Sorry sir, but I can't take you seriously.

[MGlBlaze]

In the first year of my University course a few women had a Dell laptop that wouldn't work and asked one of us if we could fix it. I decided to see if I could do anything about it and opened the BIOS menu to see if I could tell what had gone awry... and they completely freaked out and said stuff like "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?".
I ended up just telling them it was probably a hard-drive failure since that's the only thing I could think of that would have gone wrong.

I haven't seen them again, so I'm pretty sure they dropped out after the first year.

 

[Plazmatic]

I had a teacher who on one day said that World War 2 started in 1938, then on another day (after reading the text book or something) said that the war only technically started when Germany invaded France.
My Polish mates were fuming.

wait wasn't it 1938 or 39?

EDIT :yeah it was 1939, what are you talking about

It started in 1939 after Germany invaded Poland (so the first time she was wrong about the date). My mates were absolutely pissed when the conquest of their country was passed over as insignificant (which I think is a little unfair at the very least considering the invasion was what triggered the declaration of war by the French, British and Commonwealth nations, and was used to secure a temporary alliance with the USSR).

ok I see, weird. I have no idea why some one would do that, she definitely does not seem qualified.

 

[Frostbyte666]

would have to be a maths lesson years ago where the teacher was showing us how to solve differentials and got to a step j. I then put my hand up and asked can't you do it this way (my way consisted of 3 steps). His response was yes you can but we're doing it this way.

Another was being the poor sod who came 1st on the register so when a teacher is late I have to report to the office and ask what to do. so 1 day after doing so had an irate english teacher yelling and saying since he wasn't there then he must be doing something important. I then pointed out why did you leave no instructions. More yelling so I just responded with a fuck you and walked off.

 

[scw55]

I find in secondary school, any teacher that seems incompetant gets eaten ALIVE. Even by good students. I've see bright publis act like twats in a class because the teacher is weak. Even I've slacked.

With me, it was in a German lesson, I went out to have a Violin lesson (have these once a week and the time varies), but when I was away, my class mates were twats to the substatute teacher. As a result my whole class got detention. I was forced to come in "because it was fair".
NOT IT FUCKING WASN'T. I WASN'T EVEN THERE.
Our detention was to copy out the school rules. I wrote them out thinking "Well this is a waste of my time. I hope I can claim it off you in the future".

But yeah, in general I severly disapprove of the whole "class punishment" thing. The teacher's intent is *meant* to inspire guilt in the guilty people who misbehaved. But all it does is make the people misbehave not care because they don't care to begin with anyway and actually piss off the students who behave and drives them to misbehave to spite the teacher. The punishment only makes things harder for the teacher. The teacher just brings about their own demise.

Another problem is that you get really good teachers and not good teachers. But the good teachers shows up the flaws of the bad teachers, so the students will give the bad teachers and much harder time otherwise. It's deserved however. I hated school. I hated most of my teachers. I still like the handful of teachers I actually liked. I learnt better when I liked the teacher. The education system is shit. I want to be a teacher so I can be a good teacher and rip the shit out of the bad ones via the students.


In Primary school, we had this teacher, who would do a long speach explaining this "complex" concept which our pathetic little minds wouldn't be able to grasp without an essay of patronising tripe before hand. If, you would put your hand up and manage to guess or assume what you were talking about "Oh, you mean a Mosaic" or "Rotational Symmertry" he would shout the living shit out of you saying "DO YOU WANT TO DO THE LESSON?".

I'm sorry. Some of us get frustraighted being treated like retards and enjoy being rewarded for having knowledge advance of our years (I used to read alot of mathematics books aimed at young teenagers and elder children [Murderous Maths and Horrible Histories etc] so I had a knowledge of that subject ahead of my curiculum.) Needless to say, thoes experiences most likely killed me being vocal in classes. Arseholes.

 

[Loreley]

I study English Philology (in Germany, and the professor in question is a German native speaker) at a university. In my Introduction to Linguistics class, we had this one professor who could barely speak English, did most complicated examples in French because of that, and was just all around pretty incompetent. This was by far the most memorable situation, though:
She was just explaining to us (we were in the morphology/word formation part of linguistics) how plurals are formed in English. She proposed the general rule that in compound words (like windmill) you attach the plural to the object that there are more of, usually the right-hand element of a compound word. So of course you don't say "There are many windsmill", but "There are many windmills".

