One of his major points is that education department programs seem designed to attract and promote scientific illiteracy if not outright fear and loathing of math and science in aspiring teachers.

Ramble: I once taught a math-for-ed-majors class at a university towards the end of my grad student days, and I remember feeling at the time that these were the worst math students I'd ever had. They were nice, pretty, attentive, and well-behaved, but they were also profoundly uncurious and unwilling to appreciate any actual math. There was no fun, no exploration, no "aha" moments -- and no expectation that there should be for "normal" people (folks like me who expected math to be fun and at least somewhat interesting in itself were clearly damaged in some way). It was upsetting to know that these people were actually going out of their way to "specialize" in math ed., and that their math anxiety attitude would be part of countless youngsters' introduction to math and science.

My own undergraduate school had no ed major -- to get a teaching certificate, you majored in a real subject like everyone else, and took a few ed courses and student teaching in addition to that (an ed minor if you will). Something like this is proposed in the article. Higher pay and respect are only in there to lure actual math and science majors into the teaching profession. The ed program at my alma mater was being shut down twenty years ago, presumably because too few students at the private university were interested in becoming secondary-school teachers.

Giovanni