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Times You Have Shown A Teacher to be Wrong
I respect teachers, and I have often taught algebra, paralegal, and even calculus classes. I don't usually haev a lot of respect for people who say, "My teacher sux" because of some imagined fault.
HOWEVER, I was just thinking today of a genetics class I took once. The professor was showing us how the recessive gene for hemophilia ran through the inbred royal families of Europe in the 1900s. She said, "As you can see, all these people died of hemophilia."
I said from my seat, "Well, Alexei Romanov there didn't die from hemophilia", to which the professor retorted, "Yes, he most certainly did."
I said, "No. Look at the year the family tree shows that he died. Now look at when all the rest of his family members died. See how they all died in 1918? They were all shot during the Russian Revolution. Actually, Alexei was shot and stabbed multiple times before he died."
The professor said, "Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right."
So satisfying.
HOWEVER, I was just thinking today of a genetics class I took once. The professor was showing us how the recessive gene for hemophilia ran through the inbred royal families of Europe in the 1900s. She said, "As you can see, all these people died of hemophilia."
I said from my seat, "Well, Alexei Romanov there didn't die from hemophilia", to which the professor retorted, "Yes, he most certainly did."
I said, "No. Look at the year the family tree shows that he died. Now look at when all the rest of his family members died. See how they all died in 1918? They were all shot during the Russian Revolution. Actually, Alexei was shot and stabbed multiple times before he died."
The professor said, "Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right."
So satisfying.
Comments
As for Alexei Romanov, he did have hemophilia. However, is that something you can really die of directly? It's sort of like how you can't die of HIV/AIDS directly. You would instead die from some disease that your immune system would have otherwise been able to defeat. If I have hemophilia and die of a papercut, would it not be more accurate to say that I died of a papercut? If you have hemophilia and you die of stabbing, then the hemophilia definitely contributed to, but was no the cause of, your death.
You wouldn't say that a Metroid died of weakness to freeze beam. The cause of death was getting shot with multiple missiles. Freezing is their weakness, but it's not the direct cause of their destruction.
Also, I remember watching a movie about the Romanovs. It was very long time ago, like 7th grade, so my memory is fuzzy. That fuzzy memory of a not perfectly historically accurate movie sees Alexei dying after using a sled to go down the stairs in the house in Siberia that the communists were keeping them in. So at least in a movie he died shortly before the rest of his family was executed.
Also, I'm no medical expert, but I'm pretty sure the multiple gunshots and stabbings probably were greater contributors to his death than the hemophilia.
My entire highschool physics class planned a prank of sorts on me, teacher included (actually started with him). One day in class, they would try to convince me of this. It was supposed to be a demonstration of how anyone can be manipulated into sheepish group-think and believing what they're told. I had none of it, and called out my friends who were in on the show as it was happening because "I never thought you could be this dumb." Basically I'm just taking this opportunity to pat myself on the back for being a bastion of resiliance against peer pressure and gullibility.
One of my friends recently reminded me of his favorite line I delivered, which was "Romeo is just a horny bastard" in english class. Another personal favorite was absolutely destroying one of the social studies teachers on his political bias during the 2000 election. Not so much proving someone wrong as demonstrating superior knowledge: everything HP Lovecraft in one of my literature classes was rather funny, thanks to Call of Cthulhu.
Basically, I had a mean streek, and it got me in a lot of trouble, but it was the only thing that made that wasted time of weak education tolerable.
I've told this before but I once had a science teacher in 7th grade who was basically just a football coach put in a teaching position who didn't believe in Evolution. I called him out on his shit in an essay we had to write and said people who don't believe in evolution are ignorant, after which he proceeded to give a 20 minute lecture about how we have to respect peoples beliefs and all that shit. He didn't mention my name but he quoted my paper so I know it was because of me. Fuck that guy.
I know there were other times but none come to mind other than things like my crazy art teacher saying there are 52 states.
The first was when I got into trigonometry my senior year of high school. At the time I was working a full-time job to pay for my car so a lot of the time I would sleep some in class. The teacher of that class, like any teacher, did not like it and got onto me often. Well about two weeks into that semester the teacher decided to spring a pretest which would be the same exact test we would take at the end of the semester as our final. Well the teacher trying to be slick decided to make a bet with me. If I could pass the test he would no longer stop me from sleeping in the class but if I failed it I would have to agree to not fall asleep again in class for the rest of the semester. I got a 96. If I remember right I was the only student to do worse on the final, which I got a 94 on, than the pretest.
Not that that teacher was bad though, I actually liked him as he defended me a couple of times from the assistant principal when I was high in class. It was actually his fault that I did so good on that pretest because a couple years earlier I had him in geometry and always asked for extra work which he gladly gave.
