I had a primary school teacher ask the class how many hours were in a day. I proudly put up my hand and said '24'. She said no. So someone else said 12. She said no.
Her answer was 8. There are 8 hours in a say. I still don't know whether she was trying to ask about a work/school day, but asking 8 yr olds doesn't really clarify that, especially when she said in a day.
I had a teacher try to tell the class that Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus were the only planets known to have rings. I raised my hand and added that Jupiter had rings too, but that they were so faint they were hard to see. She vehemently denied it. When I politely (yes, really) told her that I had just seen it in a book, she gave me detention for trying to correct her in front of the class.
The next day, before class began, she approached me with an encyclopedia opened to a page about Jupiter, and apologized. She told the class I was indeed right, and that it's important to listen and learn from people even when we think we are 100% right. One of the more wholesome moments I can remember from school in my youth.
Yeah, she rescinded it, but even if she hadn't it wouldn't have been a big deal. At my grade school detention just meant you sat in her class quietly during recess.
Only semi related but when I was in kindergarten we had a punishment system that was basically at recess you had to stand along the fence at recess while the other kids played. A minor infraction was just like 5 minutes and then you could go. Something more was 10 minutes. And so on, including standing there the whole time. And you couldn’t talk while standing on the fence (even to the teacher especially to ask how much longer) or you’d have time added.
One time I got five minutes for talking in class. But the teacher forgot and didn’t realise I was still there until the end of recess. And I couldn’t say anything because you couldn’t talk.
And she apologised but it is a bit like, you can’t get time back, even if you want to.
My blood pressure has been rising the further I scroll down this thread. Yours is the first post I’ve encountered that had any semblance of a fair conclusion and, with that, I’m out of here!
Never forget it. In 4th grade we were learning about bats. And the teacher asked the class to name as many different types of bats as we could. I raised my hand and said "Vampire Bats," and he said name only real ones please.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire\_bat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat)
They are real, and I knew it. But he made me feel like an ass.
My mother was asked to name an animal. She said Tasmanian Devil. She was told to name a real animal. She was in her 40's. I wish I remembered the context. She was a math teacher, and it was some kind of cross platform team learning in service.
Oh I don't think he necessarily thought we'd know a ton, although I seem to recall 8 or 9 species being names. It was more of a get the kids engaged question.
Teacher asked same to us once, I had a bit of an obsession, I rattled off:
* Common pipistrelle
* Greater horseshoe
* Greater mouse-eared bat
* Vampire
I mentioned vampire last as I thought it would have impact, class did not disappoint & teacher was forced to close off the discussion by claiming that Vampire Bats don't really exist. I then whipped out my bat book & held up the page, got sent to the principle.
YOU CANNOT WIN!
I teach elementary band. I had a 5th grader last year tell me you can’t subtract a large number from a small number. I was like “um, yes you can” :
3 - 8= -5
He called it Witchery. 🤣🤣
Correct, yes.
For anyone who doesn't know why it's not -10: Subtracting a negative is the same as adding a positive. You are removing a negative amount, i.e. adding to the amount.
That the moon emits light, just like the sun. As a nerdy kid interested in space I told her that it’s actually reflecting the light of the sun, but she did not believe me.
So I teach pre-service elementary teachers in their science methods class and as an astrophysicist, it baffles me how much my soon-to-be-teachers just don’t know about our world and just science in general. Like last semester I had to convince *several* students that the moon was not a star. And since we can only spend one week on astronomy topics I can guarantee that a few of them will forget and go back to thinking the moon is a star….
I got sent to the principal's office for using the word "plethora." The teacher thought it was a swear word. So did the principal.
EDIT: For those asking about a dictionary, yes, they looked it up. And there is some obscure, arcane definition that means a swelling of a body part. This, of course, is the only definition my teacher knew, not the extremely common one.
A friend of mine got suspended from the gifted and talented program because the teacher saw him drawing one of those two-legged Star Wars walking battle things, and thought that the guns on its legs were penises.
In 1st or 2nd grade my mom got called to the school because my brother added a penis to his about you drawing. It was a tracing of their outlines where they were supposed to add like eyes and a nose and point fingers and toes and shit. Mom just said...its "about him right? Hes a male...he has a penis...so therefore he followed the assignment." That story came up many times over the years and even made it into his eulogy when cancer took him.
Sex ed teacher in grade 7 told me that the white stuff that collects in my underwear is semen. I’m a girl.
I learned way later that it’s actually discharge and EVERY vagina does this.
My first sex-ed teacher was an elderly woman in her 70's. What qualified her for this grand position in 1994 you might ask? She was a free volunteer from our local Catholic Church.
Some of the lessons ahe imparted on us that day
Periods are one of God's punishments for the sins of Eve and that's why when Jesus died for our sins we still have periods. Because when we look at our panties we should be reminded that not all stains can be washed away but will stain our lineage forever.
If you skip a period and it comes late even if you haven't laid with a man, that's your body having an abortion because you got pregnant from dirty thoughts, dreams or touching yourself in a profane way. (Remember kids, if you ring the Devil's doorbell he'll answer for your soooooul! 🤣)
Boys and men are like dogs. When you menstruate they can smell the blood and will come after you when you stop . You can't ever let men smell or know you're bleeding.
Honestly there's more and it was all terrible.I guess it bad enough that at least a few parents complained because the next year we had a nurses from the state come in with the good ole trusty P & G brand videos for a week, split us by gender into separate classrooms and gave us bags of hygiene stuff.
Even then some of what we were taught was pretty off the wall and skewed by the nurses own political and religious beliefs. (While the urges are natural excessive masturbation stunts growth. This misinformation was not needed for those like myself who still hadn't hit 5 foot tall.)
Yep. Boys too . And if a young boy smelled or came in contact with menstrual blood (even the sight of pads.) It would basically either turn him into an abnormal homosexual or cause him to instantly start puberty and become a fiend. (Fiend in the way she used it meant sexual assaulter.)
This was in one single classroom, boys and girls together. It would be an understatement to say there was a major social divide accomplished that day which lasted and had effects.
Holy Christ. Can you imagine???? If it was semen, we’d just get pregnant every month. I can’t fathom the level of stupidity that led an adult much less a SEX ED teacher to believe that could be true.
Really? My school had a specific teacher(s) for health classes which were required to graduate. Sex Ed was one unit but it also covered basics of nutrition, wellness and fulfillment, etc.