Having just (!) read that out of the book, she applied it to the word "toothbrush". She then went off into a ten minute tangent about whether the plural of "toothbrush" is "toothbrushes" or "teethbrush". Because, after all, you brush more than one tooth! The logic that even if you only use one toothbrush, you brush more than one tooth, and all the rules she has one minute prior to this told us apparently were forgotten. And this all on top of toothbrushes not exactly being a very exotic English word you could get confused about to begin with.

Eventually, someone with a laptop had to google it for her because she was completley confused.

That was pretty much the point where I decided that I used my time in her lectures to work through the book instead of listening to her. And I still don't understand why someone who can barely speak English on a high school level is allowed teach it at a university.

 

[Daverson]

Stand back ma'am! I've got some science here!

Photons can be 'bent' in a powerful enough magnetic field, but not in the same way that ionized particles are. A strong enough field can force a photon to split into an electron/positron pair, which will usually be travelling in a different direction when they recombine. It's not bending in the classical sense, but it has a similar observable effect, so it's sometimes referred to as such! (link) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delbruck_scattering]

Well yes, but considering the earth's magnetic field is about 0,00006 T at the poles and an ordinary NeFeB magnet has about 1,6 T I'd say we can safely assume there is no noteworthy amount of quantum-physical magnetic effects going on.
And anyway, bent gamma rays would not be able to produce an aurora because it takes mainly oxygen and nitrogen atoms emitting photons to create the colours. (and of course I've got a link too if we really want to be this professional) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28astronomy%29#Auroral_mechanism]

I mean sure, we can argue about quantum effects but all in all this really isn't much excuse for a bad explanation of aurora borealis.

I know, I just thought that was interesting.

Side note, what's up with teachers/lecturers and projectors? Has anyone ever had a class/lecture start with the projector not working, and the teacher/lecturer been able to fix it instantly? And it's always something really obvious, like it not being plugged in! D=

 

[Brandon237]

This is a hilarious thread, but umm... your science teacher was actually right. That is a very simplified explanation of how auroras are made.

Uhmm... no he wasn't. He wasn't even close. The Earth's magnetic field does not bend light, not to any great degree at least. Certainly not nearly, anywhere conceivably close to half of a quarter of a millionth of the amount needed to create the Auroras.

The auroras are not created because photons of light (it was there in the original post in the footnote, that little word...) are bent by Earth's magnetic field. The auroras form because of charged particles (ions, protons, electrons) from the solar wind striking the atmosphere. These charged particles react with the gases in the upper atmosphere, transferring charge. When the gases in the atmosphere lose their given charge and go back to their grounded states, they give off light. THAT is what causes the auroras. NOT the bending of photons by any measure.

And you can read another 10 posts in this thread (at least) that re-affirm this and the fact that said teacher was very wrong.

he may not be a scientist, but you sir, need electrocution lessons.

I need lessons on how to kill people with electricity? OKAY!

 

[Sleipnir]

I had a science teacher (bio or phys, can't remember) who insisted that any woman who wears dungarees is either pregnant or a lesbian. He was difficult to take seriously after comments like that, granted he was a surprising little man, first lesson back after Christmas we didn't have him any more, apparently he was "really sick" and decided to try his hand at a floorless waltz.

RIP you weird bastard.

 

[Dastardly]

The title is relating to a teacher of mine, a science teacher. A new teacher who has not been the most knowledgeable science teacher I have ever had. During the first lesson he taught us, the lesson was on magnetism, he said that the cause of the auroras was "The magnetic field of the Earth bending the light[footnote]Yes, photons of light...[/footnote] towards the poles." For those who are not science students, think about the fact that it takes a black hole many times heavier than our sun to bend light like that. Couple this statement with his general level of confusion and number of self-contradictions and corrections, as well as his Arnold Schwarzenegger accent and I simply cannot take him seriously when he teaches.

Now to the point: Have any of you Escapees ever had a situation like this where, for some or other reason, you could no longer take some seriously? All the better if said person was a teacher / in a position of power over you.

Oh, and if anyone says they cannot take me seriously for the slight grammatical error in the title, I will kindly ask them to consume their own pancreas. It is there for effect damnit!

It's called a simplification. This, you know, being your "first lesson" with the guy, he probably didn't feel the need to go into specifics just yet. He's a new teacher, so he's still getting used to what you guys did/didn't learn from last year. Yes, he's got a list that tells him what you supposedly learned, but we all know a lot of folks don't quite catch it all the first time (and they forget a lot of that over the break).

