The teaching profession has seldom been under greater pressure than it is at present. This book aims to help teachers to understand the forces that shape their personal development, their careers and ultimately their relations with the children they teach. It identifies three main areas of pressure on the individual teacher: the influence of the school, with its myths, its use of language as an instrument of manipulation and its social pressures, and finally the internal, psychological influences which lead people into teaching in the first place and have a powerful effect on their future careers. The authors show that by bringing them out into the open and examining the values upon which they are based, teachers can achieve a greater say in decisions that affect their practice in the classroom and successfully tread the difficult path between autonomy and accountability.