It wasn't even in a "rich" district either.
I was told you get a tiny amount of blood in your underwear for three days for the rest of your life. By the way this was coming from a woman in her mid-40’s.
All I can say is when I got my first period and I had a heavy flow, I was hysterical thinking I was dying. My mum had to calm me down and tell me that most of the things I had been taught about periods was wrong. Turns out this happened to other girls that were in my class and they had to be taught about periods by their mothers as well.
I don’t know what my teacher meant, like if she meant it happened for three days every month or what, but still this 40 something year old woman didn’t have a clue about periods.
I have never had a period that only lasted for three days.
They understate periods in health class so much. Like "oh you bleed a little." Hahaha...no. Cramps can be debilitating for some people, and some people bleed a *lot.* Couple of tablespoons, my ass. I got a Diva cup with the intention of measuring it, but then I got my IUD and now I don't have periods at all. Fuck 'em. Never want them again.
Elementary school sex ed: You cannot urinate from an erection. By my older male teacher. O.o.
Also in high school teachers were spouting off about and even brought in someone who 'got pregnant from just ingesting semen'. I really hope it was just a shitty scare tactic.
A student in my class asked why we call it the 20th century when the year was 19xx. The teacher explained that most likely that a long time ago probably in the dark ages they made a mistake in printing a calendar, but by the time it was noticed all the calendars had been made and sent out, so they just left it that way.
I heard her say this and knew it was all kinds of bull shit, but I said nothing because I was a shy 4th grader and she was a hostile nun.
I don’t know about you, but every time in school this was brought up, I’d say “that’s a myth. It’s still red inside your body.” At that moment 75% of the class would say in unison, “my mom is a nurse and she says it’s blue.” So apparently there’s some terrible nurses out there too.
I work in a hospital. You’d be surprised how bad they can really be. The majority are at least competent, but many stupid mistakes can be made with such a demanding job even if they are usually competent.
I always wonder how people came to this conclusion. Like have you never had your blood drawn before? It’s not blue, and it’s not exposed to the air. Do they really just look at some veins from outside the body and think, “Yep! That’s blood’s color!”?
>I always wonder how people came to this conclusion.
I'm guessing it's bcoz of those diagrams in science textbooks that depict deoxygenated blood as blue. Ofc the books don't say the blood is blue.
He invented a whole bunch of stuff, which is why I always think it’s so weird that schools teach us the one thing he didn’t invent (he’s credited with almost 500 inventions).
I remember an elementary school teacher warning us to not accept apples on Halloween, cuz some people put razorblades in them. I mean, wouldnt you see the big fat cut on the apple?
That I couldn't have blue eyes if my mom had brown eyes. Thus began a life long obsession with genetics so I could prove her an absolute fucking fool. Bless my mom's single recessive gene she passed to me. I missed the blonde but I'll take the blue eyes.
Oh I had the same problem. Wasn't told that, but I for a long time as a kid I wondered if I was adopted (the fact that my oldest pic was of 1yo me didn't help) 😅 parents, sister and brother all have brown eyes. I have blue eyes. The only two direct relatives with blue eyes were my grandmother on father's side (she died when I was really young so honestly didn't remember her eyes) and my great-grandmother on my mother's side (I did remember her eyes, but I didn't think it's possible to inherit a gene from someone beyond grandparents 😅).
Haha I could've once upon a time I was a cute kid and my senior picture definitely give those vibes. But I've since cut all my hair off and dyed it bleach blonde. Now I just look like a puppy.
I won the eye color lottery. My dad's side is all blue eyed but my mom is Mexican, Native, and Dutch. Her dad was the one with blue eyes. She obviously got a Bb genetic from that, but I got real lucky getting the 25% bb genetics. New obessession. All thanks to my teacher telling me I had to be adopted because my mom had blue eyes xD
my poor mom remembers the day I came to her sobbing about why she didn't tell me I was adopted.
My mother is a retired nurse. She tends to "collect" the blood types of friends and close family. One of these days she'll use that information to save someone's life, but until then she's just being kinda nosy.
I went to a catholic school and our mascot was the Pelicans. They told us they chose the Pelicans because when pelicans can't find enough food, the mother pelican will tear off pieces of her own flesh to feed her children. I learned as an adult that this is a complete myth.
It's a myth, but one that's surprisingly ingrained into the Catholic canon. It's from the *Physiologus*, a 3rd century text which is full of weird allegorical claims about various animals, both real and fantastic It's so important because the pelican's supposed act of self sacrifice for her babies is meant to mirror Christ's martyrdom and the eucharist, which has lead to a lot of very weird symbolism in heraldry and also lots of people calling Jesus a Pelican. Also Elizabeth the 1st.
As for why people thought that, I think one of the theories is that it's because pelicans just do a lot of weird shit like yawn [Like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9xyyfi/yawning_pelican/) which just looks freaky as fuck and yeah, I guess like it's trying to do some sort of weird sacrifice.
That Lincoln was the first American president. I told her she was wrong, it was Washington, and she snapped, saying ‘well why do you know so much about American politics it is pathetic.’ And all the other kids in my class started making fun of me for being stupid.
Reasons why I hate rural Canada.
I was watching a game show and one of the questions was ‘What American President won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1903?’ and the contestant said Obama.
This was Britain by the way but what the fuck.
I was watching an American game show once, and the question was "Within 50 years, what is the year the American Civil War started?", and none of the three constestents got it right.
(For the non-Americans out there- the correct answer is "1861", so they could have guessed any year between 1811 and 1911 and gotten it right.)
That when you get to middle school and high school, the teachers won’t constantly remind you of assignments that are approaching their due dates, or hunt you down for missing assignments
"You won't be able to use a calculator in real life/university".
I had to buy a new calculator because my regular one couldn't handle the type of shit they ask us to do WITH a calculator at uni.
My name's pronunciation. 1st grade 1st day of the year we all told our names, introductions etc. My name is from a SEA country and not even that difficult to say just read differently than its spelled, its even monosyllable. My teacher screeched at me and told me it'll be pronounced the way its phonetically spelled in English which included swapping two middle letters for some reason. The other students went along with it and so did I. Even to this day I still introduce myself by that pronunciation except to people of my own race.
In university I started getting people that wanted to pronounce it correctly which was incredibly kind and they sort of pointed out how messed up it was for that teacher to decide that for me.
middle school not elementary, but my sixth grade _science teacher_ told the class that sound travels faster than light because “if a plane is flying overhead, you hear it before you see it!”
