Professions are occupational arrangements for dealing with human problems. Professional "people work" requires a certain interactive closeness; face-to-face communication is prominent in professional-client relations. This also seems the case in the educational system. But in education, organization provides the "raison d'etre" of this profession. This organizational infrastructure enables and delimits educational interaction. The school bureaucracy is criticized by the profession; the profession has an outspoken interest in reforming its organizational infrastructure again, again and again. This article provides a theoretical analysis of teaching, which elucidates this relation between profession, organization and work. (Contains 6 notes.)