Similar story of my own: Had a middle school computer teacher who told us to use “File -> Open URL” on Internet Explorer/Netscape (can’t remember which) which opened a prompt window with a text field to enter in a URL. And I pointed out that you can just use the address bar and do the same thing and she angrily told me that I had to do it the proper way. While I thought she wasn’t looking, I used the address bar anyway. She apparently had been trying to spy if I disobeyed, caught me, and told me that I failed the assignment (I did not even know I was being graded).
Another different computer teacher at my high school I had seemed to more or less admit she had no idea what she was doing (she originally taught a different subject, she seemed legitimately nervous/insecure about possibly losing her job) though she tried by just reading the text book to us verbatim for a few days. Eventually, she gave up and the students just taught each other computer stuff in her class, then when they ran out of things to teach each other they just played Age of Empires all class and the she let us.
Something about this reminds me of macOS’s default Finder settings that doesn’t let you manually type a path.
This is such a strange and irritating limitation of an other great OS.
They don’t pay teachers enough and sometimes it shows.
Dude, School was the worst f’ing psyop.
Give me a straight question and answer on the material, and I’ll 100% it. No, we can’t do that… Here’s four answers that are all technically correct, choose the MOST correct one.
Ohh so it’s pros and cons of a situation and you need to pick the one with the most upsides or least downsides? No, they’re all just mostly ok, but we were REALLY thinking about answer B when we wrote the question.
School is like slavery in many aspects to be honest. Though it‘s really not a physical one, but a mental one.
You can not do much without getting permission from an authority figure first, including relieving basic biological needs such as eating or using the bathroom. You are not allowed to leave the facilities without permission. You are classified into different groups based on your performance on tests, and eventually seperated based on that (usually at high school/university level). You are trained for at least 12 years in this way to obey arbitrary rules and procedures, which are designed to get you ready for the capitalist hellscape that awaits you. Some countries even use this period of time to push another agenda on you, usually one related to religion &\ nationalism. At last, you come out of it (while probably having forgotten many of the things ”taught” to you) and you are immediately put into mandatory military service, or you come to the point of needing a service job just to survive.
Autodidacticism definitely rocks, and homeschooling would be a better idea if one was qualified for it and the child’s social needs could be met elsewhere.
Kinda unrelated to your example, but I just wanted to expand on your psyop comment.
That’s a solid take. The difference I’ve noticed, though everyone’s experience is different, is with homeschooling. From what I’ve seen, quite a few parents take it on despite not really being suited for it. Some seem to have their own forms of indoctrination, the kind that even public schools won’t entertain, so they choose to keep their kids out entirely.
My son has a handful of friends who are homeschooled. (We kept him home a bit longer during Covid while he did remote learning, and he kept a lot of those friends.) His friends span the full spectrum: a couple are pretty middle-of-the-road, you’d never guess they were homeschooled. One lives under really strict, almost militant control, and another seems to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
I hate the crap that goes on when the establishment runs the game, but I also hate what happens when nutjobs run their own game. It’s like we need some kind of framework to keep everyone on the same page, where kids just learn and excel. We should get nominal discipline, learn self-control, but also not be pigeonholeed with a lot of redtape used to protect schools from legal action. Some kind of common sense brigade :)
Average autism experience tbh
That, and teachers really fucking hate being called out on something for some reason.
All my teachers were fine with it honestly :3 at least after primary school… if you corrected them they might’ve given you extra credit
But the general notion of saying something correct and people saying that that’s wrong, and not knowing why still stands
Once I got into Gifted teachers were like that. My first couple years in normie classes suuuucked.
Then in Gifted the bullies got much smarter. Fun times.
You had an extraordinary school experience.
Maybe :3 I think my school wasn’t that highly ranked nationally, but I don’t know how others were in terms of the teachers so can’t compare… It definitely had a lot of other issues tho haha
Teachers and parents. So many tend to double down when you point out their mistakes.
“I’m the adult so tnat means I’m right and you’re wrong”
All they got in life is their self-declared superiority over literal children
Really? Seems like.a very shit teacher and school. Dont think a 7 yr old getting upset by that is unusual. Id be furious of that had happened to my kid.