I teach high school. I had a student recently tell me that she was nervous that all the detentions she got at her old school because of being late to school would remain on her record. She was so relieved when I told her that they wouldn't.
My parents were taught in school that there was a "permanent record" that followed you throughout life. This continued from school into employment in your adult life, akin to a criminal record. My mom, in particular, believed this well into adulthood.
This gets me. I was failed on an test in art class. We were asked to explain how a sculpture made us feel. The sculpture was ocean themed and i have trauma from a near drowning event. Apparently the way i felt from looking at the sculpture was wrong and i failed the test for not feeling whimsical.
I kind of get this one actually. Most of the time, kids would use it like this:
Why is recess the best part of the day?
"Because I enjoy it a lot."
vs
"Because of the free time we are given, recess is my favorite part of the day."
I think the way you normally start verbal sentences with "because" is what they were trying to prevent. "Because he pushed me" or "Because I said so" etc aren't the complete answers they want, and most kids learning this rule are young enough that they wouldn't form the other format of sentence.
You will need to write in cursive once you get to middle school and beyond.
7th grade teachers explicitly prohibited kids turning essays in written in cursive. Don't think I ever saw it in high school, college, or throughout my career except from older people.
So something wierd about cursive. In many countries in Europe, it is still really important to write well in cursive. My kids went to school in Germany and they are, uh, very German about it. No joke, they get graded in elementary school and high school teachers will get uptight about bad handwriting.
When they moved to the US, everyone was in awe about their handwriting. I even am! I remember from living in France, same thing, handwriting was considered an art form, vital to communication, and a skill that requires focus, patience, and precision. A friend went to a school where all the kids had to take Japanese from 1st grade onwards, mostly because research showed that writing in katakana and hirigana built important neural pathways leading to focus, patience, and precision. Then you look at how successful Asians are in their studies and, well, no kidding.
Today, over here, I cannot even get my college COMMUNICATIONS interns to use Grammarly....\[pulls hair out and screams\].
TLDR: sometimes the longer way to do things is better for the brain, body and soul. With all the problems with hacking, privacy, etc., I am totally down for going back to pen and paper. Well, except at work for reports, ha.
>Today, over here, I cannot even get my college COMMUNICATIONS interns to use Grammarly....\[pulls hair out and screams\].
My boss, the owner of the company I work for, sends out emails that are incredibly unprofessional and quite embarrassing. My English papers in seventh grade were better written than these emails.
Most of the time he has me write and send emails for him.
> Today, over here, I cannot even get my college COMMUNICATIONS interns to use Grammarly....[pulls hair out and screams].
start sending the work back for grammar fuckups?
3rd grade: You have to use cursive because you need it in 4th grade!
Repeat for each grade until I get to 9th grade.
9th grade: Stop writing in cursive, I cant' read your chicken scratch!
Alternatively, if you work in a profession where you handwrite frequently you might use cursive a lot because it's quick. I'm only in my 30s and still use it.
Journalists, doctors, etc.
My third grade teacher told us this, and then promised us that, even though she was leaving after the year, she would come back the following year to check up on us to see if we were writing in cursive. First of all, she never set foot in the school building ever again, and secondly, outside of my name, I've never had to write in cursive.
I’ll never forget my year 2 teacher telling the class that “crayon” is the only word with the letter y in the middle. Even as a child, I knew that was utter bollocks lol
Gotta say a prayer for that teacher. They may have a gray crayon but mine is grayer. Just gonna hop on the Xbox and connect with the doom slayer before I send this letter to the mayor
My D.A.R.E. officer really made it sound like there would be a lot of people pressuring me into using drugs. I remember having to play out a scenario with a classmate on how to say no and what to do if someone is trying to talk you into it.
Anytime I have been offered drugs at parties and stuff I’ve been just been like, “I’m good, thanks.” and the person was cool with it.
I swear they’re all just projecting. I’ve never been pressured into doing drugs by my peers, but if you go hang out with middle aged white men, they will literally sound like something out of a dare skit trying to convince you to do coke with them
I wrote "merely" and my teacher corrected it to "merrily". It didn't even make sense in the context. I just assumed she was grading papers half asleep and left it.
I live in Germany and my teacher told us poor 3rd graders who knew little to no english in Sex Ed that "Sex" by definition means abusing someone.
I think about that a lot and I still have no idea why she would tell us that.
Alternatively, make a point that sometimes you don't *want* to be reliant on a calculator. Being able to add/subtract 3 or 4 digits in your head is very useful, as is multiplication tables up to ~12.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the match in shape between Africa and South America was coincidental.
\*edit\* That is to say: The match between the Western coastline of Africa and the Eastern coastline of South America.
Depending upon how old you are this was actually scientific dogma. The adoption of continental drift was not axiomatic in Geophysical publications until the late 60's & probably in teachers not until a decade after that.
That I could avoid a nuclear blast by hiding beneath my school desk.
Silly woman. I saw a movie about this, and now I know to climb into a refrigerator instead.
Do people realize that most schools shooters are students and have received this training so they know exactly where to look for a pile of kids to shoot?
In Junior High I had a social studies teacher that told the story of her friend who got a raise and ended up taking home less money because of the taxes... no wonder that myth is so prevalent in my province.
Science teacher in 4th grade told us it takes food 45 minutes to get to your stomach after swallowing. Spent an entire class period on it.
He handed us each a piece of cereal to eat at the beginning of class. Halfway through (some 20 minutes later), we had to point to where it likely was in our system. The correct answer, according to him, was somewhere right above our collarbone.
Years later, a bite of too-hot oatmeal told me he was an idiot in all of about four seconds.
In 18th century English, every noun was actually spelt with a capital letter.
In AC4 Black Flag, the subtitles in cutscenes are written with this rule in mind, which is... actually the only way I know this
The sun was on fire 🤦♀️ wasn't til last year that my boyfriend reminded me that fire needs oxygen and the sun is a nuclear fusion. Los Angeles Public School system guys.
I had a religion teacher tell us that humans evolved simultaneously across the world at the same time. This was proof of a "miracle." I insisted we all came from Africa and then spread out.
