"As for schools, the only people i know that have ever chosen teaching was those that had poor marks by comparison"

That may be your experience Realist, but I doubt it is the case. My mother is a teacher, and chose the profession despite having gained a Commonwealth Scholarship for university, which was only awarded to the top students.

Many teachers are there (at primary and high school levels at any rate) because they love teaching and helping others learn, and find it facinating.

That said, I do wish University lecturers were taught more about the art of teaching, as many of them seemed to rely on boring Talk-Straight-From-Their-Notes styles of lectures.

Realist, I think you're expecting a little much from teachers. Having done some prac teaching, I realized it was a hard way to make a living. Playground duty, lesson preparation, keeping on top of curriculum changes, marking, assessment. as well as keeping 25-30 students on track and adjudicating disputes. You needed eyes in the back of your head for miscreants playing games under the desk and generally had at least one clever dick winding you up by complaining that you didn't know about the "real world". If teaching in high school, repeat for up to 6 classes. I needed a rest at the end of it. If on top of that you also want someone who "effects [sic] peoples lives permanently, shape futures, and create or destroy dreams" you don't need a teacher, you want a saint.

Running down teachers is not going to encourage the best and brightest to join a difficult and not very well paid profession.

Yet another person that wants university staff to be good at everything (teaching, research, administration, marketing, science, etc.) all for a pay that isn't competitive with either jobs outside or other countries. This simply isn't realistic given that the situations in univerisities is now not unlike high schools, where decent staff are not possible to find in many areas. THerefore, additional regulations restricting the number of people who can work simply means a smaller pool of worse people will be available, and, in addition, it will waste more of the time of the people already there. Evidentally, the author simply isn't aware of the current marketplaket place for academic skills.

A better solution would be to allow universities to do, employ, and charge what they want, and you might find some would then want to compete on good quality teaching, and they could also pay the salaries to get really good people.

Does training maketh the teacher?
As one who has a Diploma in Education (Secondary), I prefer the word 'educator', the Latin origins meaning 'to lead out'. The heart or core of the human person is the origin of this leadership.

Moreover, is it merely the author's wish or does our current system uphold the notion of elective 'life-long learning'?
It seems that the reverse is happening. Today we are expected to be 'retrained' in instances of job dissatisfaction: to have a second chance at becoming a cog in a wheel of romantic fulfilment.

Teaching work in religious schools used to be fulfilled by many(admittedly) railroaded sisters, brothers and lay personnel. Many people have a living memory of the teacher as violent and without joy.

Yet today the system maintains its industrial-revolution standard: one conforms or faces the peril of exculsion. I see this in the expectation that one must fulfil a specific criterion before being allowed to serve young people as their educator.

As one who would love to work in primary schools, after a number of years working in high schools as a history teacher, I find that the legislation is hostile if not discouraging of such lateral application of my learning.

Ah! Oh for a little more awareness of more simple ways of finding teachers of heart!

Let us establish more mentoring links, for applying human faith in teachers' work, and assessing its fruits, rather than enforcing bureaucratic hoopla of 'outcomes' and 'criterion of behaviour'! I'm with Howard on this one.

May your Anzac Day be duely commemorative. Lest we forget.

Just a couple of observations as a university-trained high school teacher . . .

1) In order to qualify as a high school teacher, I had to go through four years of university-level teacher training. Knowledge of my subject area did not suffice - an ability to teach my subject did. And my employment hinged on proven success in prac - despite a GPA of 6.5, if I couldn't teach, I wouldn't have been given a job.

2) As I understand it, university lecturers are given their jobs as a result of research output and knowledge of their subject area. This meant that, even in my Education subjects, my lecturers who could spout constructivist theory in the most boring manner would keep their jobs even if they were poor educators.

3) Likewise, a Masters Degree (as suggested by Sapper as a minimum requirement for a HOD position) does not guarantee that one can teach OR run a department. It just means that one is (or once was) up-to-date with theory.

4) I tire of hearing that only poor achievers become teachers. I achieved an OP2 at high school and, in my year, could have enrolled in any uni course nationwide. I chose to teach.

Essentially, the only frustrating element of my job is that everyone thinks they know how to do it. We don't tell neurosurgeons how to do their jobs, but every man and his dog has an opinion on best practices in teaching. Perhaps it is a relatively easy job - but why, then, are there so many bad teachers out there?

Otokonoko, the obvious reason that there are so many bad teachers is that the pay for teachers isn't high enough for the job, thus many teachers will have more attractive options, and many people highly competent people won't become teachers to start with.

If schools are anything like universities, people also probably have to waste large proportions of time doing administrivia and fufilling government requirements thought of by bureaucrats that seem to have the very strange belief that more and more legislation and rules (which waste more and more of people's time) are the answer to the problems -- not unlike the writer of this article (a Canberra based bureaucrat).