There are lots of good ideas on our side about how to fix K-12 education, yours included, but until the several states abolish the monopoly they have given to colleges of education to produce certified (or credentialed or licensed or whatever the legislature decided to call it) teachers, it won’ t help. From my experience, about 15% of ed majors are dedicated, diligent students, who really want to educate children. The other 85% are ditzes who picked the easiest major in the university, are math phobic, and while marginally literate can’t write at what used to be an 11th grade level. The miseducation they get from colleges of education, rubbish from Dewey that’s been dragging down American education for over a century, Vygotsky’s erroneous ideas about the nature of knowledge, whole language reading, whatever the lastest useless enthusiasm in mathematics education is, “self-esteem” as a virtue, . . . Even the “real” stuff taught in colleges of education is at best education lite: a 3 credit course on using audio-visual equipment?? How dumb do you have to be to not be able to use an overhead projector or read the instructions to thread a film projector, or figure out how to give a power-point presentation?
Until the normative credential to teach a subject is an actual degree in the subject, nothing can be fixed.
Vygotsky’s erroneous ideas about the nature of knowledge,
I haven't read the whole thread yet - have to go out the door but will be back and read - but the problem with teachers having degrees in the subject they teach is that not just colleges of education are stuffed with the most radical of leftist teachers, but practically every institution of higher learning is so stuffed. There are very few universities other than a few private colleges that are not flaming cesspools of ultra leftism.