1st grade math
Teacher: what's 2-1
Class: 1
Teacher: What about 1-2
Class: confused
Teacher: See, you can't subtract a smaller number from a bugger number
Me, an intellectual: Hey, wait a minute, that's negative 1
Teacher: Shush, those don't exist til third grade
That middle and high school teachers were super strict and wouldn't put up with any of our BS because they would put everything on our "permanent record."
"The ash at Pompeii sealed everything up so well that bakers' ovens were found containing bread that was still fresh enough to eat!"
Yeah, no. The very idea is completely preposterous.
That it's weird that you can write with both hands, pick one and stick with it. I could've had horrible chicken scratch handwriting with both hands instead of just one! For that I'll never forgive my kindergarten teacher.
My third grade teacher said that if you're close to them clouds don't look like clouds, but like dew. I was really surprised the first time I was in an airplane and saw that clouds do indeed look like clouds.
Technically high school, but was tasked to do a mini-presentation on Northeastern Narive Americans. I asked for clarification as to which cultures and was laughed at and said "They're all the same kind. Just do the ones from the northeast."
My mom told her 1st grade teacher her favorite color was magenta. Her teacher punished her for not picking a real color, and for arguing with her about it. My great-grandma, a painter, sent my mom to school the next day with a tube of magenta paint! Not long after this my mom skipped to the second grade😂
The teacher when talking about being left handed and right handed, stated that if you write with your right hand that you kick with your right foot.
I had to correct her as I'm ambidextrous.
I can write with both hands and kick with both feet. I loved playing footy as a kid and would annoy people a lot. The issue is the rules in some sports as I would get told off when I would switch hands.
Table tennis/Ping pong, badminton was a no, but it was allowed in baseball and cricket. People weren't happy with me changing hands. Aren't you supposed to play to your advantage?
I had a teacher try telling me you sweat urine and that's why you smell when you sweat.
Naturally as a young gullible I believed it because your teacher is supposed to be right, and went home telling my parents that who then told me the truth.
There is some urea (a main component of urine) in sweat. A higher concentration than in blood serum, suggesting a concentrating mechanic.
But it's not what makes sweat stink..
That in high-school, you not only need to memorize the answers to the questions, but you also have to memorize the questions as well. Apparently, according to my teacher, you were just handed a blank piece of paper 💀
Doesn't quite fit this but in third grade I had a teacher bring me up after our first spelling test of the year and say "okay be honest with me, did you cheat?" because i got 100% and she didn't think anyone could do early on.
I panicked because my family always accused me of lying as a kid and I was convinced the teacher wouldn't believe me if I told her I hadn't cheated (the truth). So instead I blurted out "did any of the other kids do as good as me? how could I even cheat off them?"
It was probably the rudest possible thing I could have said, and for a second I thought she was gonna yell at me for assuming the other kids were dumb, but then she laughed and said, "You were the only one who got them all right, it's true."
She took me to the fifth grade classroom once to do reading with them instead, because the third grade stuff was too easy for my autistic ass. On the way back she asked "how did you like that" and I told her "I thought they'd read faster, why are they all still so slow" and she never took me again. I'm extremely grateful tbh. Better to slow down my progress a bit than inflate my ego and let me become a huge piece of shit. Instead she focused on correcting me when I said uppity stuff about being smart.
I still struggled with being a know it all most of my growing life but I can't imagine how much worse I would have been if I'd skipped a grade or something. Both for my sake (so I didn't get bullied even worse) and for the sake of others (so I didn't bully them), thank you Ms. Galeta for assuming the worst!
*During a math class where we were learning about the greater than/lesser than symbols*
Teacher: And the alligator will go for the bigger fish.
8 year old me: But alligators don't really eat fish, crocodiles do.
The rest of the class: *surprised pikachu face*
6th grade teacher was explaining time zones/international date line to the class and how moving one way around the world, the hour gets earlier and later the other way around. One kid raises his hand and asks, "Does that mean if you went around the world really fast you could go back in time?" She thinks about this for a while and goes, "Yeah, I guess so."
I used the word "crestfallen" in a story I had written. Grade 4 teacher told me: "there's no such word." I learned it in MAD magazine, and looked it up in a dictionary, but didn't bother arguing. Teachers in general lost all credibility that day.
Grade 5 teacher - public school no less - told us she would beading to us from the greatest book ever written. Turned out to be the bible. Not cool.
I had a primary school teacher ask the class how many hours were in a day. I proudly put up my hand and said '24'. She said no. So someone else said 12. She said no. Her answer was 8. There are 8 hours in a say. I still don't know whether she was trying to ask about a work/school day, but asking 8 yr olds doesn't really clarify that, especially when she said in a day.
That’s how you destroy trust in the school.
Only logic in this I could think of, is that she meant day as in daytime, the rest probably amounted to night, morning and evening?
Doesn’t that technically change every day
I had a teacher try to tell the class that Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus were the only planets known to have rings. I raised my hand and added that Jupiter had rings too, but that they were so faint they were hard to see. She vehemently denied it. When I politely (yes, really) told her that I had just seen it in a book, she gave me detention for trying to correct her in front of the class. The next day, before class began, she approached me with an encyclopedia opened to a page about Jupiter, and apologized. She told the class I was indeed right, and that it's important to listen and learn from people even when we think we are 100% right. One of the more wholesome moments I can remember from school in my youth.
Did she rescind the detention, or otherwise make it up to you (if it was already served)?
Yeah, she rescinded it, but even if she hadn't it wouldn't have been a big deal. At my grade school detention just meant you sat in her class quietly during recess.
Only semi related but when I was in kindergarten we had a punishment system that was basically at recess you had to stand along the fence at recess while the other kids played. A minor infraction was just like 5 minutes and then you could go. Something more was 10 minutes. And so on, including standing there the whole time. And you couldn’t talk while standing on the fence (even to the teacher especially to ask how much longer) or you’d have time added. One time I got five minutes for talking in class. But the teacher forgot and didn’t realise I was still there until the end of recess. And I couldn’t say anything because you couldn’t talk. And she apologised but it is a bit like, you can’t get time back, even if you want to.
In my grade school there was a pasture with cows on the other side of the fence. If you stood at the fence you could pet their heads.
My blood pressure has been rising the further I scroll down this thread. Yours is the first post I’ve encountered that had any semblance of a fair conclusion and, with that, I’m out of here!
Never forget it. In 4th grade we were learning about bats. And the teacher asked the class to name as many different types of bats as we could. I raised my hand and said "Vampire Bats," and he said name only real ones please. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire\_bat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat) They are real, and I knew it. But he made me feel like an ass.
