This one is more insensitive than cruel, but it’s one of my only memories from grade school. I was in around 10-12 years old, and we were drawing a horse from a model in art class with pencils. I was never very good at drawing. When the teacher saw my half-finished drawing, she said something about the proportions being off. She erased half of my drawing with an eraser without asking, then drew some outlines of what the horse should look like. I ended up not touching the parts of the drawing she had drawn. Even though my original horse sucked, it was still my drawing.
My high school orchestra teacher was a well-respected teacher who got great results from the kids. But he had an explosive temper, and was known to throw chairs, music stands and batons.
He was also Italian and a known anti-semite. One day, one of the Jewish kids was having trouble getting a difficult passage right. This teacher bellowed, “What’s the problem? Is it your goddamn religion?”
The next year, he was rewarded by being promoted to Assistant Principal.
I’d finished Lord of the Rings in middle school math class (teacher would drone on and on and never notice). Then I promptly fell out of my seat in what must have looked like a seizure of laughter, when I started Bored of the Rings.
Back on topic, we had a vicious 2nd grade teacher who’d made my little sister’s life hell. There were many incidents, and even years later a little kid came up to a group of us 6th graders, bawling: “Miss Liefert says…sniff… there’s no Easter Bunny!”
Yeah, I name-checked you, Miss Liefert! Hope you’re reading this from an afterlife of paper cuts.
Wow, a lot of bad teachers over the years. For the most part, mine were OK. Once I started paying for my own education, I took a lot more interest and participated in class so well that I had teachers thank me for helping keep the class moving. Due to me taking an interest and doing my homework and all, I was one of the first to finish my tests. I rocked an A- average all the way through college btw.
A teacher said the throwaway words mentioned years ago “Don’t worry about how long you take on your test, usually the ones who finish first don’t understand the subject.” `I said something about her calling me stupid in front of the whole class and she tried to mansplain what she meant.
I still turned in A- work, I still tested with A’s, I never asked another question in that class and seeing as how I was the one leading the discussions in many cases, the class went from lively back and forth with everyone showing interest to one where people sat at their desks like bumps on a log. If she happened to ask me to answer a question I’d just mutter, “I’m too stupid, ask one of the smart ones”.
I would have been to frightened to do such a thing before college, but I figured that if I was paying the bill myself, I wanted to get my money’s worth and I certainly wasn’t paying to be called stupid in front of a full classroom.
I passed with a B because of my lack of class participation.
Wow, its been 40 years and it still stings.
I don’t remember any cruel remarks from the teachers Even though I went to public school in a small town, damn, we had a good education!
I do remember this bit of strangeness, though. Our sixth grade teacher was a little too close to the students. I don’t mean than in a sexual way—I mean he saw us as friends sometimes. Maybe he didn’t have any outside the building.
And in that spirit he sometimes shared things he shouldn’t have. For example, we had a music teacher come in once a week. I don’t recall how the subject turned to it but he told us she was bald as a cue ball, but was wearing a wig. A student (I don’t know who it was and he probably didn’t either) went home, told a parent, and within a day or two he made this announcement to the class:
“It’s true that I told you about her being bald. I thought the things we said in here stayed in here! But I want you to know I apologized to her.” It sounded like this had transpired in front of the principal.
He went on to teach there for many years. The good parts of what he did were really good. But he had some lapses in judgment like that.
Maybe my teachers were largely good because they knew kids could tattle and it would be their asses.
That said, some of my sibs and I had the same 7th grade math teacher. He was a great guy, had been in Golden Gloves at one time IIRC. When kids got out of line, said an older sister, he’d throw a chalkboard eraser at them. I never witnessed it myself…maybe that was fine with parents in certain decades but not others.
I know I’ve repeated this story on this Board, but I just did a quick search of this thread and didn’t see it here. My apologies if I missed it. Here goes.
Back in parochial school (grades 1-8) we were standing in line, as usual, waiting to go someplace. The Sister Superior was walking down the line, disciplining kids. For no good reason I could see, she suddenly stopped next to me. turned to face me, and said:
“[CalMeacham], you’re so smart, you’re dumb!”
… and then she turned and proceeded along the line, disciplining all the way.
Sometimes, it’s not what a teacher says, but what a teacher doesn’t say that matters.
I was in the eighth grade, and the class was doing some sort of go to the blackboard and solve the problem type of thing. The teacher called on me, and I got up and went to the board.
