KneadToKnow,
Hilarious. Did being drawn and quartered ever come up?
Sir
Jesus, were you there? 
I wasn’t going to bring that up, but yes, it did. It was the very next topic of conversation as a matter of fact. We were reading Huck Finn and were discussing the ultimate fate of the King and the Duke and I had to explain to them the exact nature of the (fully deserved) tortures those scoundrels are beset with when last we see them, tarred and feathered and riding on a rail. After that explanation, somebody asked what “drawn and quartered” meant. I explained as PG-13ly as I could.
“Agog” doesn’t begin to describe their reaction to that.
damning indictment of the american education system…
i went to a Centre for Talented Youth summer school (age 16, applicants have to score more than 1200 on the SAT)in dublin and we had kids from america there…who hadn’t realised Ireland was a 12 hour plane-trip away, or an island, or that we had running water and electricity!
so, does that fill you with confidence about the intellectual leaders of tomorrow?
I’m doing an archeology field school right now. We’re in the woods in Vermont, digging up Middle Woodlands stuff. After a discussion of how most of the state was deforested for agriculture back in the 1800’s, one of the less-attentive students said:
“So the Indians were using their Achulean hand axes to chop down the trees so they could plow this land?”
Wow. It missed the point in three different ways at the same time.
-Yersina, hoping she didn’t misspell Achulean.
Um…
-Yersinia, hoping she didn’t misspell…whatever 
OTOH, here in Ireland I know adults who don’t know that the US is over 3,000 miles across (I’ve heard people express surprise that it would take more than a day to drive from San Francisco to Chicago), that Washington D.C. is not part of Seattle, or that there are allowed to be more than two candidates for president in every election. So what does that tell you?
How about a stupid thing a teacher said/did?
I had a German teacher, who was recently from Hungary, who would complain that the students were “stuffing tomatoes”.
When asked to explain, he showed us what that meant in Hungary - by sticking his finger deep into his nose to extract a booger. It was stupid because within minutes half the class was imitating him and the rest were gagging.
a.) I wouldn’t consider that “stupid.” Funny, yes, but there was no ignorance on the part of the teacher.
b.) The “stupid things teachers said” thread is found elsewhere. This is where we show that students are as imperfect as teachers.
I am a librarian at a university and all of the students here are perfect. Ahem.
However, back in the 80s I was a librarian at another college and a student came to me at the reference desk and asked: “Is Nicaragua in Europe?”
I tilted my chair back to reach for an almanac which was the nearest place to find a map. “No,” I said. “Nicaragua is in Central America.”
“Oh,” said the student. “Is Central America in Europe?”
I did not fall over backwards. But it was a near thing.
One more which was not realy ignorant, just unfortunately phrased. When I was a college student back in the seventies my English class was discussing popular culture and one young woman was complaining about the prominence of sex in entertainment and advertising. As an example she brought up the X-rated movie that had recently been surprisingly popular. “Take Deep Throat. That’s another example of the way sex is being crammed down our throats!”
Other dopers are getting in line right now to flame you for having to go get a book to answer that question, but I’m here to tell you that your Reference professor would be so proud!
Hell, most American adults probably don’t realize that there can be more than two candidates.
–Tim
My mom had som great stories about her teaching days. For a test question about how fiction books are arranged in the library she got answers like “On shelves” and “In order”.
Her favorite story involves a girl who was reciting Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”. Her version was just a bit off:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
…
My little horse must think I’m a queer
To stop without a farmhouse near…
No one in the class was paying enough attention to notice, but my mother, a very proper Southern lady, was barely able to contain herself. Once the girl sat down Mom took a deep breath and said “And don’t you know that horse was just terrified.”
Bill Norton
Austin, TX
First story comes from my husband, a librarian at the University. It is closeing time (midnight) and a student runs in, runs upstairs, and runs back to the desk clutching two volumes. The computers are shut down at 15 'til every night and had been shut down even before he entered the building. He begs and pleads with my husband to let him check out these two books, he has a paper due tomorrow morning at 8. My husband, being a nice guy, starts the computers back up and reaches for the two books.