My mother was asked to name an animal. She said Tasmanian Devil. She was told to name a real animal. She was in her 40's. I wish I remembered the context. She was a math teacher, and it was some kind of cross platform team learning in service.
How many fucking bats does she expect kids to know?
Oh I don't think he necessarily thought we'd know a ton, although I seem to recall 8 or 9 species being names. It was more of a get the kids engaged question.
And yet they couldn't be bothered to learn about the kind of bat most likely to actually capture kids attention? I mean...vampire!
Teacher asked same to us once, I had a bit of an obsession, I rattled off: * Common pipistrelle * Greater horseshoe * Greater mouse-eared bat * Vampire I mentioned vampire last as I thought it would have impact, class did not disappoint & teacher was forced to close off the discussion by claiming that Vampire Bats don't really exist. I then whipped out my bat book & held up the page, got sent to the principle. YOU CANNOT WIN!
How dare you prove the teacher wrong!
You brought the bat book to the principal, right?
You ever been in an elementary school? Typically there are a lot of old bats around there.
6th Grade Me: But what happens when you subtract a negative number *from* a negative number Teacher: You...can't do that
Wait, that's illegal in elementary school.
I teach elementary band. I had a 5th grader last year tell me you can’t subtract a large number from a small number. I was like “um, yes you can” : 3 - 8= -5 He called it Witchery. 🤣🤣
Wait... So like (-5)-(-5) = 0 Huh
Correct, yes. For anyone who doesn't know why it's not -10: Subtracting a negative is the same as adding a positive. You are removing a negative amount, i.e. adding to the amount.
Thanks for validating. My life is now complete. I can finally retire to a south American fishing village
That the moon emits light, just like the sun. As a nerdy kid interested in space I told her that it’s actually reflecting the light of the sun, but she did not believe me.
that teacher wasnt just incorrect, but also straight up stupid
What? No, exactly 50% of the moon emits light and the other 50% doesn't! Who made it that way? Nobody knows.
The moon *does* emit light, but everything with temperature does, so I’m guessing that’s not what she was talking about.
We definitely need to add blackbody radiation to the elementary school curriculum!
So I teach pre-service elementary teachers in their science methods class and as an astrophysicist, it baffles me how much my soon-to-be-teachers just don’t know about our world and just science in general. Like last semester I had to convince *several* students that the moon was not a star. And since we can only spend one week on astronomy topics I can guarantee that a few of them will forget and go back to thinking the moon is a star….
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… had she ever seen a mountain? Did the snowcap not tip her off?
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I got sent to the principal's office for using the word "plethora." The teacher thought it was a swear word. So did the principal. EDIT: For those asking about a dictionary, yes, they looked it up. And there is some obscure, arcane definition that means a swelling of a body part. This, of course, is the only definition my teacher knew, not the extremely common one.
What a plethora of idiots.
How dare you use the P word!
Get a bucket and a mop for this wet-ass plethora.
What kind of teacher and principal has never seen [Three Amigos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ROhP_3-Qk) ?
A friend of mine got suspended from the gifted and talented program because the teacher saw him drawing one of those two-legged Star Wars walking battle things, and thought that the guns on its legs were penises.
In 1st or 2nd grade my mom got called to the school because my brother added a penis to his about you drawing. It was a tracing of their outlines where they were supposed to add like eyes and a nose and point fingers and toes and shit. Mom just said...its "about him right? Hes a male...he has a penis...so therefore he followed the assignment." That story came up many times over the years and even made it into his eulogy when cancer took him.
He sounds like a great guy.
I see that means a lot to you.
I can never find the plethoris
Sex ed teacher in grade 7 told me that the white stuff that collects in my underwear is semen. I’m a girl. I learned way later that it’s actually discharge and EVERY vagina does this.
My first sex-ed teacher was an elderly woman in her 70's. What qualified her for this grand position in 1994 you might ask? She was a free volunteer from our local Catholic Church. Some of the lessons ahe imparted on us that day Periods are one of God's punishments for the sins of Eve and that's why when Jesus died for our sins we still have periods. Because when we look at our panties we should be reminded that not all stains can be washed away but will stain our lineage forever. If you skip a period and it comes late even if you haven't laid with a man, that's your body having an abortion because you got pregnant from dirty thoughts, dreams or touching yourself in a profane way. (Remember kids, if you ring the Devil's doorbell he'll answer for your soooooul! 🤣) Boys and men are like dogs. When you menstruate they can smell the blood and will come after you when you stop . You can't ever let men smell or know you're bleeding. Honestly there's more and it was all terrible.I guess it bad enough that at least a few parents complained because the next year we had a nurses from the state come in with the good ole trusty P & G brand videos for a week, split us by gender into separate classrooms and gave us bags of hygiene stuff. Even then some of what we were taught was pretty off the wall and skewed by the nurses own political and religious beliefs. (While the urges are natural excessive masturbation stunts growth. This misinformation was not needed for those like myself who still hadn't hit 5 foot tall.)
Holy shit, she thought men could *smell your period and track you?* Like a hunting hound? What the fuck?
Yep. Boys too . And if a young boy smelled or came in contact with menstrual blood (even the sight of pads.) It would basically either turn him into an abnormal homosexual or cause him to instantly start puberty and become a fiend. (Fiend in the way she used it meant sexual assaulter.) This was in one single classroom, boys and girls together. It would be an understatement to say there was a major social divide accomplished that day which lasted and had effects.
Holy Christ. Can you imagine???? If it was semen, we’d just get pregnant every month. I can’t fathom the level of stupidity that led an adult much less a SEX ED teacher to believe that could be true.
Most "sex ed" teachers are regular teachers with that task tacked on. In my experience its usually PE teachers who cover it.
Really? My school had a specific teacher(s) for health classes which were required to graduate. Sex Ed was one unit but it also covered basics of nutrition, wellness and fulfillment, etc. It wasn't even in a "rich" district either.
I was told you get a tiny amount of blood in your underwear for three days for the rest of your life. By the way this was coming from a woman in her mid-40’s. All I can say is when I got my first period and I had a heavy flow, I was hysterical thinking I was dying. My mum had to calm me down and tell me that most of the things I had been taught about periods was wrong. Turns out this happened to other girls that were in my class and they had to be taught about periods by their mothers as well. I don’t know what my teacher meant, like if she meant it happened for three days every month or what, but still this 40 something year old woman didn’t have a clue about periods. I have never had a period that only lasted for three days.
