The US needs to totally revise teacher training.

Today to get teacher certification you have to have taken the Education major in college.  No other major need apply.  If you have not majored in Education you don’t know how to teach.  Thus saith the Ed majors who run the teacher certification process.

Trouble, they are wrong.  There is no magic knowledge in teaching.  Successful teaching calls for the teacher to establish a trusting relationship with the student, in fact all the students in the class, and know the subject they are teaching.  The education major does not teach this. 

 My college roommate wanted to teach school so he took the education major.  He told me it was the most useless and boring stuff he had ever suffered thru.  And my roommate was a sharp guy, if there were anything worth learning in the Education major he would have found it.  Essentially there is no real content in the education major, and they rehashed nothing, over and over again.  Junior and senior year, education courses met twice a day. 

  I have had a lot of teachers over the years.  Mostly good, many very good, a couple of dud’s (Miss Coyne and Mrs. Waters) but in general a pretty good bunch.  The absolute best teachers I ever had were in the US Air Force.  These guys were just enlisted men, pulled right off the flight line and set to teaching in the Field Training Detachment.  They were extremely good; they knew their subject matter backward and forward.  They maintained order in class rooms full if 18 and 19 year olds, the prime age for making trouble.   None of them had gone to college, let alone taken the education major.  My takeaway from this experience is successful teachers know their stuff and develop rapport with their students. 

  For US education I would first abolish certification of teachers.  Let the principal and the faculty at the school look at resumes and interview candidates and hire the ones that seem good.  Allow them to lay off new teachers that are not working out without doing a bunch of paperwork.   Look for college majors in subjects that they will be teaching, English, mathematics, US history, French, Spanish, physics, chemistry, and not wasting time on the Education major that has nothing to teach anyone.