The teacher's trap: the equation of teaching with child care persists as a way of devaluing the work of teachers. While teaching duties undoubtedly exceed those of child care, how can teachers defend themselves without participating in the downgrading of "caring professions" - presumed to be the domain of women - more broadly?

"God seems to have made woman peculiarly suited to guide and develop the infant mind, and it seems ... very poor policy to pay a man 20 or 22 dollars a month, for teaching children the ABCs, when a female could do the work more successfully at one third of the price.'

-- LITTLETON SCHOOL COMMITTEE, LITTLETON, MASSACHUSETTS, 1849

In the recent dust-up culminating in pre-summer job action by the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF), news forums lit up as supporters and detractors exchanged barbs over the merits of the provincial government's and STF's respective bargaining positions.

While teachers clearly enjoy a base of support and even heroic status as frequent subjects of Hollywood's inspirational kitsch, they also inspire significant public resentment. It is no easy task to sort out the real opposition to the teachers' position from the muddle of anti- unionism and taxpayer angst.

With a new school year under way and a contract now ratified, the dust has all but settled on this dispute in Saskatchewan. Yet teachers' enduring fight for public esteem remains unresolved.

To start, the idea that teachers are merely glorified babysitters, while not always put …