Teachers giving misinformation

[RoniaBorkason]

My fifth grade teacher told us that tornadoes were attracted to trailer/mobile home parks because of all of the metal that was in the trailers. That’s why they were always destroyed so completely.

[Filbert]

I remember my head teacher (in fairness, it was a tiny school, and she taught a mixed class of students almost all subjects- so it’s no suprise some stuff was a bit less than fully accurate) telling the class that if we ever got bitten by a tick, we should immediately go to hospital to get it removed.

The school was in the middle of sheep farming country, with her being the only person who commuted from town- I think my daily tick record was 17, and I didn’t even live on a farm, unlike half the other kids…

I mean, yes, potentially they can transfer some rather nasty diseases, and if you do get bitten by one then get ill, by all means, tell your doctor about the bite, but hospital??? *Immediately???*She was generally a good teacher, but nature walks with her were hilarious, I remember her pointing out a hawthorne hedge, and telling us it was a rose bush, among other things.

[shiftless]

My 7th grade math teacher had an issue with the words “minus” and “subtract”. We were not allowed to say “6 minus 3” when me technically meant “6 subtract 3.” It took me a couple of years of being laughed at in math class to break the “6 subtract 3” habit.

She also made us refer to written number as “numerals.” “Numbers” are abstract concepts, “numerals” are written form, in her view.

[Zsofia]

@njtt

Well, it was, once: Federal Republic of Central America.

So, if you were a teacher (before reading that) and a student asked you if Central America had ever been a country, would you have got the got the answer right, or would you have confidently answered “No”?

Even if you would have known, do you think that every teacher who might happen to passingly allude to central America during a lesson ought to be expected to know that? Do you think that they ought to allow themselves to be diverted from whatever they are supposed to be teaching (supposing it is not actually a class on the history of Central America) in order to expound on the detailed history of the region?

Someone who has hung out at the Dope for a while ought to be aware that most questions of any interest do not have simple straightforward answers, but schoolteachers often do not have the luxury of going into the nuances of difficult questions (which would often leave most students bored and baffled anyway).

Of course, if teachers were paid very much better than they are - say at the sort of level that society currently rewards lawyers or doctors (I might have said Wall Street traders, except that I do not think anybody deserves to be rewarded at at the levels many of them attain) - and if they were not routinely subject to the sort of mockery exemplified by this thread, the profession might attract smarter, more knowledgeable and even more motivated people. As things are, most people who have the brains and talents to make excellent teachers are quite rational to decide that they should go elsewhere.

Do you REALLY believe that’s what he meant? This was a geography class, by the way. He honestly believed there was no such thing as countries named, for example, Panama and Nicaragua.

[Acsenray]

@shiftless

She also made us refer to written number as “numerals.” “Numbers” are abstract concepts, “numerals” are written form, in her view.

When you’re doing math, most often you are talking about the abstract concept that the symbols represent.

Also, a “numeral” is the name of the number (in words) or the totality of the written form of the number. The individual type characters that make up numerals are “figures.”

[Brown_Eyed_Girl]

@wheresmymind

Still curious about what began with “A” though.

Air-cushion vehicle, I imagine.

@Muffin

Which brings us to why my grade one teacher was sacked. She demoted me from first grade to kindergarten because she did not like the way I spelled my surname: the way my family had been spelling our surname since the very outset of middle English. Unfortunately, the teacher was not aware of the great vowel shift, which would have my name spelled differently today than it actually is spelled and has been spelled for many centuries. The result? She was fired, I was returned to first grade, and I still spell my name the way my ancestors spelled our name.

Do you mean like spelling Smith (modern) Smythe (antiquated)?

[WotNot]

@Gyrate

And yes, “fairy cake” is basically angel food cake - a soft white sweet cake.

Umm… I’ve never known fairy cake to refer to anything but a small cup cake.

[rekkah]

@A.Gwilliam

I think there’s an argument in certain specific circumstances for changing vocabulary in books when crossing the Atlantic. If the reader is misled or is thrown out of the writing by a Wtf? moment, then the author’s intention is surely being done a disservice, with something quite inconsequential doing harm to the text.
[snip]
A more obvious example would be changing AmE “pants” to BrE “trousers”, something that might be necessary in some contexts to avoid a non-comedic scene being rendered comedic.

You really find this a problem? I admit I have (very rare these days) moments of startled humour or confusion followed by realisation caused by these, but I don’t think it’s ever caused me to misunderstand anything. I find almost anything can be worked out from context.

I think it would be far more jolting to hear an American character suddenly start referring to his trousers or walking on the pavement and I personally would not buy that “translation”. Let alone the thought of some poor non-British person attempting to read Jane Austen, Sherlock Holmes or even P.G Wodehouse in translation with references to pants, sidewalks and appartments…

Going baclk to the OP, my A level Biology teacher started the module on the heart by saying it was very important that we could spell rhythm correctly as we would look very silly if we mispelled it on the exam. To this end, she helpfully wrote it out in big letters on the blackboard:

RYTHM

There was a short pause before I raised my hand and pointed out that it needed an extra H.