Its kind of a perfect example of how mediocre has become acceptable and even celebrated. And the attidues of don’t question, or don’t challenge. Scale that up and you start understanding how the world is as it is, particularly in the US.
They need you to feel like less so they can feel like more. Their comfort trumps your reality. Bystanders are more comfortable appeasing bullies than caring for victims.
Yep, am autistic, can confirm.
As with Union of Kobolds, I eventually got into the ‘gifted’ program… they even had me as a 2nd and 3rd grader basically being an unpaid tutor for 4th and 5th graders, sitting in the hallway, helping kids with reading difficulties (in all liklihood, undiagnosed dyslexia) read through kids books.
But, there’s always classes and teachers not part of the gifted program, and they’re often difficult and wrong and rude for no reason.
I still remember a chemistry teacher getting very angry with me for even bringing up quantum scale electron clouds as a model of atoms.
Not allowed to go beyond the Rutherford-Bohr model, even in discussion, always dismissive and rude, incapable of saying just ‘yes that is a more accurate model, but it is far too complex to go over without understanding Rutherford-Bohr first’.
Union of Kobolds
wait is that a thing?
oh wait nvm that’s another user’s username
… Or just a smart kid. Me and my friend in school were also early in learning about negative numbers, but our teacher was positive about it and encouraged us to use them in the problems even though the other kids didn’t need to.
Absolutely not
The worst part is that he was grounded by the parents. When I was younger a teacher told me I was wrong for saying that Portrush was in County Antrim, not Londonderry like she told the class. My mum brought it up at the parent teacher conference.
Same teacher also marked me wrong when asked to list loughs in Northern Ireland and Iisted Lough Beg. I was right, but it wasn’t on the list that SHE gave us.
I really don’t get this attitude. I’ve taught many classes, and making mistakes is just part of teaching. Unless you’re just reading from a textbook (and even those can be wrong), you’re going to make some mistakes. I’m a human being; sometimes I’m going to get stuff wrong. I try to minimize the errors, and it’s not like I’m teaching subjects I’m unqualified to teach. But to err is human. Maybe it’s different because I’ve taught undergrad students rather than K12, but IDK. I just really don’t get the attitude of an educator that feels they need to conjure up an aura of unerring perfection.
if I make a mistake in some derivation, I’ll just admit it, usually with some self-deprecating humor. A few things I’ve said to address it when it happens:
“Whoops! Guess the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet!”
“Whelp, contrary to popular opinion, I am not infallible!”
“Well, I’m clearly not infallible, guess I’ll never be pope!”
<Delivered with obvious sarcasm.> "No, you see, that was intentional! i was just testing you to see if you would notice my error! Obviously it can’t be that I made a mistake!’
“Whelp, as you can plainly see, I am clearly drunk!”
I’ve said all these and other things in front of entire classrooms of students. I don’t make mistakes often. But if you teach enough, it does happen. And it’s always a bit annoying to the students, as they have to back up, maybe correct their notes, etc. And I try to lighten that annoyance with some levity. So I try to make my lectures as correct as possible. But when mistakes do happen, i just try not to make a big deal about them, I dismiss them with some light humor.
Honestly, I’m glad I make mistakes. I wouldn’t want to teach if I didn’t. Part of teaching is making students feel confident that they have the ability to wrap their heads around concepts that may be very challenging. And if even the instructor can make mistakes? Well then students hopefully won’t feel so frustrated and demoralized about the ones they make.
It’s a fine line to walk while teaching. On the one hand, you want to be an authoritative source of knowledge on whatever topic you’re teaching. On the other, you need to be human. And part of that is not trying to portray yourself as some infallible god. Because ultimately that’s not what you are. And kids are clever and perceptive; they can see through your bullshit. If you make a mistake and try to cover it up, they will see through it, and they will lose respect for you. Aside from a few reprobates, most kids have enough emotional intelligence to realize that ultimately you’re just a human being trying to do your best, and that some errors are inevitable. Students are perfectly willing to forgive imperfection. They’re far less willing to forgive dishonesty.