Immediately, a loud chorus of catcalls and lewd hooting started up from my usual tormentors. I was relentlessly sexually harassed in the seventh and eighth grades every day. Every single damn day.
And what does the teacher say? He raises his voice over the mob and says, “Just ignore them.”
He didn’t say, “Stop that right now!” He didn’t say, “We don’t act like this in the classroom!” He didn’t say, “Hey! Show her some respect!” He let the horny bastards howl. It was up to me to ignore them.
I finished the problem and sat down. I fucking hated school. I had every right to fucking hate it and I did.
This was grad school, and it happened to the class ahead of me. We were in set design school, and Ming Cho Lee was in to critique final projects. He was a big deal in set design back then. He walked through and just said “Crap, crap, crap,” to people’s work. No further elaboration as to why it was “crap.” I don’t give a fuck who you are, or what level of schooling these people are at, you don’t get to treat people like that. I promptly took 2 years off of grad school.
I had a prof in grad school that was like that. She had her favorites and she’d always write a copious number of praising notes on their term papers, fawning over every little aspect.
For us proles she’d put all sorts of nasty comments that I’m sure she thought was humorous or inventive. She never addressed the content of the papers, sjed just scribble insults in the margins:
“Not even good enough for a 4th grade book report.”
“You’d get a better grade if you study the material before attempting to write a paper.”
“I’d give constructive criticism but since it’s obvious you didn’t read any of the monographs assigned before writing this drivel I’m sure you won’t read my criticisms either.”
“Why are you wasting both our time?”
And my personal favorite:
“Most people in this program actually want their MA and are working towards that goal. I’m not seeing any evidence of that here.”
Naturally class discussions were much of the same. Thankfully she usually only called on her favorites to talk, so us rejects tended to be spared at least some humiliation. But when she did call on us she was mean and nasty and, on a good day, condescending.
As I was selecting the profs that would be on my committee I was given very… uh, strong recommendations on who to pick by my committee chair. When that profs name came up I told my chair that I would not work with her and I would leave the program before submitting my thesis in any way for her review. My chair didn’t bat an eye and simply moved down the list until we found someone more suitable.
I’m a high school dropout with a GED who was in grad school as a man approaching middle-age. Every day in that class she made me feel more and more of an outsider, a peon unworthy to sit in her precious classroom. Needless to say I learned nothing from her class (I dont even remeber the specific subject). She was one of the shittiest profs – and flat-out meanest people – I’ve ever met. But I got my MA, no thanks to her. Fucking bitch.
I’m a teacher now in a boarding school. I have a lot of kids – perhaps most – with similar attitudes for similar reasons. When I started my #1 goal was to not emulate a middle school or high school environment. I have a lot of leeway in my classroom – and lot more power than a K-12 teacher – and my intent is to make my class a safe and accepting and open environment. I don’t give a shit if students like me or not, but I do want them to respect their fellow students. For the most part, they do. Those that don’t get dealt with harshly.
Thank you for being a good teacher. We could use a lot more like you.
A certain med school back in the day had a memorable professor of hematology. A very smart lady of eastern European extraction, she was not exceptionally tolerant of goof-offs.
One time she was teaching a seminar in blood banking. At the start she encouraged student participation, assuring us that there were no stupid questions.
At one point, someone in the class raised his hand and queried her about something she’d said. She fixed the offender with a glare and loudly said, “That is the stoopidest qvestion I haff ever heard!”
I’m still not sure how serious she was.
First year of high school. We had this weird lady teaching “Ecology”, which was a light course on general biology concepts. She never bothered to learn our names, so when she asked a question to the class, she would just point to someone at random and said “You !” (as in, give us an answer to the question).
We had been learning about plant reproduction, then a little bit about animal reproduction and the difference between somatic and sexual cells. Then she asked “What are human male sexual cells called ? You !” . Guess who she was pointing at.
Internal reflection : I’m the nerd of the class. I’m being asked a question about human sex in front of my 12-13 year-old peers. I think I know the answer, but if I mess up I will be humiliated forever.
“I don’t know.”
The teacher said: “You don’t know ? A big boy like you ? If I were you, I’d be ashamed !”
Then some jock said “You know, we got some courses on that !” Indeed, we’d had sex ed classes at the end of grade school. So I blurted out the correct reply then.
To be fair, I was never mocked by my peers over this episode (over many other things, but not this). I guess they all thought the teacher was a jerk. But it’s been 41 years, and I remember.
