抄録
Now that the introduction of English as a regular school subject into the primary school curriculum is planned to take place in 2020, securing a sufficient number of teachers who can teach English at primary school has become a pressing issue. At the moment, the government is discussing two possible ways to tackle this urgent issue; recommending primary school teachers to acquire a teaching certificate to teach English as a subject and relocating lower secondary school English teachers to primary schools. Both ways seem feasible to a certain degree, but it cannot be denied that both are rather hasty preparations for emergency, not a solution to be sustained for decades. This paper proposes a third way to solve the issue, getting a hint from the teacher education system in Finland. It will propose revising the current teacher education system so that it may educate so-called generalists who can teach English as a subject not only at secondary school but also at primary school.
