Qualifications

On the subject of qualifications, and design and education as professions, I wonder what people think qualifies someone to teach design?

I ask because I happen to know the number of design teachers with teaching qualifications in the UK is extremely low. The biggest qualification seems to be that you know someone who is already teaching, once worked for a famous client, or have stuck your work up on a gallery wall somewhere.

I've asked the question before but does being a 'good' designer make you a 'good' teacher? And who determines 'good' design anyway? I suspect a large number of design teachers have little understanding of teaching. (Witness the teacher I spoke with last year who said that students learn by being in the presence of greatness - a not untypical view).

Incidentally, this is true in all disciplines (even education!) - only a small percentage of university teachers in the UK have a teaching qualification, or have been observed teaching to see if they can actually do it. The perception is that there is nothing you can teach or learn about teaching and learning, that expertise is everything.
Maybe worse is the belief that once you're qualified, that's it. I would worry if I decided one day that I was 'complete' and that I had no way of improving as a teacher. I know I've still got a long way to go before I'm happy with my teaching ability, even though I've got a certificate that says I should be.

But imagine sending your child to a school where the teachers are unqualified beyond their interest in the subject. Or getting on a plane piloted by someone whose only claim to know what they are doing is 200 hours playing Flight Simulator on a PC at home, or being taught to drive by someone who has proven themselves a world leader on Project Gotham on Xbox live, but isn't actually qualified to drive for real.

You wouldn't do it. You'd object in the strongest terms. Yet that is what happens in universities up and down the country. There are fantastic teachers out there - lots of them, in fact, but outnumbered by the people who are good teachers but don't know why and don't care, and the mediocre teachers who could be great but can't be bothered to improve, and the bad teachers who blame the students and management when they moan constantly about falling standards, but don't for one minute think they might be at fault or in a position to make an improvement.

Sometimes I wonder how the academic community can survive with such closed minds.