It was The Illiad and *The Odys
Second story: I was in a particularly brutal history class. We were reading aloud brief arguements about the earl sucess of Christianity in the later days of the Roman Empire. I wish I could remember this one essay in it’s entirerty because it is impossible to summarize the myriad bizzarre ideas in it, but the thesis was that Chrisitianity’s sucess could be traced back to the fact that David was a Christian king.
Well, in a group of about 70 students, I had 3 turn in papers they’d downloaded off the Internet- and they all chose the SAME paper.
An entire class was convinced that I had a secret love child concealed somewhere? Why? Because I told them that having a baby hurts, and they couldn’t think of any other way I would know that.
Not a teacher, but went to school with some very … interesting … people.
My favorite story was in “modern literature” class. Discussing Orwell’s 1984. We’re reading out load, the narrator is describing how the world got to it’s current state, how this country had invaded that country and then took over the other country, etc, etc. It’s at this time when then girl in front of me politely raises her hand and says, in all seriousness, “Wait a minute, this didn’t really happen, did it?”
And then the teacher yelled at me for laughing at her. So I explained to her that the book was published before these events would have taken place, and Orwell probably never read HG Wells, so he didn’t know how to build a time machine.
LordVor
When my wife and I met she was teaching school. She taught 10th grade English. One class was assigned a book to read and then were to write a report in class.
In this class there was an under-achiever and a not-too-bright student that sat next to each other.
Shortly after class started the under-achiever walked up to my wifes desk and handed in his paper. She opened it and read:
“I did not read a book.”
Almost right behind him came the other student putting his paper on her desk. She opened it and read:
“I ain’t read one, neither.”
In fifth grade, we had just finished a trimester of sex-ed. It was the second to last day of class, and the teacher was reviewing for the big test. She asks if anyone has any questions, and one girl raises her hand and asks, “Can boys get pregnant?”
Wow! I’m glad I didn’t have to tell that class about being tarred and feathered, much less being drawn and quartered!
IANATeacher but IAAStudent. A few years ago when we were maybe 14 or 15 years old we were in a Physics class learning about gravity. One girl puts her hand up:
“But sir, don’t things just fall down because of the weight of the air on top of them?”
I practically had to restrain myself from getting up and physically slapping some sense into her.
It’s research paper time again, so I had to resurrect this thread. One 11-th grade girl did all of the following:
- Got assigned “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” as a topic, but apparently didn’t read it on time. When the time came to propose what topic from that play she wanted to pursue, her proposal was “I want to talk about the Virginia Werewolf and why everyone is so afraid of it.”
- Wrote the sentence “He is the apple of three eyes.” First, it’s a cliche. Second, she put “there” rather than “their.” Third, she misspelled her incorrect diction, ending up with the image of a red three-eyed fruit.
- When handing in her topic outline (now having read the play, or at least renting the movie, since she’s decided on a real topic), she writes the Roman numerals by hand, but the rest of the outline is typed out on a computer. I ask why it’s like that and she replies, “My computer doesn’t have Roman numerals, only the regular numbers.” Oddly and sadly, this is not the first student I’ve heard say this.
Another student asked to analyze a Walt Whitman poem starts by saying, “This poem made me think of a whorehouse.” He proceeded to use the word “whorehouse” 17 times in his 1-page paper. The poem, of course, is not about a whorehouse, but since it mentioned love, he felt that the whorehouse angle was legitimate. He questioned the D- that he received, saying that he has a right to think what he wants and he shouldn’t be penalized for it. I told him that it wasn’t his thought being penalized; this is a free country and you can think whatever you’d like. Your paper, on the other hand, was trash.
Don’t get me wrong…the students are nice people who usually put forth a lot of effort, but these were some hilarious statements.