I had a teacher in grade school who told me I was too quiet and encouraged me to ask questions if I was stuck on something. Then when I mustered up the courage to ask a question, she got mad and acted like I was trying to cause trouble. So I never asked a question in any class ever again and went out of my way to fade into the woodwork as much as possible.
If that kid publicly called a teacher a faggot and a nigger*, he is a little jerk, and worse than a jerk, and should be severely punished for both of those offenses as separate infractions. Why the hell should anyone, even a public school teacher, have to put up with some mouthy little bastard calling them two of the worst epithets in the English language?
*I didn’t bleep either of those epithets, because I
don’t go along with the stupid notion that the n-bomb must always be censored these days, even when it’s quoting a third party who is obviously a racist asshole, and because they’re equally offensive as dehumanizing slurs against whole groups of innocent people. But Farmer Jane has no trouble with spelling out the first one while self censoring the other. I wonder why that is?
Somewhat similarly, I had Mrs. J for an English lit teacher at my high school. She was my English Lit teacher for my last two years of high school actually. She did not suffer fools gladly, and I well remember her spotting a copy of Coles Notes (Canada’s version of Cliff’s Notes) in a student’s belongings, and ripping it up in front of the class.
But I was an exemplary student of English lit, and loved her class. She elevated it beyond high school, and she might as well have been teaching a university seminar. Participation in class discussion was encouraged, and those who had both read the works we were assigned, and who could discuss them knowledgeably, generally did well. I certainly did, and still consider Mrs. J to be one of the best teachers, in any subject, I ever had.
A couple of years later, along comes my sister. Now, my sister was a knockout blonde in high school–the family joke was that “Spoons got the brains, and Spoonsis got the looks.” And she found that that worked in her favour. As long as she was near the front of the classroom, smiling prettily in her carefully-selected outfit (I don’t believe she ever owned a pair of jeans until she was in her mid-20s), with professionally-coiffed hair, she managed to skate by with minimal effort. Especially with male teachers.
Which Mrs. J was not, so Spoonsis was out of luck in her class. Spoonsis absolutely hated Mrs. J as a teacher. My sister was never a big reader to begin with, so having to deal with Shakespeare, the poetry of John Donne, or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, among other typical high school English lit works, were beyond her capabilities. She appealed to me for help, but I was busy with my undergrad studies at university. She persevered on her own, and tried her best, however.
But tensions flared for a few weeks when she called me and said, “I hate you!” When I asked why, she reported that she had failed an essay in Mrs. J’s class. When returning the students’ papers, Mrs. J basically threw my sister’s F-grade essay at Sis, saying, “There is no way anybody as stupid as you can be related to Spoons.”
I’m a little over 1/2 Italian and look it - dark hair and eyes and olive skin. One day in 6th grade (1973), the teacher read us a poem. In the poem was the word “Dago” which was a term used for Italians. After she read that line, she told us what the word meant. Then she looked at me and said, “you are a Dago aren’t you?” At the time, I don’t think I realized it was a derogatory word, but at the same time, it made me feel weird. I instantly became nervous and then denied my heritage!
I sure wish I could remember what the poem was. I keep thinking it was Casey at the Bat, but I’ve read through it and I don’t see that word. Unless I just missed it.
Maybe Carl Sandburg’s “The Shovel Man”?
Juior year HS chemistry class with an average variety of ethnicities/genders in a suburban-northern NJ class, taught by a weird, older white female, who occasionally demonstrated some batty behavior. One Asian-American student, “Joe,” raised his hand with a question about calculation of moles in a volume of a solution. She, without skipping a beat said, “What’s the matter “Joe”, break out your calculator. You’ve got a calculator dontcha . . . ain’t ya Chinese?” and proceeded to carry-the-fuck-on as if nothing had ever happened.
I recall the class was too dumbfounded to respond, and I don’t know if Joe had ever reported it. In retrospect, I regret that I didn’t.
Tripler
“Joe” renamed to protect the innocent (and I forget his real name).
Perhaps being mannerly would have saved you all this effort in defending rudeness?
Way back in Kindergarten we had some sort of drawing assignment. I turned mine in, and the teacher said it looked just like some other kid’s drawing. I said he had copied off me, but he finished first. She stood up, called out his name, and then ripped up his paper in front of the whole class.
First, WTF, second, why believe something a 5 year old tells you to get out of trouble, and third, WTF?
No idea why my drawing and this other kid’s looked the same. I wasn’t embarrassed, just totally lost all respect for the teacher. I hope the other kid wasn’t as scarred as some of the people in this thread.