This thread in GQ turned into a sort of ‘arguing with teachers that didn’t know what they were talking about’ thread. It was trucking along just fine but I think a thread like that would fit even better in MPSIMS than GQ, so, here it is!
In 3rd grade I had a teacher that believed the saying ‘what goes up must come down’ was a scientific law. I got told to be quiet for arguing with her that no, the Voyager probes were NOT coming back. This would have been 1986 or so, the things were already near the last planets in the solar system, how in the world are they going to come back? I was 8, she had to be in her 50’s! How could she not know this?
Even worse, my 6th grade science teacher was talking about the space shuttle’s propulsion systems. We talked about the solid fuel boosters for a while, then we moved on to discussing the liquid fuel engines. The ones on the shuttle itself and the ones on the giant orange fuel tank. Wait, what?
I politely informed him that the giant orange fuel tank does not have an engine, it’s just a fuel tank (Albeit giant and, so I’ve heard, orange). He said I was wrong. I told him to look at the picture in our book, showing the bottom of the giant orange fuel tank with a smooth surface and no rocket nozzle. I was then treated to him mocking me with “Oh ok well then, since omgzebras says there’s no rocket on the fuel tank, I guess he’s right and I’m wrong. omgzebras just knows everything doesn’t he? Fine then everybody, just listen to whatever omgzebras says since he thinks he so smart.” This was all done in just the snottiest voice imaginable. Imagine Mr. Garrison from South Park.
Nowadays I’d have said something snotty right back but back then I was mortified to have a teacher talk to me like that so I just sort of sank into my seat and shut up. Still, it was right there in the picture! Just look!
The thing you have to understand is that other teachers may be often wrong, but I never am. As sure as the sun rises in the West, I always know the correct answer!
Once near the beginning of a physics class the professor said we could ignore a sign in calculating something, and I pointed out that he couldn’t ignore it and would trying to make something more powerful without putting any work into it if he did. A thoroughly decent man, he stood back for a couple of minutes, and turned to face the class, and said “I’m sorry, I have not adequately prepared today’s lecture. Class dismissed.”
Warning: All numbers in the below post are fictitious. The actual numbers are long forgotten, but made the same point as the fake numbers.
In seventh grade history class we did an experiment to demonstrate the general awesomeness of an assembly line. The class was broken up into four groups of five students with four students left over working on their own. Each group had to set up an assembly line to make paper cars with one person cutting them out, another coloring, another glueing, and the last two doing something else that I can’t remember. The four left over students made the paper cars on our own. We had five minutes to produce as many cars as we could.
The highest producing group made seventeen cars. Out of the four students working on their own one made five cars, another seven, another three, and the last five also.
The teacher explained to us we finished that working on an assembly line, the groups were able to produce more vehicles than any of the individuals. I pointed out that in the highest producing group, five students made seventeen cars, but if you grouped the students working on their own, then you had four students who made twenty cars in the same amount of time and that seemed like a better work model. She told me it didn’t count because we weren’t really in group, but I still say that she was probably a somewhat flustered first year teacher that day because her lesson plan didn’t work the way she had hoped.
I’m currently a middle school math teacher. I’m honest with my students that I frequently make silly mistakes if I rush or don’t check my work and encourage them to let me know if they catch a mistake. I try to be graceful when they take me up on the offer to correct me.
To repeat my mangled contribution from the other thread:
My brother goes to a… a special school. A sorta reform school. I’m sure there are many people there who smart and kind, but the majority that figure in his stories are brick dumb. Including some of the teachers.
Case 1: Teacher says the sun is the largest star in the galaxy. Brother says, no it isn’t, that’s Betelgeuse. Teacher tells him he’s wrong, and everybody in the class makes fun of him for being a stupid loser. (Admittably, the teacher says she meant solar system instead of galaxy. Which would be technically correct, but pretty useless information).
Case 2: The class is having a disscusion on drinking, and my brother annouces that he’s a teetotaler. The teacher tells him that “teetotaler” is inappropriate, and that the word is “sober”. Brother keeps protesting that teetotaler is a perfectly valid word, and more accurate than sober. Nope, the teacher keeps insisting that teetotaler is a bad word (?) and that he shouldn’t use it.
Needless to say, Brother is not excited to return to school in the fall. And if half the stories he tells of his classmates are true, I don’t blame him.
I went to space camp when I was fifteen. We took a course in ‘Space Law’ wherein we discussed the treaties governing space launches and satellites and the like. The course was taught in English, but the instructor’s first language was French.
At one point, he mentioned the international court which is responsible for the relevant treaty, which is located in the city of La Haye. I put up my hand to point out, for the benefit of those students who weren’t bilingual, that the English name of this city is The Hague. The instructor disagreed, and when I told him I was quite confident, I was shouted down by other students, to the effect “You fool, proper nouns don’t translate!”
I was too flustered to further insist, and even to remember such other proper nouns as London/Londres, Germany/Allemagne, etc. as a rebuttal.
When the exam came, I was confronted with a question asking the location of the international court. I wrote “The Hague, Netherlands (known in French as ‘La Haye’)”.
The question was actually worth quite a few marks, and I’m virtually certain that my poor performance on that exam (I got every other question right) cost me the award for highest marks on the space camp curriculum at the end of the program.
I still remember how embarrassed and powerless I felt, shouted down in class by stubborn, proud ignorance, and unable to prove the truth to be right for lack of a reference material. And how disappointed I was to get such a poor academic report for the course, after doing so well in all of the other courses and really wanting to excel in the material.
