Oh, don’t get me started. There’s also
log (a+b) = log a + log b
sin (a + b) = sin a + sin b
“So you think all functions are linear, then?”
“What does that mean?”
I can add this ancedote:
In an Eastern Cultures class, the teacher was beginning a unit on China. He asked what everybody thought about when they think about China, expecting to get the answer “Chinese Food” and almost nothing else. One of the students raised his hand and was called on. But instead of the expected answer, the student said “Chinese People”
(duh)
** Nacho4Sara **, i would also love to have a copy as well. i’m a writing tutor and i’ve found that i get easily frustrated with 25 year olds who’ve never heard of a five point essay. if you could email it to lzaremski@herzeleid.net , i’d be much obliged. 
Hey, Nacho4Sara, could you e-mail me a copy of that too? It’s jkrising at hotmail dot com (no more spam for me!). I don’t teach writing, but I’m trying to learn to write, and what you have sounds really useful.
Nacho4Sara, could you send me one as well? Its sounds like a really useful tool. dhfeinsm@syr.edu
When I was in the ninth grade, a girl once asked the teacher why it is that, when we look at stars through telescopes, we can’t see their points.
When I was in the eleventh grade I corrected exams for my psychology teacher. One exam contained the following question: “Name the part of the body in which neural transmission occurs.” The correct answer is, of course, “the synaptic canal.” One student wrote—not at all intending to be funny—“the septic trough.” In his case he was right. The teacher and I laughed until we cried.
I teach philosophy at a major research university, and sometimes I teach in the humanities program for freshmen/sophomores. This past quarter students wrote a paper on Plato and Pindar on memory. One paper contained the following sentence, exactly as quoted: “When you find out something you thought you didn’t know before, in your mind it is your opinion.”
Another college class story: I was in a class for education(!) majors and one of my fellow students began relating something she had heard on the news that had happened in Korea. The professor interrupted, asking “Which Korea?”
She gave him a blank look. “There’s more than ONE??”
Mind you, when I was recruiting for Amnesty International, this student told me she was apolitical…guess that means she didn’t feel the need to learn geography.
Perfectly excusable if was the first whack by that student at a foreign language. The synapsis just misfire.
Nacho4Sara, I’m compiling a similar manual for my students. Could you send me one of yours so I can compare? It’s jmatte212@yahoo.com
They have grammar books and a writing book, but sometimes those are a bit confusing for some of them…
IANAT either, but nevertheless…
The Scene: Grade 10 English
We were reading To Kill A Mockingbird in the typical very slow high school manner. We would read and discuss each chapter before moving onto the next. We had been reading and talking about the book for about three weeks (maybe a month), when my teacher hands out a sheet of comprehension questions, probably hoping for some peace and quiet. So, we have a quiet room, filled with the sound of pen on paper, and suddenly, from the back row comes:
"Oh, Tom Robinson is black!"
This kid had been in class every single day - how the hell did he miss that? In any case, this comment pretty much brought the house down, and there was no more peace a quiet for my teacher that day.
The same kid, the same year, in French class, put up his hand and said (in English):
Why is there a verb ‘to drive’ in French? There isn’t one in English!"
In the Army I instructed a number of classes. One day I was teaching students on a tactical intelligence course how to use aerial photographs, which is actually kind of fun. It’s sort of cool to try to identify things like billboards and grain elevators from aerial photos, because they look strange from above; nothing is a recognizable shape. Anyway, we had some run-of-the-mill aerial photos out and the steroscopes and I had everyone go through the exercises. At the conclusion of the class I asked if there were any questions.
Asked Private (Name withheld), “So, these pictures were taken from the air?”
I had to revive this old thread, since I’ve just read a couple of semi-funny lines from student essays:
From a writing assignment on * Our Town *: “Life is good in Groovers Corners.” I picture Disco Stu grooving on a corner.
From a paper on Transcendentalism: “We should inspect our livers more often.” Just a typo, I know, but the result is still kind of funny.
From a short story: “He went down into the lobby and talked to the lobbyist.”
A couple of others that were spoken, not written:
A girl who has me for homeroom asked me, “What’s a ‘scant’?” I replied that “scant” means “not enough” or “not much,” but I’d never heard it used as a noun. Let’s look it up, I say, just in case there’s a usage I don’t know… Nope. No noun usage. Why? She replied, “My grandmother gave me a recipe for fudge, and it says to use ‘scant milk.’ I don’t know where to get that kind of milk; maybe it’s like goat’s milk?”
And finally, after an announcement was made that so-and-so would be speaking at the Rotary Luncheon, a girl, genuinely puzzled, asked why they would eat lunch right in the middle of the rotary. (Or “roundabout,” if you don’t have rotaries where you come from.)
OK, that’s all for now.
