Not Everyone Should Teach — And We All Know It

There’s an uncomfortable truth we rarely say out loud in education: you can’t teach someone to outthink you. At least, not when it comes to developing the kinds of skills measured by cognitive or reasoning tests. If a teacher struggled to break an 18 on the ACT, what makes us think they’re well-positioned to coach a student toward a 30? This isn’t arrogance — it’s logic. If the teacher knew how to score higher, wouldn’t they have done so?

Test scores aren’t everything, but they are a flashing signal. They indicate something about your ability to read complex material, to recognize patterns, to sustain abstract thought. These aren’t just test-taking tricks — they’re core thinking skills. And if you don’t possess them yourself, your ability to cultivate them in someone else is… let’s say, constrained.

We pretend this doesn’t matter because admitting it would collapse the myth that all teachers are equally capable of teaching all students. But some students — the cognitively gifted, the deeply curious, the high performers — need more than classroom management and a pacing guide. They need someone who can meet them in complexity, model clarity, and stretch their limits. And that’s not something you can fake with a laminated lesson plan.

Credentialed But Clueless

The real scandal isn't that some teachers can't outscore their students — it's that the system doesn’t even expect them to. We’ve built an entire professional pipeline that confuses training with thinking, and nowhere is that clearer than in teacher prep programs. These are institutions that often require no more than a heartbeat and a decent attendance record to pass. Their graduates emerge with shiny degrees, laminated pedagogical jargon, and the exact same analytical horsepower they walked in with — which, in many cases, wasn’t much to begin with.

But we hand them a class of 30 minds and say, “Shape the future.”

It’s a strange ritual. Imagine training someone who’s never played chess to teach others to play. Worse: imagine if their own teacher barely knew the rules but still received a certificate of “chess pedagogy proficiency.” Now multiply that by a national scale and sprinkle it with words like equity, differentiation, and 21st-century learning. Welcome to the modern K–12 system.

The numbers back it up, too — if anyone still cares about those. Education majors routinely score at or near the bottom on the SAT, and when they move on to graduate school? The lowest average GRE scores of any profession. Not low like “just behind business majors.” No — low like “dead last.” And still we act surprised when deep intellectual coaching is in short supply.

Of course, the system needs us to pretend that intelligence doesn't matter — because if we ever admitted it does, then we’d have to start asking uncomfortable questions:

• Why do we let the profession with the most influence on young minds require the least intellectual firepower?
• Why are teacher licensure exams often set just barely above pass/fail thresholds?
• Why is “rigor” a buzzword instead of a baseline?

The establishment’s answer to all of this is usually a mix of slogans and emotional appeals: “Every teacher is doing their best!” And sure, that might be true. But sometimes, your best isn’t good enough — not because you don’t care, but because you simply don’t have the intellectual tools to guide someone farther than you’ve gone.

There’s no shame in that. But there’s danger in pretending it isn’t real.

The Cult of Nice and the Collapse of Standards

I saw this firsthand when I started grad school to become a teacher. Within weeks, it was obvious: the profession was full of well-meaning people who had no business teaching children. They were warm, sweet, cooperative — and absolutely unable to pass a basic licensure test without multiple tries, retakes, and a fog of excuses. The bar wasn’t high. It was barely off the ground. But still, they tripped over it.

And instead of confronting this, the institutions spun the usual comforting narrative: “They’re just bad test-takers.” As if the problem was the test, not the thinking. As if the ability to process basic reading, writing, and math under mild pressure was somehow unrelated to the job of helping kids do exactly that.

I spoke up, of course — which, in that setting, went over like a fart in a mindfulness circle. Only the people who passed the test easily were willing to admit the obvious: this profession has an intellectual floor, and a lot of people are crawling just above it. Not one of the struggling candidates ever said, “Maybe I’m not cut out for this.” Because in teacher ed programs, intentions are sacred, and competence is optional.

It was my first real taste of the education world’s favorite illusion — that niceness is a substitute for ability. That if someone is “great with kids” and has a warm smile, they should be allowed into the most formative role in society. But being nice isn’t enough. I wouldn’t let a “nice” surgeon operate on me if they couldn’t pass the boards. I wouldn’t let a “sweet” pilot fly a plane if they kept failing the simulator. Why should teaching — the job that builds minds — be the one field where charm outranks cognition?

Equity Theater and the Denial of Limits

When I first got deep into the education coursework, I’d already shifted from history back to math, leaning on my engineering background — but even then, I saw the red flags. At the time, there was a major push in Montana education programs to believe that anyone could do anything, given “the right supports.”

It sounded nice. Until you asked the obvious question.

So I’d raise my hand and ask, “Are you saying someone with Down syndrome could earn a bachelor's, then a medical degree, finish a residency, and you'd be comfortable with them as your personal doctor?” And they had to say yes. Not because they believed it, but because if they didn’t, the whole doctrine of unlimited human potential collapsed under the weight of reality.

That was the level of delusion required to stay in the club. You either lied to protect the fantasy — or you were labeled cruel for acknowledging a basic truth: not everyone can do everything.

But here’s the thing: you already know this. Everyone does. You know it when you look for a mechanic, a lawyer, a babysitter. You know it when you evaluate whether someone should fly a plane or remove your appendix. You want competence. You want skill. You want standards.

Why don’t we expect the same for the people who teach our children?

It’s not elitist to want smart people teaching your children. It’s basic survival.