This article is addressed to the teachers and to students — future teachers. In preparing for their teaching profession they must realize the importance of close relations between the development of the profession of the teacher and the character of teacher’s personality, based on social conditions. Using historical development as a background for her arguments, the author discusses the most typical demands made on the personality of the teacher, which should answer the conditions of social as well as scholarly development. Taking as an example the most important personages in the history of pedagogy, the author depicts the development of the profession of the teacher. The concluding part of the article stresses the social responsibility of teacher’s work — a lasting trait and attitude of the teacher, on the basis of which further specialized, pedagogical, psychological and other requirements are being manifested.