Obviously this is a complex issue, and I don't mean to single you out here, but I'm surprised how often I hear the argument that teachers aren't good enough from people who are concerned about the quality of education in the US. It seems to me that in most other industries, the workers in the field are given the benefit of the doubt.

In other words, do people really believe that Americans are great at being programmers or fire fighters or lawyers but that we just suck at being teachers?

Maybe I'm biased because there are a lot of teachers in my family, but my impression from hearing them discuss it is that the problem is much larger than whether teachers are good enough or not. Many teachers, like the one who wrote the linked article, are working under incredible pressure, essentially in conditions under which is is very easy to fail. Huge class sizes, inadequate funding, etc.

I think we should stop blaming teachers and assume like we do with so many other workers that most of them are smart and capable and will do well if we give them the support they need. And it would probably be wise to ask teachers how we can improve education and give them the authority and resources to implement their ideas.

Most of us have been to public schools. We have direct, first-hand observations about the quality of teachers.

I had a few stars, most were just getting by, some actively sucked. From everything I've ever heard, most people had the same experience.

It's not like we're talking about something none of us know anything about. We've been there, seen it.

We're also teaching kids about subjects they literally couldn't care less about. Every single class I took on World History, Arts, and English literature was very close to useless. I bet the artists and English lit lovers would say the same thing about Chemistry and Physics.

We don't trust 16 year olds to make decisions on what they do and do not want to study, so we force them to study some things we know they won't like. And why?

Because we want them to have a level of understanding of those fields, even if it's shallow. It's good for society if as many people as possible understand algebra or World War I or how to read and write at a high level. If for no other reason than that as a democracy, we need our citizenry to have a certain base level of knowledge of how the world works.

Citation needed on the "broad base of knowledge being useful" tidbit.

The first hand experience of people having been a student once isn't enough information in which to judge a whole profession. If that were the case, we should be letting only users of software direct how software is made.

Also, experiences can be really variable for different people. Some students might have many great teachers and be in a position where school is very positive for them. Other students could be facing an entirely different picture about the kind of schools and teachers available to them, esp. given the variances in local and state politics, class levels, income, and attitudes towards teaching.

"Some students might have many great teachers and be in a position where school is very positive for them."

I've never met anyone who said this about her public high school education. In university, many people said this about their educations in private schools, so I assume such a positive experience is possible. I'm convinced it's rare in public-funded secondary schools in the USA.