MOST SCHOOL TEACHERS HAVE ARTS DEGREES NOT MATH, SCIENCE or ENGINEERING

The Waterloo Region Record published a story on January 9/14 titled " $4 M earmarked to upgrade Ontario teachers' math skills". As per my title above, yes I do believe that that is a huge drawback. If the teachers teaching English, French, History or Geography have university degrees in those subjects then they should be competent to teach at either the public (elementary) or high school level. If they took math and sciences through high school (and passed them) then I expect with a little training they could effectively teach those subjects At The Elementary Level Only. Asking a teacher with a History degree to teach Grade 12 or 13 math is pushing the envelope. They may well have been barely competent in those subjects four years earlier and now expecting them to teach effectively that which they clearly avoided in University is ridiculous and just about par for the course for a bureaucratic structure whose first two priorities are Teachers and Administrators.

In the Record article, Education Minister Liz Sandals indicates that "Everybody needs math.". That is correct. Her statement however that "...even though not all teachers have a degree in math, they can still learn how to become good math teachers."is both disingenuous as well as hokum. Firstly followup articles in the Record have clearly indicated that the vast majority of teachers are "artsies" not math or science people. Sandals knows this. Secondly as indicated earlier a teacher who is not competent in math sure as hell cannot be taught to be a good math teacher at a level anywhere near their weak level.