In my own opinion, I do agree with the statement that teachers were being appreciated and valued by society more in the past that they were in nowadays. Teachers are not being respected that much is due to varieties of reasons, in this passage I would explain my appointment from three different perspectives: salary, authority and populations. 
Initially, teachers do not have well-organized system arranged in government, to get enough payment and welfare. As the technology has improved, the salary of other technical positions such as engineer and trader has been improved higher and higher, but teacher's salary does not appear to have large scaled uplift, and even relatively low compare to other easier jobs. Therefore, teachers cannot get the same or better life conditions compare to others with similar educating systems.
Secondly, as the the population grows, the amount of people that gets to be a teacher has also increased year by year to provide better academic level of general publics. However, there are a small proportion of teachers who does not require the virtues and ability to be a teacher. An example of bad teachers may be making illegal fraud to get money from students; ignore, or even agree with students' bad behaviors such as drug abusing or using guns in school. These kind of teachers has last a negative impression, and make teachers loss their authority and credibility in people's mind.
Lastly, because the varieties of job selecting has being increased as our society advances and knowledge level or population has largely enhanced; educating are not being as rare and hard as before. The job of teaching becoming more and more less attractive and unique. This is also resulted by the general academic outlook was not fully developed in before, therefore teacher is more respected and infrequent to see comparing to other jobs. The increase of teachers resulted the reducing the society position.