This was a response to another complaint about supposedly terrible undergraduates. I redirected the complaint toward graduate students, especially teaching assistants who receive little preparation and sometimes reproduce the habits they dislike in their own instructors.
The post mixes criticism of graduate teaching with sympathy for the conditions under which it happens: poor training, insecure work, and the assumption that subject knowledge automatically produces teaching skill. The title overstates the case on purpose. The body is less certain.
Related: Research Musings (2014) · Teaching festival