ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns a small group of teachers and the ways in which their working lives are changing. It draws upon the debate over professionalism and proletarianization as it has been applied to teachers and traces the discontinuities and similarities of experience between public school masters and the majority of teachers who work in the state system. The chapter shows that the class position of teachers in public schools is, in some ways, less contradictory than that of teachers in the state system. The junk room of educational studies is littered with discarded theoretical and empirical works concerned with the professionalization of school teachers. The views of professionalism are extreme, and it is reasonable to suggest that elements of both self-interest and altruism can be found within teachers and the more widely recognized professions. Salaries are traditionally higher than those for teachers in state schools and there is often the further perk of heavily subsidized housing.