But I came out alright. Ten years later I moved to a city a few minutes away from The Hague to work at the space agency. And it turns out ‘La Haye’ itself is a translation of a proper noun; the locals call it Den Haag.
In 9th grade, my world geography teacher, who’d been teaching at that point for 37 years, argued with me over the existence of the nation of Belize. I had been to Belize the summer before, so I knew that it existed. I told her that it was formerly a British colony, called British Honduras, had gained independence just four years before, all the salient geographical facts (location, capitol, largest city, etc.) and she endured in her insistence that I had no clue what I was talking about. So I stood up, went to the front of the room, pulled down the (brand new, just installed) world map and pointed it out to her.
She sent me to the principal’s office for being disrespectful. I told the principal that I found it disrespectful to be told over and over that I was lying about the existence of a place that I had been to, when the proof was so easily ascertained. I also said that I thought it was disrespectful to the entire class to have the teacher feed them misinformation, and that if she was unsure about the facts of a situation, she should table the matter until she could look up the proper answer. The principal sent me on to my next class and the next morning I had a note from the principal in homeroom (not unusual) that I’d been transferred to the other world geography class and my schedule had been rearranged.
In one of my first year politics classes, the professor stated that a particular political party existed in every state in Australia but mine.
This had been true up until the year before when a branch had been formed in my home state. I informed him of this fact, politely. He argued, simply repeating his previous assertion. I had a great deal of difficulty not remarking that if he bothered to learn anything new in the previous decade he’d already know that I was correct. Grr.
I mean, hello, I lived there and was of voting age, and came from an extremely political social circle. But what would I know? Yes, I am still bitter!
You should then have taken the grade 10 history class that I did: History and theory of revolutions… (We covered the American Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolutiuon.)
When I am wrong, which happens, I use it as a learning experience for the kids. Usually I find out I’m wrong during the day.
The next day, I’ll start class by saying something like, “Well, I was reminded of something yesterday. I’m human and sometimes I make mistakes or remember things wrong. Because I’m responsible and mature, I’m going to admit it and make sure you learn the right thing.” Then, I explain the error/goof-up and say that while it was tempting to say nothing, I want them to learn what it means to be a responsible person.
Actually, nearly all teachers I work with do something similar. I’m sorry to hear so many have had such poor teachers. I promise, while they stick out in your mind, they do not represent the majority, who made sacrifices to go into a poor paying career to help kids.
I’ve actually learned to correct teachers by asking questions, most of my teachers were pretty good so I technically wouldn’t have needed to, but the worse ones tend not to get offended if you just ask “I was told by [authority]/read in [relevant source]/whatever that [contradictory information] did I hear wrong?” It’s so hilariously transparent it sounds like it shouldn’t work, yet it does for some reason. At the worst the teacher just says it’s wrong I say “okay” write it in my notes in case the wrong fact is on the test and then bitch about it to friends later, at best the teacher skips a beat, goes “oh :smack: right” and corrects themselves.
That said, most of my teachers (especially math teachers) specifically told us the first day to correct them if we think something is wrong. Like I said, ESPECIALLY math teachers, partially because we may have done something wrong and they can correct us and partially because you’re bound to think 2 + 2 = 5 on an off day eventually. I’ve also caught history teachers spreading those mostly-harmless-but-ultimately-incorrect little factoids about an era and said something, which they usually look up and concede.
However I had one really… odd… teacher in a bad college I went to for a couple semesters that had some, er, UNIQUE views regarding computer science concepts (he was a social psychologist), to the point where he would redefine terms to fit philosophical views (deciding AI had nothing to do with learning, reaction, neural nets, etc but rather that your fucking cell phone’s ability to store phone numbers was AI in its purest form, long story). The entire class rebelled against that guy, he never conceded anything and we must have derailed at least 3 classes arguing with him, he mysteriously left for another school after that semester…
On an assembly line, the station at the end has to wait for the nearly-completed car to come his way. Unless the teacher had cars in all stages of production ready and waiting, the last guy in line would be waiting two minutes or so with nothing to do. The students working alone can all get started right away.
In the real world, the cars that are on the line at the end of one day are waiting the next day so everyone can pick up right where they left off. Given enough time, the assembly lines would have overcome their startup delay and blown the hand-crafted, artisan approach out of the water.
My impression is that in Asian classrooms (Taiwan, Japan, Korea and so on) the lesson in being respectful is far, far more important than the location of a country around the world. Demonstrating the truth takes a back seat to genuflecting to Authority and generally getting along with everyone else, and they start pounding that lesson into kid’s brains young, early and often.
In about 6th grade I learned about mugwort in (I think) the Royal Rangers (think Boy Scouts for American Protestants).
When it was announced that my class was going on an overnight field trip, and we should watch out for poison oak, I asked if there would be mugwort there.
My teacher made pointed fun of me. I actually don’t think he was an evil guy, but that he thought I had made up the topic, and was trying to disrupt the class. He was a relatively young teacher, probably under 30. We went on the trip, and everyone rubbed mugwort on their skin to prevent allergic itching.
Back in my high school career, while the cold war was still a going concern, my history/social studies teacher stated that, following a nuclear explosion, there would be a lot of blind people wandering around because they would have heard the explosion and turned toward it, only to be blinded by the flash.
I was willing to concede that I wasn’t 100% on how the whole process worked, but that barring evidence to the contrary a flash would travel at the speed of light, where an explosion … wouldn’t.
He was kind enough to allow me to have my opinion about the relative speeds. We agreed to disagree.
