Such teaching on the way to some form of vocation deemed far more honorable was not of a sort to make teaching a profession in itself.

Later, some measure of higher education was given young women in Normal Schools to fit them for teaching little children, and the teacher of the elementary school became, thereby, a professional.

To-day few young men teach to help themselves through college and only a few choose teaching as a profession.

To-day, also, the profession of teaching, which once was almost the sole opening for higher vocational work for women, now competes with a large number of professions or types of business or applied art, and fewer women proportionally are headed for the schoolroom when they leave college or normal school.
This tendency to take other lines of work increased to unprecedented extent during the Great War, which opened new worlds of paid work to women.

This gives us the present teacher shortage, which all who know conditions feel to be the most serious menace to universal education.
There are not only not enough teachers to go around, there are still fewer teachers fit to teach.