Okay Mr. "I value Science", let's keep this going. First, all my basis is on the U.S. education system. If you're basing your idea on some other country, I'll tap out because I have no basis.
>> this is wrong, personal experience are not empirical.
All personal experience is, by definition, empirical. The definition of "empirical" is here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empirical. You're literally wrong.
>>most grade school teachers have graduated with very liberal arts degrees
Citation Needed. Is "Elementary Education" a "very liberal art"? Who is more qualified to teach 6-10 year olds if not someone with a Masters in Elementary Education (generally the minimum requirement) in your opinion?
>>many are young when they get hired as teachers, out of college
Your proposed solution doesn't address this. The 4/1 just means that teachers will now face an additional difficulty, finding a 2nd job to have "real world experience", in order to teach 7 year olds how to read and write.
>>in order to teach about something you need to know about something.
Of course. But there's millions of students spread across tens of thousands of school districts. IDK where we're suddenly going to find all of these domain experts willing to take lower pay and miss out on career advancement in exchange for educating children.
>>Economy and class matter more than education, is the lesson of the last 30 years.
I'm sorry, are you only 30 years old and therefor unaware that this is the lesson of the course of human history? Social and economic factors are your majority factors for everything, but that feeds directly into education by allowing for school choice (either by sending to private schools or moving into well funded, higher performing public schools). The fact that you're lumping the "realists and pessimists" together on who has decided what school actually is, shows your contempt for the system. I get that, you feel it's broken (so do I actually, but not at all for the reasons you do). I just find your idea that "all elementary school teachers are bad at their job" to be founded on poor/lacking data and a complete misunderstanding of the specifics of primary education.