ABSTRACT
Teachers and the profession of teaching, as well as university-based teacher education, are all under great stress in these opening years of the new millennium. Teachers as a collective entity would no longer have a say over such essentials as class size or curriculum. Teachers in a democracy need access to a wide range of materials, created by scholars, educators, and nonprofit groups rather than by a few corporations. Teacher candidates also study child development, learning theory, and content-specific pedagogy in order to learn how best to tailor their instruction to the specific children they work with. Empowered teachers would pursue their own intellectual passions and creative interests and would bring these into the classroom in a meaningful way, hoping to spark the fire of similar passions in their students. In a mature profession, teachers with a strong sense of the relationship between democracy and education would reclaim their historic control over the curriculum.