[Muffin]

@Brown_Eyed_Girl

Do you mean like spelling Smith (modern) Smythe (antiquated)?

Something like that, yes. In my case, it was the middle English [eː] having been raised in modern English [iː] (e.g. fet v. feet).

[Acsenray]

@WotNot

Umm… I’ve never known fairy cake to refer to anything but a small cup cake.

It’s either one, depending on your dialect.

[WhyNot]

And this is why I remain confused. It’s come up here before, and half you UK Dopers tell us it’s a cupcake, and half say it’s more like angel food cake. I’m too broke to fly to England and buy one for myself to find out for sure.

[Malacandra]

As a TA and a know-all I regularly have to suffer through ill-informed classes, but tact goes only so far: when a geography teacher teaching history (badly) told the class that the American Civil War ran from 1863 to 1865 I felt it necessary to have a quiet word in her ear. (From what she said she seemed to think that Abe Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation started the war. :smack: )

She manfully blamed the history teacher she’d got the cheat-sheet from, and later fumfled around the question when a pupil asked “so if the South had won, would the Confederate flag have become the U.S. flag?” :smack: :smack: :smack:

[Peremensoe]

@acsenray

Also, a “numeral” is the name of the number (in words) or the totality of the written form of the number. The individual type characters that make up numerals are “figures.”

Have you got a cite for that? This doesn’t conform to my experience of anyone’s usage, and seems incompatible with the common term “Arabic numerals” meaning the set of individual characters.

I would have said that a “figure” in this context is a grapheme (“12”), composed of one or more “numeral” glyphs (“2”), representing a “number” (the concept of twelve).

[etv78]

@Malacandra

“so if the South had won, would the Confederate flag have become the U.S. flag?” :smack: :smack: :smack:

That’s actually an interesting question! Does anyone have an answer?

[Acsenray]

@spark240

Have you got a cite for that? This doesn’t conform to my experience of anyone’s usage, and seems incompatible with the common term “Arabic numerals” meaning the set of individual characters.

I would have said that a “figure” in this context is a grapheme (“12”), composed of one or more “numeral” glyphs (“2”), representing a “number” (the concept of twelve).

I don’t have a cite handy, but I would say that in a sentence like “This is written in Arabic numerals,” the term “numeral” refers to the system of writing referred to rather than the individual characters.

Similarly, “This is written in Roman numerals.” The individual type characters that make up the Roman numeral system are just letters from the Roman alphabet. They’re not a unique set of figures used to represent numbers in a numeral system.

Compare “old-style figures,” referring to figures that have ascenders and descenders. This use of “figure” seems to me to refer to the individual type characters. Similarly, “a figure 8.”

ETA: Wikipedia seems to be consistent with what I said.

[rekkah]

@WhyNot

And this is why I remain confused. It’s come up here before, and half you UK Dopers tell us it’s a cupcake, and half say it’s more like angel food cake. I’m too broke to fly to England and buy one for myself to find out for sure.

Now I’m confused. I have never heard of them being anything other than small (half the size of a cupcake) sponge cakes, usually with decorative icing. I just did a couple of experimental google image searches. Fairy cake gets me nothing but small cakes as described and larger cakes with fairies (Tinkerbell etc) as decoration. Googling Angel cake gets me a mixture of what I think of as Angel cake and some largish sponge/ring cakes. Whereabouts do people use the term fairy cake as anything other than a small cake?

[Nobody]

@etv78

That’s actually an interesting question! Does anyone have an answer?

Assuming you’re not joking, it may have become the Confederate States flag, but the United States would keep its flag. It would just have fewer states.

[Acsenray]

@etv78

So you expect AMERICAN students to have read British literature with British spelling? :dubious:

Yes, I expect an English teacher, educated in America, to have read British literature with British spelling. Anyone who had not is not qualified to teach English in any country, not even this one.

@etv78

That’s actually an interesting question! Does anyone have an answer?

You’re not serious, right? First of all, the flag we know as the “Confederate flag” was never used as the national flag. Second, regardless of the outcome of the war, the Confederacy was not going to replace the United States.

[Little_Bird]

@Meyer6

Mercury must be a common subject of misconceptions. When I was in the 4th or 5th grade somebody broke a thermometer during some kind of science experiment. While the teacher was cleaning it up, I for some reason I felt compelled to inform her that mercury was poisonous and could make you crazy (my Dad had told me this so that I wouldn’t play around with a thermometer we had at home). The teacher told me that that was just a myth and mercury was perfectly safe, because “otherwise why would they put it in thermometers?”.

I’m pretty sure my 8th grade science teacher had no idea mercury was poison–when I broke a thermometer he had me clean it up with paper towels and my bare hands and let me take the mercury home in a film canister. Then again, maybe he was just trying to kill me…

[etv78]

@Nobody

Assuming you’re not joking, it may have become the Confederate States flag, but the United States would keep its flag. It would just have fewer states.

:smack: I wasn’t joking, but your answer made me realize how dumb my question was!