Well said. And most professors do not have, nor or required to get, training in teaching at all! Random is the right word and there is a large stdev at that. I remember one semester I had both, by far, the best and worst professors of my long schooling career; both in the same faculty too. Going from one class to the next was disjointing on how vastly different the experience was. The worst prof was so bad that that the students of the class banded together and complained to the dean that we were learning nothing and that this was a required class for our degrees. The best prof was so good that he was able to fill in some of what the other was missing on top of his regular curriculum and it felt effortless.
I understand, but it's also unfortunately unrealistic to expect that someone who is already an expert in something will also become an expert in teaching. When you are an academic, besides your teaching you need to be constantly updating your knowledge of the state of the art and pushing the boundaries to get published and stay relevant in your field. It's hard to also focus on learning teaching skills which are, sometimes, very unorthodox and not straightforward. Also, factor in that those who teach teaching are also sometimes not good teachers, and are also researchers, and will also need to stay updated with research, and will also try to push unorthodox, unvalidated teaching methods to their students... it's complicated.
Yes, I do agree its complicated. But... while it may be unrealistic to expect them to be an expert in teaching, I think it is absolutely realistic to expect them to be competent in teaching, seeing as that is a fundamental component (along with research) of being a professor.
