[JamesP81]

Were we serious about efforts to improve public education, one of the first things we would do is eliminate schools of education.

Agree in the strongest possible terms. Best teacher I ever had was one of my computer science professors. He didn't have a degree in education. He did, however, have degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. In short, he was thoroughly familiar with the material he was teaching.

[-YYZ-]

On the flip side of that, by far the worst teachers I ever had were also college professors - probably brilliant in their academic work, but with poor abilities to communicate (often with accents so thick you could cut them with a knife) and get ideas across. Just having a good grasp of the subject material doesn’t necessarily qualify a person to lead a classroom of 20-35 children - some education in the subject of teaching is probably a good idea, too. At the university level at least we expect students to be self-motivated and work around their profs’ shortcomings, but at the public school level we expect teachers to have some abilities in teaching students who are not so motivated, too.