[tj hughes]

(Original post by Muffled Snuffles)
My RMPS teacher told me Evolution was just a 'theory' ie complete guesswork and wouldn't be valid until it was proven with scientific facts. I don't think she understood what 'theory' meant in this context.

Happened in my R.E. class as well! Another R.E. teacher claimed that the earth was only a few thousand years old and that dinosaurs never existed. (this was a GCSE age btw)

Can't believe people entrust these religious nutters with the job of educating young minds.

[alexmagpie]

I once had to get a map to prove to a teacher that Kazakhstan is in fact a real country.

[philistine]

(Original post by tj hughes)
Happened in my R.E. class as well! Another R.E. teacher claimed that the earth was only a few thousand years old and that dinosaurs never existed. (this was a GCSE age btw)

Can't believe people entrust these religious nutters with the job of educating young minds.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at that.

[TheSownRose]

(Original post by alexmagpie)
I once had to get a map to prove to a teacher that Kazakhstan is in fact a real country.

I once had to do that in order to prove that Holland isn't a country.

It was to a geography teacher.

[False Utopia]

"integrate

well, multiple the top and bottom by x and we get:



*stares in bewilderment for 2 minutes* hang on, we can't integrate that! the book is wrong.".

"But sir, the numerator is the differential of the denominator" /5 second silence.

ever since that day he hated me.

[im so academic]

(Original post by alexmagpie)
I once had to get a map to prove to a teacher that Kazakhstan is in fact a real country.

Never watched Borat then.

[False Utopia]

(Original post by nohomo)
Does differential mean derivative here? Because



by the product rule

I'm not quite sure what you did there, I did say integrate. The answer should have been

[inadilemma]

Had to tell an R.S. teacher that the commandment about blaspheming is spelled 'vain' not 'vein'. She insisted that she was right, had to look it up and then finally conceded that I was right.

In year 5 the teacher was moving the tables to create space for an activity and blocked the fire escape. I told her that you're supposed to keep it clear and she told me I was being rude! She moved the table.

[Holz888]

Year 9 science. I was having a conversation with my friend, who didn't believe me that a strawberry is not in fact, a berry due to the botanical definition. So, my friend went up to my science teacher (who is a doctor of biology, I guess she doesn't watch QI though) and asked if what I had said is true. She dismissed my claims, humiliating me in front of my entire science table so that I became the butt of many "blonde" jokes (despite being a brunette). Never liked that teacher.

[philistine]

(Original post by alexmagpie)
I once had to get a map to prove to a teacher that Kazakhstan is in fact a real country.

Same thing happened to me, but with the Philippines. He thought I was simply making it up; as if I had a conjured a nonsense word in the fashion of Edward Lear!

[tehforum]

(Original post by xxm)
My Music teacher had to be corrected on his spelling of the word "Necessary".

How unnecessary.

[Architecture-er]

A-levels physics.

(we had a really bad teacher, she made so many mistakes CONSTANTLY. I learnt the entire A-level out of my textbook)


Oh, and in primary school the inevitable;

"Miss, I'm feeling sick"

"No I'm sure you're fine"

*throws up 4 minutes later*

[thegodofgod]

(Original post by AtomicMan)
A biology teacher told me that uresil was one of the bases in the DNA, and that thymine binded to adenine during the translation part of protein synthesis at the ribosomes...so much for a degree in biochem, it was in the effing text book.

Haha - I'd expect someone in year 12 to know that!

Well, not the translation bit, but the bit about U replacing T in RNA.

Physics teacher told me that I didnt understand what was going on when I said that you cant do an inverse sin on a number more than 1...

One of my chemistry teachers (the one who takes us for the electrochemistry topic) doesn't know how to do the basic maths involved in calculating the E_cell value

Ironically enough, my other chemistry teacher is an electrochemist, so we learned that topic from him

[aspirinpharmacist]

(Original post by philistine)
Let's hope she choked to death on a large slice of humble pie.

I've just remembered an earlier incidence of this sort actually, though I'll wait until the thread gets more responses.

I think this thread will only add to the complexes held by trainee teachers; not that that's a bad thing, mind.

Haha, no, she's still thriving 7 years on.

Probably will, but it wouldn't hurt to make sure that teachers actually knew their stuff.

[Brit_Miller]

(Original post by TheSownRose)
I once had to do that in order to prove that Holland isn't a country.

It was to a geography teacher.

You learn something new every day.