Being a teacher is about a thousand times more than just knowing science or math. There is more behind-the-scenes work than you could currently comprehend as a student, because the majority of the work is done by the time you get to the classroom. And here's a wondrous thing about being a new teacher: There is no "training."

If you're flipping burgers, they pair you with someone until you learn to flip them right. If you're a doctor, you do a long internship under other doctors before you go it alone. But as a teacher? You're doing the same job on day one that the "old pros" are doing. There isn't an "easy mode." You go from zero to sixty in one day. It's a lot to handle, and there's going to be some confusion and awkwardness... but given the current state of education, there's no time or money to 'ease' folks into the job.

That guy is working his ass off. And what's more? If he has his license already, he has done years of ass-busting work already. Just because you don't see all of that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Maybe you should take a step back and ask yourself what you've done in life to prove that you could do better than this guy.

 

[Project_Omega]

I looked into the mirror, and said to myself

I like ponies...

And that's when life became a joke xD

 

[Brandon237]

The title is relating to a teacher of mine, a science teacher. A new teacher who has not been the most knowledgeable science teacher I have ever had. During the first lesson he taught us, the lesson was on magnetism, he said that the cause of the auroras was "The magnetic field of the Earth bending the light[footnote]Yes, photons of light...[/footnote] towards the poles." For those who are not science students, think about the fact that it takes a black hole many times heavier than our sun to bend light like that. Couple this statement with his general level of confusion and number of self-contradictions and corrections, as well as his Arnold Schwarzenegger accent and I simply cannot take him seriously when he teaches.

Now to the point: Have any of you Escapees ever had a situation like this where, for some or other reason, you could no longer take some seriously? All the better if said person was a teacher / in a position of power over you.

Oh, and if anyone says they cannot take me seriously for the slight grammatical error in the title, I will kindly ask them to consume their own pancreas. It is there for effect damnit!

It's called a simplification. This, you know, being your "first lesson" with the guy, he probably didn't feel the need to go into specifics just yet. He's a new teacher, so he's still getting used to what you guys did/didn't learn from last year. Yes, he's got a list that tells him what you supposedly learned, but we all know a lot of folks don't quite catch it all the first time (and they forget a lot of that over the break).

Being a teacher is about a thousand times more than just knowing science or math. There is more behind-the-scenes work than you could currently comprehend as a student, because the majority of the work is done by the time you get to the classroom. And here's a wondrous thing about being a new teacher: There is no "training."

If you're flipping burgers, they pair you with someone until you learn to flip them right. If you're a doctor, you do a long internship under other doctors before you go it alone. But as a teacher? You're doing the same job on day one that the "old pros" are doing. There isn't an "easy mode." You go from zero to sixty in one day. It's a lot to handle, and there's going to be some confusion and awkwardness... but given the current state of education, there's no time or money to 'ease' folks into the job.

That guy is working his ass off. And what's more? If he has his license already, he has done years of ass-busting work already. Just because you don't see all of that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Maybe you should take a step back and ask yourself what you've done in life to prove that you could do better than this guy.

But he DIDN'T simplify, he gave an equally complex, yet wrong explanation. That is just being stupid. And it is a grade 10 science class. We are now doing chosen subjects with some matric (grade 12) level stuff, there is no excuse for that wrong explanation. And he was THERE, watching what and how the previous teacher taught when we learnt about ions, charged particles, quantised energy, emission spectrums, everything that we needed to know for a detailed explanation of the auroras, yet he gave a detailed, wrong explanation... he did the same stunt on birds and how they magnetically navigate, but that was technically biology, so I wasn't going to go into that.

And I'm not saying I'm better than him, I am just saying that I cannot take him seriously for what he taught us.

 

[Dastardly]

I mean sure, we can argue about quantum effects but all in all this really isn't much excuse for a bad explanation of aurora borealis.

Keep in mind that for years and years, kids are also taught, "Sunlight + Water + Carbon Dioxide = Sugar + Oxygen" as the totality of photosynthesis. Now, we could call that a "bad explanation of photosynthesis" if we wanted to be snobs, or we could recognize that it's a speedy representation of photosynthesis that avoids the microscopic details like which wavelengths of light are absorbed by what, or where all the ADP's or ATP's go. But we come back to it later, in more advanced classes, and teach the rest of it.

The basic idea being conveyed is sound: The aurora is a result of "sunlight" (as a composite of the light itself, and other particles that may travel with it) being acted upon (in this case, we're saying "bent") by magnetism. What is it about this explanation that's going to damn someone to a horrible existence of never being able to understand science?

