Thanks for the response, Bernie!

I agree that Camus definitely makes reference to that sense of alienation from one’s work. I think I’m focusing more on the early parts of that book, how transcendent hope — that “leap” into another world — is tantamount to suicide. I’ve heard enough of thought leaders, edugurus, tech barons, and Secretaries of Education — many of whom who have never set foot in a classroom — continually lashing us with this rhetoric of disruption, innovation, 21st-century whatever. Yes, there are teachers who are complicit in a system that dehumanizes and degrades. But I place this growing nihilism at the feet of the testing and tech industries, whose anesthetizing illusions drain the human sphere of its value.