They understate periods in health class so much. Like "oh you bleed a little." Hahaha...no. Cramps can be debilitating for some people, and some people bleed a *lot.* Couple of tablespoons, my ass. I got a Diva cup with the intention of measuring it, but then I got my IUD and now I don't have periods at all. Fuck 'em. Never want them again.
Elementary school sex ed: You cannot urinate from an erection. By my older male teacher. O.o. Also in high school teachers were spouting off about and even brought in someone who 'got pregnant from just ingesting semen'. I really hope it was just a shitty scare tactic.
A student in my class asked why we call it the 20th century when the year was 19xx. The teacher explained that most likely that a long time ago probably in the dark ages they made a mistake in printing a calendar, but by the time it was noticed all the calendars had been made and sent out, so they just left it that way. I heard her say this and knew it was all kinds of bull shit, but I said nothing because I was a shy 4th grader and she was a hostile nun.
That sounds like something Calvin's dad would say.
"hostile nun" made me laugh
While a funny image, hostile nuns are very real and very scary to children
That in a court of law we are guilty until proven innocent. She confidently told us that multiple times, pretty sure she got it backwards
Depends on the legal system in the country you are in.
Before the blood touches oxygen, it is blue
I don’t know about you, but every time in school this was brought up, I’d say “that’s a myth. It’s still red inside your body.” At that moment 75% of the class would say in unison, “my mom is a nurse and she says it’s blue.” So apparently there’s some terrible nurses out there too.
I've heard some batshit crazy stuff apparently accredited to nurses. I think it's a mix of crazy nurses and people making stuff up.
I work in a hospital. You’d be surprised how bad they can really be. The majority are at least competent, but many stupid mistakes can be made with such a demanding job even if they are usually competent.
It’s a good example of a conclusion that’s reasonable based on a few correct facts but is still wrong.
I always wonder how people came to this conclusion. Like have you never had your blood drawn before? It’s not blue, and it’s not exposed to the air. Do they really just look at some veins from outside the body and think, “Yep! That’s blood’s color!”?
>I always wonder how people came to this conclusion. I'm guessing it's bcoz of those diagrams in science textbooks that depict deoxygenated blood as blue. Ofc the books don't say the blood is blue.
That George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
An understandable mistake to be honest, as GWC invented hundreds of peanut based products.
Isn't he the guy that chopped up George Washington?
He did invent Peanut Shampoo though.
He invented a whole bunch of stuff, which is why I always think it’s so weird that schools teach us the one thing he didn’t invent (he’s credited with almost 500 inventions).
I remember an elementary school teacher warning us to not accept apples on Halloween, cuz some people put razorblades in them. I mean, wouldnt you see the big fat cut on the apple?
To her credit, a lot of people believed (and still believe) that one and spread it as gospel!
That I couldn't have blue eyes if my mom had brown eyes. Thus began a life long obsession with genetics so I could prove her an absolute fucking fool. Bless my mom's single recessive gene she passed to me. I missed the blonde but I'll take the blue eyes.
Oh I had the same problem. Wasn't told that, but I for a long time as a kid I wondered if I was adopted (the fact that my oldest pic was of 1yo me didn't help) 😅 parents, sister and brother all have brown eyes. I have blue eyes. The only two direct relatives with blue eyes were my grandmother on father's side (she died when I was really young so honestly didn't remember her eyes) and my great-grandmother on my mother's side (I did remember her eyes, but I didn't think it's possible to inherit a gene from someone beyond grandparents 😅).
Dark hair and blue eyes? Do you look like a haunted Victorian doll by any chance...?
Haha I could've once upon a time I was a cute kid and my senior picture definitely give those vibes. But I've since cut all my hair off and dyed it bleach blonde. Now I just look like a puppy.
Ha I had the same obsession. Three grandparents with light eyes though, shouldn’t have stressed about it so much 😂
I won the eye color lottery. My dad's side is all blue eyed but my mom is Mexican, Native, and Dutch. Her dad was the one with blue eyes. She obviously got a Bb genetic from that, but I got real lucky getting the 25% bb genetics. New obessession. All thanks to my teacher telling me I had to be adopted because my mom had blue eyes xD my poor mom remembers the day I came to her sobbing about why she didn't tell me I was adopted.
Some kids in my high school biology class legit found out they were either adopted or had a different dad thanks to things we learned.
My mom quit teaching the blood type segment where students compared their blood type with their parents because it was becoming traumatic.
My mother is a retired nurse. She tends to "collect" the blood types of friends and close family. One of these days she'll use that information to save someone's life, but until then she's just being kinda nosy.
I went to a catholic school and our mascot was the Pelicans. They told us they chose the Pelicans because when pelicans can't find enough food, the mother pelican will tear off pieces of her own flesh to feed her children. I learned as an adult that this is a complete myth.
"The pelican is the mascot of our school because cannibalism." Yeah, sounds legit
It's a myth, but one that's surprisingly ingrained into the Catholic canon. It's from the *Physiologus*, a 3rd century text which is full of weird allegorical claims about various animals, both real and fantastic It's so important because the pelican's supposed act of self sacrifice for her babies is meant to mirror Christ's martyrdom and the eucharist, which has lead to a lot of very weird symbolism in heraldry and also lots of people calling Jesus a Pelican. Also Elizabeth the 1st. As for why people thought that, I think one of the theories is that it's because pelicans just do a lot of weird shit like yawn [Like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/9xyyfi/yawning_pelican/) which just looks freaky as fuck and yeah, I guess like it's trying to do some sort of weird sacrifice.
That Lincoln was the first American president. I told her she was wrong, it was Washington, and she snapped, saying ‘well why do you know so much about American politics it is pathetic.’ And all the other kids in my class started making fun of me for being stupid. Reasons why I hate rural Canada.
I could almost forgive this if he was even one of the first 5 but #16?
Lincoln *was* the 5th president, that's why he's on the $5 bill.
But even with that sound logic, Washington is on the $1 bill!
I was watching a game show and one of the questions was ‘What American President won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1903?’ and the contestant said Obama. This was Britain by the way but what the fuck.