My next would be a legitimately bad teacher. I believe her name was Mrs. House, she was the wife of one of the winners of that show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. She started teaching at my school during my senior year. I had her for physics, also my senior year, specifically my last semester. I can say without a doubt that I learned nothing from her. I may have knew more going in than coming out of that class. It was not that she lacked the knowledge, she was actually quite smart, but unlike her husband, who also taught at my school, she could not teach. Also, unlike him, she was not very friendly. I remember her ridiculing other students for needing help after class. I do not even know if I passed her class. According to her I failed it but according to a little honorary document my school gave me for completing 5 science courses during high school I actually passed, and I think my school report said I had an 85.
She also taught 9Th grade biology. I remember hearing that a lot of parents when to the school board due to their kids failing. If I remember right during her first year teaching their only around 10% of kids passed any of her classes. I believe she was either fired during or at the end of the first semester the year after I graduated.
Back in elementary school I used to have long and bitter arguments with teachers over things that were obvious to me, but I mostly stopped by high school when I learned the important lesson; it doesn't matter if you are right, only if they think you are right. I learned this after I got sent home for arguing, even after using a book to show I was right. So after that, I just resolved to ignore my teachers and trust the books on any fact-based (as opposed to skill-based) course.
I still tend to do a lot of random comments in class. However, my various teachers have also given me a general thumbs up to do so, because apparently I'm rather insightful and helpful. It's not so much correcting as helping, but I think that's an even sweeter deal.
The worst was in 6th grade, though. We had a math exam, and upon the paper being returned to the class, I checked over the one question I had gotten wrong, and was subsequently pretty damn sure I was right. After class, I checked with a big chunk of the students as we were filing down the hall, and it turned out that every single one of them had gotten the same answer I had, and that it'd been marked wrong. The next day, I brought it up to the teacher, and he was completely dismissive about it. I pressed the point, and even offered to do the math on the chalk board for the benefit of the class, and it turned into a (one sided) shouting match. I was ready to just give it up and return to my seat, but as I was going to sit down, he had apparently not had enough, and shouted at me to go do the problem on the board like I wanted so I could 'show everyone how smart I was'. I did the problem, and showed the class, and everyone nodded in complete agreement, and the dude blew his fucking marbles. He grabbed a whistle from his desk and blew it in my face repeatedly, shouting for me to get out and go to the office.
I spent the day in detention, and when I told the Principal what had happened, I was told that I was on my way to a suspension if I kept disrespecting her staff like that. The next day, when I returned to class, the teacher made a point of telling me that he'd seen the error of his ways, and had refunded the points for everyone's test. Except mine, 'in the hopes it would teach me some civility'.
In conclusion, fuck you, Mr. Brown. Fuck you in whichever way you don't like it. But not that much, because you weren't actually the worst teacher I ever had.
It's not that big a deal to have made a mistake or two as a teacher. I once put that 6 + 8 = 16 while I was student teaching on a worksheet after a rough day of dealing with tiny children. One of the kids brought it up the next day so I gave them a sticker, showed why this couldn't work to the whole class, and moved on. However, getting a whistle and freaking out does seem tempting. :P
Also, funny thing, in high school we had an introductory computer science class. Of course, in all such courses you are being taught how to convert from decimal to binary. One conversion method was the Horner scheme. Unfortunately the teacher made a mistake and left out a bracket which made the whole thing wrong. I pointed it out, got some extra credit for it, and he told us he would correct the slide for next time but we should correct it in our notes right away.
The next year, in the next level class, the same teacher presented the same slide for revision. I pointed out the same mistake again, and again got extra credit. Unfortunately he immediately corrected it with a permanent marker.
1. I got reprimanded in Kindergarten for saying the Google Googol Number was a real number and my teacher made me apologize for lying. (A googol is a 1 with a hundred zeros after it and is where the search engine gets its name.) Parent's night was the next week, and my dad told the teacher that, yes, it was a real thing in math.
2. The principal of the school taught our 6th grade social studies class that if you have 100% inflation, your money is worth nothing. I protested, because I knew Brazil at the time had some ludicrous degree of inflation that went beyond 100%, but I was shot down, because it was the principal and I was just a 6th grader. Again, my dad gave me the formula for calculating inflation, and sent me with a letter that explained the math. The teacher retaught us. This was the same teacher who had a quiz question where the hint for "Pine" was "Deciduous." Decent guy, but not the best teacher.
3. I had a total jerko for 10th grade social studies. He was a fatty football coach, a total meat head conservative. I remember during the "Asian" Unit he said that Japanese women bound their feet. I corrected him, and said that foot-binding was a Chinese custom, not Japanese. His response was "Japanese are cultural borrowers, after all." I swore up and down that at no time in history has foot-binding been part of Japanese fashion, but he ignored me. The next day I came in with a book of Japanese kimono and footwear through the ages, listed off all the eras of Japanese history, and explained the evolution of the sandal. (Also, my mom said that she would eat a bug if he could come up with a single piece of evidence to support his claim.) He said "Well, okay, I guess so, but it is hard to walk in those tall shoes."
The next year he was back to teaching about "Japanese Footbinding" Fail.
I'm pretty sure he pulled that incident to see what his best students would do concerning authority, but maybe he was just doing it to be an ass. Who knows?