system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Teachers should have a degree in the subject they teach not education.

What surprised me to learn after graduating high school was the fact that my teachers did not have a degree in what they taught.  What did my history, physics, health, and civics teacher have in common?
They all had the same degree.  This leaves the vast majority of teachers at best dabblers in the subject they are in charge of instructing.  

I am aware that they had to take more courses related to their topic but often times they take the education version.  However, you can't major in the actual topic and take the education version.  That should signal warning bells.  I even know of programs that will hand out lower degrees in a subject with a PhD or Masters in education without the graduate fulfilling requirements for even an undergrad in that subject.

What is the result of this?
I had a biology teacher who taught alternatives to evolution,
math teachers who had no idea what the point of math was,
and I don't really understand the use of a comma and I have suspicions neither did my teachers.  I think we can all agree that these three things are not desirable outcomes of public education.

I'm also familiar with  education curriculum and have serious skepticism it is a four year program.
What I would propose is that educators should be required a degree in the subject they want to teach.  The curriculum should not be watered down to achieve this (i.e. a science education or math education degree).  This would end the problem of students being taught about a subject from someone who can't motivate the topic, and in some cases is very uncomfortable with the material themselves.

What I would be interested to hear is someone who wants to explain why a four year degree in education to be, say a math teacher, is preferable to getting a four year degree in math and having an educational mentor like most other jobs.


What I'm not really interested in is hearing about how we have a shortage of teachers and making it harder to become one will cause even worse shortages.  That isn't the point of the CMV.


EDIT:  As some people have pointed out grade school teachers have to teach everything.  I wasn't really including teachers who don't have a subject when I wrote this.  I'd really like to be more focused teachers who have to teach a specific subject.


EDIT:
Hey everyone, thanks for your comments.  I tried to respond to everyone as a way of showing appriciation that you took time two write an answer.
Unfortunatly due to time I can't continue to do this.
I did award a delta for the consideration of special education students.  It didn't fully change my veiw that in most casess the subject is better, but it did make me realize there are some groups of students a subject major leaves you unprepaired to engage with.
gpt
Education degrees are a hybrid degree. Half the courses that they take are in a focus on the specific subject they are going to teach, half are classes that teach you how to teach. And that is important. Being an expert on a subject in no way qualifies you to communicate that subject to another person, yet alone teach that subject to a complete novice such as a child in school. Those classes that teach you how to teach are as important if not more important to the subject courses. 

Additionally half of standard education is done with a single teacher teaching every subject (in the US). This is grades k-5th. Such teachers have to have special education for dealing with young children and having a subject specialty is basically useless for them.