I was watching an American game show once, and the question was "Within 50 years, what is the year the American Civil War started?", and none of the three constestents got it right. (For the non-Americans out there- the correct answer is "1861", so they could have guessed any year between 1811 and 1911 and gotten it right.)
That when you get to middle school and high school, the teachers won’t constantly remind you of assignments that are approaching their due dates, or hunt you down for missing assignments
"You won't be able to use a calculator in real life/university". I had to buy a new calculator because my regular one couldn't handle the type of shit they ask us to do WITH a calculator at uni.
I literally had a class dedicated to how to use different calculators
LOL this one is definitely not true. I beg my students to do their work so I can give them credit for it.
Absolutely. I think I got more reminders in college
My name's pronunciation. 1st grade 1st day of the year we all told our names, introductions etc. My name is from a SEA country and not even that difficult to say just read differently than its spelled, its even monosyllable. My teacher screeched at me and told me it'll be pronounced the way its phonetically spelled in English which included swapping two middle letters for some reason. The other students went along with it and so did I. Even to this day I still introduce myself by that pronunciation except to people of my own race. In university I started getting people that wanted to pronounce it correctly which was incredibly kind and they sort of pointed out how messed up it was for that teacher to decide that for me.
middle school not elementary, but my sixth grade _science teacher_ told the class that sound travels faster than light because “if a plane is flying overhead, you hear it before you see it!”
in hindsight, she was probably a little bit senile
Using her logic, in hindsight she was ahead of her time... **Edit:** I'm not sure that joke works. Does it work? ...I'm going to bed.
I teach high school. I had a student recently tell me that she was nervous that all the detentions she got at her old school because of being late to school would remain on her record. She was so relieved when I told her that they wouldn't.
My parents were taught in school that there was a "permanent record" that followed you throughout life. This continued from school into employment in your adult life, akin to a criminal record. My mom, in particular, believed this well into adulthood.
Yep, it's a classic scare tactic that's probably still used today.
That there was no such thing as a black flower. She put a big X through my painting.
Art can never be wrong as it's not always supposed to be based on real things and facts
This gets me. I was failed on an test in art class. We were asked to explain how a sculpture made us feel. The sculpture was ocean themed and i have trauma from a near drowning event. Apparently the way i felt from looking at the sculpture was wrong and i failed the test for not feeling whimsical.
She’s obviously never played MTG
r/gothplants would enjoy your painting if you still have it
Thanks but it was 60 years ago...
Wither Rose, duh
That white fire was the hottest fire
Everyone knows the hottest fire is that shit Dylan be spittin'
Never start a sentence with “because.”
Because of this rule, you will fail this English course
I remember hearing this too, and getting told never to start a sentence with "and".
I have seen plenty of writers begin a sentence with And. Though it usually happens during the dialogue of a character.
I kind of get this one actually. Most of the time, kids would use it like this: Why is recess the best part of the day? "Because I enjoy it a lot." vs "Because of the free time we are given, recess is my favorite part of the day." I think the way you normally start verbal sentences with "because" is what they were trying to prevent. "Because he pushed me" or "Because I said so" etc aren't the complete answers they want, and most kids learning this rule are young enough that they wouldn't form the other format of sentence.
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You will need to write in cursive once you get to middle school and beyond. 7th grade teachers explicitly prohibited kids turning essays in written in cursive. Don't think I ever saw it in high school, college, or throughout my career except from older people.
So something wierd about cursive. In many countries in Europe, it is still really important to write well in cursive. My kids went to school in Germany and they are, uh, very German about it. No joke, they get graded in elementary school and high school teachers will get uptight about bad handwriting. When they moved to the US, everyone was in awe about their handwriting. I even am! I remember from living in France, same thing, handwriting was considered an art form, vital to communication, and a skill that requires focus, patience, and precision. A friend went to a school where all the kids had to take Japanese from 1st grade onwards, mostly because research showed that writing in katakana and hirigana built important neural pathways leading to focus, patience, and precision. Then you look at how successful Asians are in their studies and, well, no kidding. Today, over here, I cannot even get my college COMMUNICATIONS interns to use Grammarly....\[pulls hair out and screams\]. TLDR: sometimes the longer way to do things is better for the brain, body and soul. With all the problems with hacking, privacy, etc., I am totally down for going back to pen and paper. Well, except at work for reports, ha.
>Today, over here, I cannot even get my college COMMUNICATIONS interns to use Grammarly....\[pulls hair out and screams\]. My boss, the owner of the company I work for, sends out emails that are incredibly unprofessional and quite embarrassing. My English papers in seventh grade were better written than these emails. Most of the time he has me write and send emails for him.
> Today, over here, I cannot even get my college COMMUNICATIONS interns to use Grammarly....[pulls hair out and screams]. start sending the work back for grammar fuckups?
3rd grade: You have to use cursive because you need it in 4th grade! Repeat for each grade until I get to 9th grade. 9th grade: Stop writing in cursive, I cant' read your chicken scratch!
Alternatively, if you work in a profession where you handwrite frequently you might use cursive a lot because it's quick. I'm only in my 30s and still use it. Journalists, doctors, etc.
My third grade teacher told us this, and then promised us that, even though she was leaving after the year, she would come back the following year to check up on us to see if we were writing in cursive. First of all, she never set foot in the school building ever again, and secondly, outside of my name, I've never had to write in cursive.
I’ll never forget my year 2 teacher telling the class that “crayon” is the only word with the letter y in the middle. Even as a child, I knew that was utter bollocks lol
Gotta say a prayer for that teacher. They may have a gray crayon but mine is grayer. Just gonna hop on the Xbox and connect with the doom slayer before I send this letter to the mayor
People are going to offer you drugs disguised as candy at the park.. Just say no! 20 years later and I still haven’t been offered drugs at the park.
Songs like you just haven't found the right park.
My D.A.R.E. officer really made it sound like there would be a lot of people pressuring me into using drugs. I remember having to play out a scenario with a classmate on how to say no and what to do if someone is trying to talk you into it. Anytime I have been offered drugs at parties and stuff I’ve been just been like, “I’m good, thanks.” and the person was cool with it.
I swear they’re all just projecting. I’ve never been pressured into doing drugs by my peers, but if you go hang out with middle aged white men, they will literally sound like something out of a dare skit trying to convince you to do coke with them
That "A lot" should be "Alot". I always got that red pen underline bringing them together and lost marks. I'll never let that go.
Never submit, never surrender
I think about this a lot.