 

[ultimateownage]

My maths teacher was Romanian, and had never learnt Maths or English. The rest of my teachers were okay, and the young ones who were only recently out of their university course haven't ever been too ignorant.
It was funny when one of the most senior members of the science department taught my class that Lambda was spelt Lamda though.

 

[Quaxar]

Stand back ma'am! I've got some science here!

Photons can be 'bent' in a powerful enough magnetic field, but not in the same way that ionized particles are. A strong enough field can force a photon to split into an electron/positron pair, which will usually be travelling in a different direction when they recombine. It's not bending in the classical sense, but it has a similar observable effect, so it's sometimes referred to as such! (link) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delbruck_scattering]

Well yes, but considering the earth's magnetic field is about 0,00006 T at the poles and an ordinary NeFeB magnet has about 1,6 T I'd say we can safely assume there is no noteworthy amount of quantum-physical magnetic effects going on.
And anyway, bent gamma rays would not be able to produce an aurora because it takes mainly oxygen and nitrogen atoms emitting photons to create the colours. (and of course I've got a link too if we really want to be this professional) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_%28astronomy%29#Auroral_mechanism]

I mean sure, we can argue about quantum effects but all in all this really isn't much excuse for a bad explanation of aurora borealis.

I know, I just thought that was interesting.

Oh, it definitely is, don't get me wrong. I just like to talk physics so I couldn't really resist that.

I mean sure, we can argue about quantum effects but all in all this really isn't much excuse for a bad explanation of aurora borealis.

Keep in mind that for years and years, kids are also taught, "Sunlight + Water + Carbon Dioxide = Sugar + Oxygen" as the totality of photosynthesis. Now, we could call that a "bad explanation of photosynthesis" if we wanted to be snobs, or we could recognize that it's a speedy representation of photosynthesis that avoids the microscopic details like which wavelengths of light are absorbed by what, or where all the ADP's or ATP's go. But we come back to it later, in more advanced classes, and teach the rest of it.

The basic idea being conveyed is sound: The aurora is a result of "sunlight" (as a composite of the light itself, and other particles that may travel with it) being acted upon (in this case, we're saying "bent") by magnetism. What is it about this explanation that's going to damn someone to a horrible existence of never being able to understand science?

As I said before, it is a fine explanation for kids. I would tell it to my six-year-old the same way.
If you read the OP's post above you you'll see that this happened in grade 10 so... 16 year-olds? Around that. Now tell me that you'd explain photosynthesis that way to a biology class full of 16 year old people.
It's fine for the right age but in a science class it's just bollocks.

 

[Dastardly]

As I said before, it is a fine explanation for kids. I would tell it to my six-year-old the same way.
If you read the OP's post above you you'll see that this happened in grade 10 so... 16 year-olds? Around that. Now tell me that you'd explain photosynthesis that way to a biology class full of 16 year old people.
It's fine for the right age but in a science class it's just bollocks.

I absolutely would explain photosynthesis like that to "16 year olds." Because age has nothing to do with what is instructionally appropriate. If I were teaching plain ol' 10th grade biology, you can bet that would be the explanation for photosynthesis I'd use. Because that class is a survey course, basically. You're introducing the core concepts, deepening a few familiar ones slightly when it's necessary for introducing a new one.

If this isn't AP Biology (a common college-level course offered to high schoolers in the States), there's just no reason to go much deeper on photosynthesis. There's plenty of other, better stuff to spend that time on. If this is a class for people who are near their last year of secondary school, though, and it's a class meant for people intending to study science at the university level -- and I'm talking as a major course of study, not just "to fulfill the science requirement" -- then sure, we'll get into it.

 

[Dastardly]

A year ago one of my history teachers said that it took great courage for Truman to drop the bomb on Japan.
I raised my hand and said that that was one of the most wrong statements I have ever heard.
1) If Truman didn't drop the bombs America and its allies would have had to invade Japan and (on a very conservative count) it would have cost over a million lives, billions of dollars and years and years of house to house fighting. Like Guadalcanal, only bigger, with a supply line and tons of civilians. Not to mention more standard bombing. When the American public eventually found out about the bombs they wouldn't wait for the impeachment trial, they would have locked Truman inside the White House and burned it to the ground.
2) Truman (and basically everyone else) just thought of the nuke as a bigger bomb on yet another bombing run. And that there was a misconception that it was just a civilian killing operation. Hiroshima and Nagasaki (to a lesser extent) had massive military bases that would have been a disaster for the USA if it had a landing operation.
After my little 5 minute history lesson I helped the teacher a bit by saying that what did take courage was when Truman fired MacArthur. But this teacher knew his stuff and simply believed something that (for some reason) most historians believe.