These teachers are just teaching from the same cloth they were taught from.
- The teacher is always right.
- If the teacher is wrong, refer back to rule number one.
The teaching goals in this system are to teach obedience, not information. It’s highly useful when training the next generation of factory workers, not thinking individuals. The teachers are teaching a mindset.
And it varies from school to school, locale to locale. It depends on what the admin views as productive and necessary, almost like a culture in a sense, and is the difference between an inner city school vs a private elite school.
This shit happened to me, but in kindergarten. I grew up in a bilingual house. I spoke English and Spanish equally. I went to the school with my mom to get assessed. She said I could read and was bilingual. The teacher didn’t believe it and made me read from one of their books.
To add insult to injury, when they had Spanish class, the fucking teacher taught us that “purple” was “porpuda” and “lizard” wad “lizardo.” Shit like that… My mom put me in another school.
I’m 48 and still laugh about lizardo. How absolutely stupid.
When I was in kindergarten, my mom got a call day 1 because I didn’t know how to count to 10 supposedly. Even though I did it multiple times. I just did it in Japanese cause they never requested I do it in English. Tbf, I’m white and not bilingual.
why does this gat dang kid keep complaining about his itchy knee?!?
san yon go roku shichi hachi kyu jyu!
…jyu-ichi jyu-ni jyu-san…
Ok I’ll stop now.
Ahem, not bilingual, but I definitely have a small chunk of Japanese drilled into my head after a decade + of Karate, haha.
I do have eczema, so maybe they did think that’s what I was saying.
Lol my ex girlfriend had a “karate” teacher growing up. He taught them a few “Japanese” phrases. It wasn’t until decades later she learned this dude just made it all up. I guess it was something you could get away with in early 90’s bumfuck Wisconsin. Like this dude just rolled into town, started “karate” classes, and just kinda went with it.
Thanks, now I have a plan for trolling my kid’s future kindergarten teacher.
Okay…
lol porpuda. was she trying to say púrpura instead of morado?
y más lagarto = lagardo = lazardo = lizardo??
poor kid
Exactly that. Porpuda is now a joke between my girlfriend and I and we intentionally use it wrong.
You had Peggy Hill as a full time Spanish teacher‽‽ She’s supposed to be a substitute!
Was your spanish teacher called Senór Chang by chance?
No, but he was definitely a white dude who probably smoked a joint before class.
To add insult to injury, when they had Spanish class, the fucking teacher taught us that “purple” was “porpuda” and “lizard” wad “lizardo.”
That’s ridiculous! Everyone knows the correct world is lizarda! Spanish is a gendered language, the genders matter! /s
El lizardo is a great name for a male strip club tho!
That’s just bad teaching. If you’re not allowed to use negatives then the teacher shouldn’t be asking questions where negatives are the answer. 20-25 is NOT equal to zero whether you’ve learnt negatives or not.
Depends on what we’re subtracting. If I have a basket with 20 cookies and I give it to a class of 25 students, I’ll have 0 cookies. I won’t be in a 5 cookie debt, the cookies are distributed on a first come first serve basis. If you didn’t get one too bad, I never signed anything. And fuck them slow kids anyway, they’re probably last because they’re fat and can’t run too fast, they don’t need any more calories, loose some weight lil’ shitlings and be quicker next time.
It’s just a greentext. It’s fake.
Also gay.
Mostly it’s a fetishization of being the minderstood smart kid with scenarios that aren’t true but feel true.
Pretty fake. Pretty gay.
I don’t really like the slur I’ve been using here, but authenticity requires it. Oi moi.
Maybe this instance is fake, but this does happen: my primary school teachers went as far to refuse that negative numbers exist.
She got angry if someone hinted at them.
I literally had a teacher once “correct” me for saying the area of a circle is πr² instead of πrr. I was told “you’re not wrong but that’s for future classes”. On another class, I had a teacher correct a short story by removing repeated words, whereas I used repetition for emphasis, but used a comma instead of ellipsis. Think “I saw it, saw the thing” instead of “I saw it… saw the thing”. Both was in early elementary, no higher than 3rd grade.
