I wonder if kids pick that because its one job that they understand and attribute positively (to some degree - "a teacher is someone that teaches kids like me at a school and we have fun") whereas jobs that their parents have are more nebulous and more negative in their mind ("my parents leave for the day and then come back angry? I don't want to do that").

I know a former teacher in China who told me that it's a very respected profession there, in the same way that doctors and lawyers are respected in the west.

I knew lots of kids who wanted to be teachers. Ask a kid that age to list their favorite people and their teacher will pop up often, because it’s someone they know. Teaching is something tangible to them.

I also knew several adults who wanted to be a teacher, but quit shortly after starting because they literally couldn’t afford it due to unreasonably low wages. We should really treat good teachers better.

A lot more children from developing countries tend to want to be teachers because education is not taken for granted there (even when it has been universally available for a couple generations like it is now in China, the times in which it was not are still in living memory...go back to the 1960s and 70s and you still had many people in especially rural China who had very low levels of education). Education is seen there as a noble profession helping people on the path to a better life, and they look at teachers not too differently from how they look at doctors.

By contrast, developed countries tend to take education for granted, and young people see that education is not really that necessary to become rich, powerful and famous, and the most glamorized people in the society tend to be either some kind of entertainer, sports or pop star, or rich entrepreneurs.