[Jelephant]

Ugh, one of my lecturers wasted the majority of a class arguing over a little mistake that could easily have been fixed. Basically there is a sequence of numbers and we were applying a formula to pairs of numbers along the list and the previous answer, if you see what I mean. The lecturer had written out the first 8 or 9 and wanted us to work out the next one, but he had written one of the answers wrong, throwing us off. He had repeated a pair of numbers, giving the wrong answer, but as we needed to use the answer in the next question, that was automatically wrong too, continuing all the way down the list.

Now when I noticed, I thought perhaps I was just reading the question incorrectly, but then someone behind me pointed it out to him... cue a good 35 minutes of arguing and the lecturer telling us we were stupid and didn't understand what he meant before he even bothered to look at the question and realise his mistake

[Cake Faced Kid.]

My year three teacher would not believe that I was ill, so when I threw up, I aimed in the direction of her laptop, conveniently placed right next to me. She took me to the head to explain the broken laptop (me still covered in sick), but she ended up getting shouted at for not seeing that 'the child is clearly ill'

[Arekkusu]

(Original post by philistine)
... yet they stuck to their story, and used the 'argument from respect' fallacy. It's happened to everyone at least once, and I think it'd be interesting to see what the point of discussion was. Doesn't matter whether the event(s) took place in primary school, high school, college or university. I can remember quite a few, mostly from high school, though this is the first time that it had happened:

I was in year five, and it was 1998; the days of not seeing a single mobile phone amongst your peers, raging every five minutes at the AOL dial-up connection, and obscenely large quantities of pastel coloured garments. Life was good, man.

I was in red group (the top one), with five or so other children, and we been assigned the task of sorting inventions by century. I think we had twenty or so picture cards, and a table of each century to put them under. Many were quite straightforward, though some were tricky.

After breezing along with the cards, we came to the last one: the automobile. I was convinced, despite being only eight and knowing bupkiss about cars, that the automobile was in fact invented in the nineteenth century. I was damn near certain of it. It may have been the 'important discoveries of the world' poster I had in my room that gave me the hunch, though I couldn't be absolutely sure of it. I stuck with my guns, and convinced my group to file the car under the column for nineteenth century.

So the teacher comes round, correcting the various errors of each of the groups (yellow group had the blockheads, and they totally failed it); she was a wretched harridan of a woman, though I later heard she slipped on a mossy paving stone and broke her hip-- regardless, she came round and graded the activity. We were all feeling quite smug about ourselves; a regular group of Charlie potatoes, confident we'd get maximum points.

But we didn't. We got one thing wrong: the automobile! 'No (name), the automobile was invented in the early twentieth century, not the nineteenth', she said mockingly, reducing us all to a dolorous state, before having them look at me, as if to say, 'this is your fault!'

I argued, naturally, in my own way, though there was no having it; we had balked a point, and I had convinced myself afterwards that maybe I was wrong; maybe it was invented in the twentieth century, and I had simply been mistaken. A shame set in. Like the Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki, I had been reduced to a puddle of human turmoil; to be found ignorant on a subject, despite not even knowing how a willy goes into a hoo-hoo, was deeply shameful.

Several years later, I'm not sure how old I was, I remember seeing a DK information book on- yep, you guessed it- the history of the automobile! I will never forget what the first page said:

The modern-day automobile... existing in various states... generally considered to be invented by one Karl Benz... in 1885.

It was from that day onward that my laurels grew so weighty and spacious, they had trouble returning to earth until I was about eighteen.

Go.

Your particular example may be an example of arrogance by the teacher, but having taught myself, I can say the following:
- undermining the teacher is harmful to the classroom environment.
- facts are simplified all the time depending on the kids' level.

Under the first caveat what you did was bad for learning. Nobody cares about some stupid fact like whether the first car was the Benz thing with the spokey wheels or whether it was the Model T in 1908. But if you undermine the teacher too much kids won't trust what they say or will raise objections, drawing the lesson off track and confusing the rest of the kids.

I would have thought you'd have learned a bit more about the real world if you're 22/23 - your expressive style reminds me of the average insufferable 17-year-old hipster who comments on Cracked a bit too much.

[philistine]

(Original post by Cake Faced Kid.)
My year three teacher would not believe that I was ill, so when I threw up, I aimed in the direction of her laptop, conveniently placed right next to me. She took me to the head to explain the broken laptop (me still covered in sick), but she ended up getting shouted at for not seeing that 'the child is clearly ill'

[thehaberprocess]

In geography, the teacher was talking about dams, but spelt it 'damn' on the board. I corrected her, explaining the difference and she replied, 'Er, no it's not. I'm a geography teacher, I should know.' Dick.