Perhaps the question should be rephrased to, "What's Wrong with [secondary school] Teachers?" In the US, we only compensate our teachers $20-40k a year. For a

Perhaps the question should be rephrased to, "What's Wrong with [secondary school] Teachers?" In the US, we only compensate our teachers $20-40k a year. For a skilled practitioner in a field, teaching presents an untenable opportunity cost. Most fields pay their experts at least four times the salary of teaching. Therefore the only reason for an expert to apply his skills to teaching becomes passion or a sense of duty. On the other hand, a non-expert may become a teacher because it is his only option. So we either get teachers who are both expert and passionate, or teachers who are non-expert and possibly even non-passionate. How can we expose students to more passionate, expert teachers? The clear solution is to reduce the opportunity cost of teaching for the expert. He should be able to engage his passion or satisfy his sense of duty without also sacrificing the benefits of a career in industry. The obvious way to reduce this opportunity cost is to pay teachers more. However, blindly raising salaries is an expensive and lazy solution. It risks attracting the group of passionless semi-experts who can barely get a job in industry. A more targeted approach would be to make it easier for experts to engage their passion, or satisfy their sense of duty, by participating in short-term, low-commitment teaching. Why should working and teaching be mutually exclusive? I propose that schools allocate a small budget for a new class of "temporary teachers," who keep full-time jobs in industry, but also attend class on a weekly basis to augment the permanent teacher. For example, a programmer could come to class once a week to teach or interact with the students. This would benefit the students by exposing them to a skilled practitioner in the field, help the practitioner by satisfying his passions or sense of duty, and utilize the permanent teacher for his specialty. It seems like an effective and cheap solution.