Nor does it mean that one can actually impart knowledge competently, nor does it mean that one can control or motivate a classroom of 30 hyperactive and easily distracted kids. It merely means that you sat through the requisite number of credit hours, and gave a state college enough money.
My wife has an ed degree. The classes she took were a joke.
Agree 100%. In all of my Ed classes, I only picked up two pieces of practical knowledge, both from a seasoned full-time HS teacher who was a Harley riding bouncer in his youth, and still had the pony-tailed salt-n-pepper hair. (He taught evening college classes for fun.)
The first was how to break up a fight between two kids who were both bigger than you.
The second was how to make lesson plans that were actually useful. Neither was part of his curriculum. (His room also gave dozens of ideas on how to construct an interesting learning environment.)
The School of Education and the numerous Teacher's Unions were both useless at best, and immense obstacles from time to time, when it came to actually helping a classroom full of children to gain specific pieces of knowledge and concrete thinking skills.
I was a teaching assistant at a state university while in Graduate School. I spent one wasted year teaching Biology in the School of Ed. The class was taught to the university population (art majors, journalism students, poli sci students) and a separate class for the School of Ed. The first class was tough ... those students came out with a firm foundation in Biology. The latter class was pablum ... stuff you would teach to kindergarten kids.