I still don't think it's all that inaccurate. "Courage" is the ability to do what you know needs done, even when you know people are going to hate you for it. And plenty of people hate the US for having dropped the bombs. But he knew it needed to be done, it made the most sense, and so he gave it the green light.

Just because you can explain something doesn't mean people still won't hate you for it. And doing it when you know it'll be misrepresented and used against you? Yeah, that takes courage/character/determination/etc.

 

[Brandon237]

As I said before, it is a fine explanation for kids. I would tell it to my six-year-old the same way.
If you read the OP's post above you you'll see that this happened in grade 10 so... 16 year-olds? Around that. Now tell me that you'd explain photosynthesis that way to a biology class full of 16 year old people.
It's fine for the right age but in a science class it's just bollocks.

I absolutely would explain photosynthesis like that to "16 year olds." Because age has nothing to do with what is instructionally appropriate. If I were teaching plain ol' 10th grade biology, you can bet that would be the explanation for photosynthesis I'd use. Because that class is a survey course, basically. You're introducing the core concepts, deepening a few familiar ones slightly when it's necessary for introducing a new one.

If this isn't AP Biology (a common college-level course offered to high schoolers in the States), there's just no reason to go much deeper on photosynthesis. There's plenty of other, better stuff to spend that time on. If this is a class for people who are near their last year of secondary school, though, and it's a class meant for people intending to study science at the university level -- and I'm talking as a major course of study, not just "to fulfill the science requirement" -- then sure, we'll get into it.

The biology they take is as a chosen subject in grade 10. It will be a subject they are doing in their last year of high-school, you know, that they write their finals on.

If you take it in grade 10, you keep it to matric, your last year of HS, and you likely will be doing it at university. And you only choose 3 non-compulsory subjects, 2 of which are often career subjects, making them kind of... important. And relevant for university level, so all grade 10 + subjects should be taught as such, and generally are at my school. Making that explanation for photosynthesis and my teacher's for the aurora unacceptable.

 

[Dastardly]

As I said before, it is a fine explanation for kids. I would tell it to my six-year-old the same way.
If you read the OP's post above you you'll see that this happened in grade 10 so... 16 year-olds? Around that. Now tell me that you'd explain photosynthesis that way to a biology class full of 16 year old people.
It's fine for the right age but in a science class it's just bollocks.

I absolutely would explain photosynthesis like that to "16 year olds." Because age has nothing to do with what is instructionally appropriate. If I were teaching plain ol' 10th grade biology, you can bet that would be the explanation for photosynthesis I'd use. Because that class is a survey course, basically. You're introducing the core concepts, deepening a few familiar ones slightly when it's necessary for introducing a new one.

If this isn't AP Biology (a common college-level course offered to high schoolers in the States), there's just no reason to go much deeper on photosynthesis. There's plenty of other, better stuff to spend that time on. If this is a class for people who are near their last year of secondary school, though, and it's a class meant for people intending to study science at the university level -- and I'm talking as a major course of study, not just "to fulfill the science requirement" -- then sure, we'll get into it.

The biology they take is as a chosen subject in grade 10. It will be a subject they are doing in their last year of high-school, you know, that they write their finals on.

If you take it in grade 10, you keep it to matric, your last year of HS, and you likely will be doing it at university. And you only choose 3 non-compulsory subjects, 2 of which are often career subjects, making them kind of... important. And relevant for university level, so all grade 10 + subjects should be taught as such, and generally are at my school. Making that explanation for photosynthesis and my teacher's for the aurora unacceptable.

Sure, because there's no chance they might come back to it later in more depth, or anything like that. Why not leave the professional curriculum decisions to the curriculum professionals (ie, teachers)? You're just too quick to pass ultimate judgment on someone whose proven qualifications far, far exceed yours because he happened to have what you judge to be a bad day.

Sorry, mate, you're just not qualified to make that judgment. He has already proven his capability to his teachers from first year up through university. He has proven it to whatever licensing boards govern education in your area. He has proven it to the administration with whom he interviewed. And they'll continue to measure him, as well. These are people with likely hundreds of combined years of experience and thousands of hours of training.

That carries a lot more weight than some kids looking for any excuse not to listen to a teacher because they have a case of the "teenage know-it-all"s.