Though teaching yet has its advocates, more and more teachers are leaving the profession after only a few years in the school setting. The satisfactions of this impossibly complex and difficult profession are less and less obvious in this era of accountability and high stakes testing. Indeed, I suggest that the satisfactions often ascribed to the teaching profession are ever doubtful, and in the article I look for an alternative to the current propaganda concerning the satisfactions to be expected by teachers in their work, and suggest that to teach is to take an ethical stance in the world. This ethical stance is, finally, the only and the best satisfaction available to the teacher. (Contains 9 notes.)