ABSTRACT
Teacher boosters were as likely as teacher bashers to believe that teachers were prejudiced and racist as well as incompetent. They hoped that teachers could become 'good' or 'true' or 'real' professionals and grounded their hope on a quite different appraisal of the position of teachers in the school bureaucracies than the appraisal made by teacher bashers. One element certainly was the increasing teacher militancy and demands for collective bargaining by teacher unions. The contrasting reformist stance defined teachers as more power less than powerful. Critics with reformist stances affirmed the fundamental legitimacy of the society and of the school system, but they wanted gradual, more or less complete change in both. For some, legitimacy would be increased by providing greater professionalism for teachers; for others, legitimacy required more administrative and/or community control over teachers.
