ABSTRACT
Good education demands good teachers. Over the course of the twentieth century, as the teaching profession has grown, so have its standards risen. Many teacher-training courses in rich countries now last for four years and follow after 12 years of schooling: teachers have now had four more years of full-time education than used to be the norm. Society has steadily expected more of teachers in the variety of tasks they have to perform, in the skills they need to master and in the imagination required for their work. Rising expectations have brought rising quality. But, in the last third of the century, near-impossible burdens have been placed on the teaching service of developing countries. The end of the colonial era brought new demands for education. Schools had to expand at an unprecedented rate and needed to be staffed. Demographic pressure and the practical difficulty of expanding teacher education in pace with the demand for schooling made for a chronic shortage of teachers in much of Africa and Asia.