I’m not a teacher, and this is arguably off topic, but it’s too amusing to not post. At my karate class, there’s a kid who always tries to covertly wipe his nose with his gi sleeve during a rising block. The worrying thing is that as if it wasn’t blatant enough (If you know what a rising block looks like, try wiping your nose during one. It’s really not a very clever way to do it.), bear in mind that gis, and their sleeves, are white. Say no more.
~ Isaac
I teach 1st year physics undergrads maths. They’re supposed to be mathematically able. Some of my gems:
“What’s a vector?”
“The cube root of a negative number is undefined” Um, right, OK.
A classic from a group of year 9 (14 year olds!) that I had the pleasure of teaching Hubble’s Law to:
Me: “So, how do you think we measure distances in the universe?”
Kid: “Miss! With a ruler.”
Me: “No, its too short”
Same Kid: “Ooh! Ooh! With a tape measure?”
Me: “No, that could be a bit impractical, the distances are really large.”
Kid: “Ooh! Ooh! Miss! I know!!”
Me (Expecting the worse): “Go on…”
Kid: “With one of those trundley wheel things that you roll along the floor”
At this point, Kid’s friend turns to him and says:
“Don’t be silly. You need solid ground for that to work. There’s no ground in outer space.”
One morning I found “Jai guru deva” written 100 times on my chalkboard.
Sounds like Lisa Simpson had to stay after school this time.
I have two that immediately come to mind:
#1
I was student teaching, studying Macbeth with tenth graders. We had read the play out loud, discussed it, and spent a week or so carefully exploring the text. Then, we settled in for a BBC video production. [“Culminating activity” in edu-speak.] Fifty-minute classes mean the video is a three to four day “culminating activity.”
Okay, on day two Macbeth has stolen into Duncan’s bedchamber and killed him in cold blood. In the video, he comes out of the room holding bloody daggers in both hands, blood streaming down his arms, completely out of his mind with guilt.
I’m sitting at the back of the class. A kid turns around and loud-whispers to me, “Who’s he?” She’s wide-eyed, dead serious, having absolutely no clue who the guy with the blood could possibly be.
I am dumfounded.
When I finally recover my faculties, I choke out, in a strangled whisper of despair/dismay/utter helplessness: “MACBETH!!?!!!?!”
This was the moment in my student teaching semester where I thought, is it too late to change my major?
#2
In my first year of teaching I got a wicked flu, and left a lame “read the story in the book and assign questions 1-25” lesson plan for the sub.
When I get back I have a huge stack of this nonsense to grade, and I am going through them, vowing never to assign such a dumb ass thing again, when I come across Johnny’s tattered loose leaf sheet of answers.
Apparently Johnny, also feeling it was a lame assignment, had pilfered his answers from the teacher’s edition textbook. What was my first clue? What tipped me off to Johnny’s strategy? I guess it was when, for any question which called for an opinion, rather than a concrete answer–about half of the questions–he had scrawled “Answers will vary.”
Female students swore to me that drinking Coke with aspirin would terminate an unwanted pregnancy. . .
Today, in lessons. A Politics lesson for A-level, no less. Designed for people with a definite interest in politics.
Teacher: What is indirect democracy?
Me: (sleepily) It’s like, we can’t all fit in the House of Commons, so we send elected representatives.
Teacher: Close enough. Steph*, from that, can you take a stab at what direct democracy is?
Steph: Dunno.
Teacher: Can’t you have a guess? You know what indirect democracy is…
Steph: Nah… what’s democracy?
Argh. How can you be doing Politics for A-level and regularly writing essays on election systems and not know what democracy is?
*not her real name.
When I was an undergraduate, I took many music theory and composition courses for fun; by the time I graduated, I’d completed most of the advanced curriculum required of music majors.
So about 15 years later, my partner is a professor at a small uni here in Virginia. Turns out I can sit in on classes for free, and I thought, I’ll take music theory again, cos it was great fun, and I’d like to get back into it.
No problem – the professor who taught the music majors’ theory classes (as opposed to the pretty general music theory class that anyone can take as a group req) allowed me to sit in.
Now, to get into these classes, it is music majors only. As at other schools, to become a music major, one must have been playing an instrument for a certain number of years, have auditioned on that instrument, and passed a battery of entrance tests including sight singing, interval identification, etc.
I dropped out of the class after 2 weeks – not one kid in that class could identify notes on the staff, or look at a key signature and tell you what key had 3 sharps, etc. I thought perhaps I was in the wrong class, but one day before the professor came, I finally just asked the kids, who were all very friendly, what instruments they played, and were they all majors. A wide variety of instruments, and all were majors.
How in the heck did they get into the formal programme and pass all those tests, and played instruments with presumably formal training, yet didn’t know their clefs, notes, key signatures?
The answer is obviously 8 over 0, and the two zeroes cancel out.
:rolleyes: and maybe a little :dubious: