ABSTRACT
It is difficult to continue a discussion on education without referring to teachers—their social as well as institutional location, the responsibilities they are endowed with and the difficulties they confront. As education is a constant process of transmission of social heritage, skills, knowledge traditions and values from one generation to another, teachers, as Emile Durkheim reminded us, play a key role in the process of this transaction. But who are they? Are they just paid employees in bureaucratically managed institutions—the way bankers work in a bank, engineers work in a factory? Or, is it a vocation of an altogether different kind? Is the larger society aware of the meaning of this vocation? Does it care for its teachers? How are teachers recruited? How do they define themselves? These are important questions—sociological as well as pedagogical—that we need to reflect upon.
