ABSTRACT
Despite his protestations to the contrary, in his Ruskin speech James Callaghan was highly critical of the teaching profession. How could it be otherwise? At a time when teachers’ claim to be a profession primarily rested on the fact that they had considerable autonomy in deciding what they taught their pupils, how they taught them and how they assessed them (Grace 1987), any critique as fundamental as that made by Callaghan was inevitably a criticism of the teaching profession itself. What Callaghan wished for, perhaps naively, was a world where teachers were different, where they were willing to work with others in society whom he believed had a legitimate interest in the education of the nation’s children. In short, what he implied was a new professionalism among teachers, one based on the recognition of the legitimacy of accountability rather than the practice of autonomy.
