II.

Abstract As the nation faces a growing imbalance between the demand for teachers and the supply and various reforms of the teaching profession are being considered it is important to examine historical trends to see what can be learned from the past. In absolute terms, teaching has indisputably become a more desirable occupation. Real salaries have increased and working conditions have generally improved. However, in comparative terms. Teacher's salaries have lost ground relative to those of other college-educated workers. And many working conditions have not kept pace with the rising expectations endangered by the demands of teaching and by comparisons with other college-educated personnel. The recent decade of teacher surplus is an aberration. Throughout most of the twentieth century there has been a shortage of teachers. Nevertheless, educational standards for entry to the teaching profession have increased; whereas the norm for teachers at one time was high school graduation it is now college graduation. (Most teachers today have master's degree acquired within the first few years of teaching.) The analysis suggests that major teacher shortages such as that of the 1950's were accompanied by (if not solved by) particularly large increases salaries and increases in the educational standards for entry to teaching. Wage discrimination has resulted in teaching being more attractive to women than to men, but women's right movement and the expansion of occupational opportunities have freed women from being a captive labor force for teaching. Although the civil rights and women's have begun to affect school staffing and their full effects have no yet been felt because schools have done relatively little hiring since these movement began to affect the career choices of women and members of minority. Recently, teaching has become a far more desirable occupation during the twentieth century. Teachers today enjoy more freedom and autonomy that did their nineteenth-century predecessors, and they are saddled with fewer arduous physical burdens in their daily work. Until recently, recurrent shortages were eased by the availability of relatively well qualified talented women and minorities who had few alternatives well qualified talented women and minorities who had few alternatives. Teachers in the modern society are competitive and has different teaching strategies which motivates the learner