This National Council for History Education (NCHE) Occasional Paper presents the text of a speech given by Roger Mudd, a former network news correspondent and now a correspondent for the History Channel, to NCHE members. He spoke of his regard for the profession of teaching, and of the difficulty of being a teacher and the respect for teachers that is missing in U.S. society. Mudd told some personal stories from his professional life, and since it was just a few days before the 2000 presidential election, he mused about people's expectations and convictions about every new president who takes office. He discussed the results of the testing programs for public school students, mentioning that in his state of Virginia it was the high school test on United States history that most of the students flunked. Mudd also talked about National History Day and related some anecdotes about U.S. presidents from earlier times. He concluded with some personal opinions about how history is currently taught, and how television was not much help until Ken Burns' 1990 PBS series, "The Civil War." Roger Mudd ended his speech with a humorous anecdote about having the surname Mudd. (BT)