“Shouldn’t even a really smart high school graduate be able to teach others the same thing? An associate degree in education should be the max required, especially for those teaching grade school.”
Disagree. Teaching should require a degree in the subject you plan to teach. As it is you have Math teachers who never took grade 12 math.
But that should be all that is required.
My mother and her grandmother immigrated to the US in 1920, she was twelve years old. It took her about six weeks to learn English, granny never learned. Mom attended "normal school" through eighth grade and then attended "Teachers College" which amounted to high school.
Most kids did not attend beyond eighth grade but if you ever run across the comprehensive exam they had to complete to graduate you'd be impressed by the difficulty level of the questions. I'd think that few if any college graduate English majors would pass.
Regards,
GtG