So, believe it or not, things happen to other people even if they didn’t happen to you.
The worst thing about calling this fake is that it’s not even unbelievable, it’s a perfectly possible and mundane thing that most likely happened to millions of children as they grew up, yet everything in the internet is fake, right? No one just happens to record people for no reason, no one’s smart enough to make funny jokes in the spur of the moment and get a reaction from strangers.
EDIT: Added context.
I got this in school, it happens. Or happened in the 90s.
I went to a lot of different primary schools (UK here, that’s up-to-11-years-old) and there absolutely were ones where this happened. There were also good ones.
Well that’s just upsetting. What’s the point of even asking trick questions like that if you’re just gonna provide an inaccurate answer? Like, it’s absolutely terrible teaching. If you’re not comfortable teaching the concept of negative numbers just… don’t ask questions where the answers are negative? Completely batshit
There’s not much worse as a kid in a learning environment, or even with your parent(s), to be shut down painfully for being right about something that they don’t know or don’t think you know. Really crushes the satisfaction of nailing a win and turns it into bitterness and starts the lifelong process of keeping your mouth shut when you’re right and letting others win when wrong.
On the other hand, its a crash course in reality of just because you’re right it doesn’t mean anyone gives a shit
I will make them give a shit with my loud voice and this gun I found!
So the school did its job just right then. High five, I quietly let people be wrong too.
I can believe this. Not fake, not gay. The math teaching of the past was so dumb. Even now, I have 2 kids who never got a bad math teacher and still love math; two who did (one teacher who actually thought women ought not get higher education) and those two do not
And a good math teacher is a treasure beyond words. Mr. Galing, if I could have had you teach my kids through high school I would have taken them anywhere.
how many kids do you have?
4 I gave birth to plus 5 step kids - when we married 3 were already grown and 4 were in high school, only 2 were small (and we doubled up on birth control) so we didn’t have an impossible household situation. Enough kids to draw conclusions about the school system though.
That’s a lot! Props to you for keeping your sanity.
Can I ask what your cultural background is? Mormon? Indian? Catholic? South-east asian?
Ha! Not religious, but yes from Catholic background both me & husband. I do like kids, and they are all glad now to have such an extensive network of siblings. White mostly by way of Southern Europe on my side, husband mostly by way of Eastern Europe.
Sounds like there were a lot of fights growing up but now they’re at somewhat peace with one another
How many loaves of bread have you eaten?
16-24 slices per loaf, I have eaten on average 1.39‰ six dozen loaves today
Me, but it’s a job site and the teacher is my manager and I’m 28. Had a possibility to leave in contrast to this 7 years old child
You got a trade? Self employment is a wonderful thing, lemme tell you
Can confirm. Nothing beats not having a boss.
Can confirm. Nothing beats not having a boss.
Life pro tip. A machete and a shovel are very useful tools in achieving this state.
I had an elementary school teacher who insisted that gravity came from the earth’s rotation, and that if the earth stopped spinning there would be nothing holding us down.
I had a math teacher at my stem highschool claim that the touch screens on the ipads worked by heat and that if you touch them too much the screen will get too warm and stop responding
She also told students their computer was slow because they had too many desktop shortcuts, or hadn’t emptied their “trash” files.
There was also an argument we had over whether something was actually a 3d vector or multiple 2d vectors but I don’t wanna dredge my memories for the exact details, it was dumb.
So, there is some jank in how Microsoft handles the desktop that results in more shortcuts on in using more resources. It always has to have all the images and icons loaded at all times.
But with the increases in baseline RAM I’d be shocked to find anyone with more than 4GB experiencing slowdown from it, even in the most extreme situations.
Similar thing with trash/recycling bin. Are you already low on storage space? Then yeah, clean it so your PC has enough spare space to work, or to use for swap (effectively extra, slower RAM by way of using drive space). But that was also far more likely to be a problem on the old drives measured in MB.
Huh, thank you for the additional info!
I had a math teacher at my stem highschool claim that the touch screens on the ipads worked by heat and that if you touch them too much the screen will get too warm and stop responding
I think the only way this could be any stupider is if she said it has cameras under the screen looking for where your fingers go.
