I can think of a lot of people who are less qualified than someone with a Ph.D. "who thought they'd be tenure tracked by now," like people who can't do long division, and at the more extreme end, people people who are functionally illiterate, and people who have a sobriety problem. I would bet money that there are a solid number of current 6th grade teachers who honestly aren't qualified to be teaching sixth grade because of lack of subject knowledge.
This.
DH is the head of the physics department at a public school headed by a principal who decided on teaching high school after getting that phd (a principal he is very happy with btw) and thus trains newly qualified teachers, some of whom are PhDs as well.
He says that he can train anyone with a solid grasp of their subject to be a good enough teacher, if not always a brilliant one. It I very hard doing this with someone who does not have that grasp - not merely because anyone who is only one step ahead of their students can be tripped up by any probing question, be it by a weaker student needing clarification or a talented student looking for further insight, but also because someone who spent years in university on a subject of their own choosing and still can't do it tends to lack more fundamental qualities such as the brains, the motivation and a healthy personality in the first place, it is much harder to turn someone in good enough teacher who lacks one or more of these qualities. They may have just scraped through at the bottom of their class, or have mental health or substance abuse problems, sometimes all of the above. Motivation helps if it's there, but it's still a slog, and students do notice,
I'd much rather have my child taught by that PhD. A bunch of gifties might LOVE having that phd teacher, and vice versa.
