusal to treat teachers as highly trained professionals has made the job undoable. We now have a severe shortage of teachers in every state across the country.