Lol, yeah somehow that would sink even lower. It fucking drove me up the wall when I was a kid
I had an 8th grade social studies teacher/football coach tell us black people had an extra bone in their leg and that’s why they were so good at sports. He was pretty well liked teacher tbh, we watched Oliver Stones “JFK” in his class. During lectures he’d come around and sit on the front of his desk to seem more relatable. He ended up on the school board eventually.
If anything would it not be the opposite due to centrifugal force? The faster the earth spins, the more you should be pushed away.
Did your teacher believe in the hollow Earth theory?
She clearly had no idea which way the vectors point on the outside of a spinning sphere
I wonder if she ever played on a roundabout, being spun fast enough that holding on is barely enough
funnily enough i’ve heard people say the same thing irl
it kinda baffled me how people would even think that way
I still remember my teacher bitching me out in front of the class when we were learning negative numbers because when he asked me how I figured out the correct answer I said that the positive numbers and negatives cancelled each other out. Like -4 and positive 5, the negative 4 cancels out 4 on the positive side and you are left with 1. Maybe that wasn’t the correct verbiage but it gave me the correct answer every time. He was a dick about correcting me though.
You understood numbers intuitively and that piece of shit could not even comprehend that someone can understand it this way.
The bajillion stories in the comments about horrible experiences with math just reinforce the fact that I’ve made the right career choice.
I became an elementary teacher as a second career specifically because so many elementary teachers are absolutely terrible at teaching math. (Mostly because they don’t actually understand the math that they’re teaching. In my university cohort, almost 50% of my classmates failed the math entrance exam the first time. There was nothing more complex than 5th grade math on that test.)
Students should be allowed to use the strategies that work for them, and they should definitely never be punished for knowing math from higher grade levels.
If a student in my class knows something more advanced, I will challenge them to use grade-level-appropriate strategies to prove that their answers are correct. And if they demonstrate that they can do both, I’ll give them more advanced work to help them grow.
There’s good out there too. I was good at maths in school and was encouraged to do more advanced stuff
Seeing several of the most brain-dead people I knew in high school going into teaching really made me lose a little respect for teachers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some great teachers, but this really explains all the shitty ones.
Maaaaaan, I’ve been holding this in for almost 3 decades and it’s time to vent lol…
When I was in
middle-school(lol) primary school we were doing a quiz on space and the Earth and I recall the question: how long is a year?I’d remember reading in my “Magic School Bus” book that a year is closer to ~365.25 (that’s where we get the extra day in the leap years) and the class and teacher mocked me for not putting 365. I’m still salty about it!
Julian = 365.25 days
Gregorian = 365.2425 so you also loose a day every century but this is cancelled every 400 years.
Farnsworthian = exactly 3
Units are weird. I just say one orbit
Sidereal, tropical or anomalistic?
“Impossible” would be a more mathematically accurate answer than “zero”.
It’s not a matter of accuracy even, if for any two natural numbers x < y it holds x - y = 0 then x = y, which is a contradiction. So this is basic consistency requirement, basically sabotaging any effort to teach kids math.
Depends on how your mathematical system is defined. In the mathematics system this teacher is using, negative numbers simply do not exist. The answer to 5-6 is the same as 5/0: NaN. Is this mathematical system incomplete? Yes. But, as has been thoroughly proven, there is no such thing as a complete mathematical system.
The answer would still not be 0 as 0 is clearly still well defined within that system. NaN, undefined, etc. would be acceptable answers though. Otherwise you define:
for x > y, y - x = 0
Which defines that x = y
Resulting in the conditional x > y no longer being true
Also x/0 isn’t NaN. It’s just poorly defined and so in computing will often return “NaN” because what the answer is depends on the numbering system used and accidentally switching/conflating numbering systems is a very easy way to create a mathmatical fallacy like the one above.
I was under the impression that there is in fact such a thing as a complete mathematical system (if you take “mathematical system” in the broader sense of “internally consistent system”), but such a system would be pretty limited and therefore rather useless.
Yea, or “the first twenty are free but the remaining five you don’t have to give are a problem”.