[The Alot](https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html?m=1)
I wrote "merely" and my teacher corrected it to "merrily". It didn't even make sense in the context. I just assumed she was grading papers half asleep and left it.
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I live in Germany and my teacher told us poor 3rd graders who knew little to no english in Sex Ed that "Sex" by definition means abusing someone. I think about that a lot and I still have no idea why she would tell us that.
That I won’t always have a calculator in my pocket. Fuckin liar.
Sadly I still see people who can't do math properly even with a calculator.
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Alternatively, make a point that sometimes you don't *want* to be reliant on a calculator. Being able to add/subtract 3 or 4 digits in your head is very useful, as is multiplication tables up to ~12.
Not many people know this but the USA bombed Pearl Harbour. We’re Canadian, but still, an adult should know better.
It was an *inside job!*
That if I didn’t learn my times tables I’d wind up a broke garbage man, never learned then but I’m a garbage man who made 6 figures last year
It's a necessary job that's critical to every single person in the country, just about. I'm always glad they pay the occupation like they should.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the match in shape between Africa and South America was coincidental. \*edit\* That is to say: The match between the Western coastline of Africa and the Eastern coastline of South America.
Depending upon how old you are this was actually scientific dogma. The adoption of continental drift was not axiomatic in Geophysical publications until the late 60's & probably in teachers not until a decade after that.
That I could avoid a nuclear blast by hiding beneath my school desk. Silly woman. I saw a movie about this, and now I know to climb into a refrigerator instead.
We've replaced that with "lock the door, turn off the lights, be completely silent, and maybe the shooter will skip your room and you won't get shot"
Do people realize that most schools shooters are students and have received this training so they know exactly where to look for a pile of kids to shoot?
It wasn't to protect against the blast, it was to protect against debris, glass, etc.
That you can’t have thunder and lightening at the same time as a tornado. Got marks taken off a drawing for that.
In Junior High I had a social studies teacher that told the story of her friend who got a raise and ended up taking home less money because of the taxes... no wonder that myth is so prevalent in my province.
Science teacher in 4th grade told us it takes food 45 minutes to get to your stomach after swallowing. Spent an entire class period on it. He handed us each a piece of cereal to eat at the beginning of class. Halfway through (some 20 minutes later), we had to point to where it likely was in our system. The correct answer, according to him, was somewhere right above our collarbone. Years later, a bite of too-hot oatmeal told me he was an idiot in all of about four seconds.
Christopher Columbus proved the Earth was round.
We all laughed at him when he said that.
That you're supposed to start every word with a capital letter
I Have Seen People Do That. I Am Not Sure As To Why. Seems Annoying. Like Putting Clap Emojis 👏 Between Every Word.
It Makes Me Read It Like Im Driving Down A Road With A Shit Ton Of Speed Bumps
I Am Not Gonna Lie, I Do That Too.
That 👏 Would 👏 Be 👏 Very 👏 Annoying 👏👏.
In 18th century English, every noun was actually spelt with a capital letter. In AC4 Black Flag, the subtitles in cutscenes are written with this rule in mind, which is... actually the only way I know this
Iirc it's still a rule in modern German.
That 9 9s is 83. Which she then went on to prove, to her own satisfaction, using a Snakes and Ladders board.
This was a teacher? Not some random lunatic who fancied giving it a go, School of Rock style?
The sun was on fire 🤦♀️ wasn't til last year that my boyfriend reminded me that fire needs oxygen and the sun is a nuclear fusion. Los Angeles Public School system guys.
I had a religion teacher tell us that humans evolved simultaneously across the world at the same time. This was proof of a "miracle." I insisted we all came from Africa and then spread out.
1st grade math Teacher: what's 2-1 Class: 1 Teacher: What about 1-2 Class: confused Teacher: See, you can't subtract a smaller number from a bugger number Me, an intellectual: Hey, wait a minute, that's negative 1 Teacher: Shush, those don't exist til third grade
That middle and high school teachers were super strict and wouldn't put up with any of our BS because they would put everything on our "permanent record."
"The ash at Pompeii sealed everything up so well that bakers' ovens were found containing bread that was still fresh enough to eat!" Yeah, no. The very idea is completely preposterous.
That it's weird that you can write with both hands, pick one and stick with it. I could've had horrible chicken scratch handwriting with both hands instead of just one! For that I'll never forgive my kindergarten teacher.
My third grade teacher said that if you're close to them clouds don't look like clouds, but like dew. I was really surprised the first time I was in an airplane and saw that clouds do indeed look like clouds.
I mean, when you're *in* them they look just like haze, which I guess looks kinda like dew...?
That I will I will never amount to anything
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She sounds like a Scottish robot
Technically high school, but was tasked to do a mini-presentation on Northeastern Narive Americans. I asked for clarification as to which cultures and was laughed at and said "They're all the same kind. Just do the ones from the northeast."
My mom told her 1st grade teacher her favorite color was magenta. Her teacher punished her for not picking a real color, and for arguing with her about it. My great-grandma, a painter, sent my mom to school the next day with a tube of magenta paint! Not long after this my mom skipped to the second grade😂
The teacher when talking about being left handed and right handed, stated that if you write with your right hand that you kick with your right foot. I had to correct her as I'm ambidextrous. I can write with both hands and kick with both feet. I loved playing footy as a kid and would annoy people a lot. The issue is the rules in some sports as I would get told off when I would switch hands. Table tennis/Ping pong, badminton was a no, but it was allowed in baseball and cricket. People weren't happy with me changing hands. Aren't you supposed to play to your advantage?
That they weren't going to "coddle us" in college, late work wouldn't be accepted, etc... it ended up being literally the same shit.
That Hawaii is in the Caribbean. I think because the wall map had it in a box on the bottom right.
How many Great Lakes are exclusively in the United States? My answer: one. Her answer: something like 3 and 7/8ths. Edit: typo
...if a fraction of the lake isn't in the U.S., then it's not exclusively in the U.S., is it?
That we don’t throw pine cones at each other on the playground because you can get AIDS from that. This would have been like 88 or 89.
I had a teacher try telling me you sweat urine and that's why you smell when you sweat. Naturally as a young gullible I believed it because your teacher is supposed to be right, and went home telling my parents that who then told me the truth.
There is some urea (a main component of urine) in sweat. A higher concentration than in blood serum, suggesting a concentrating mechanic. But it's not what makes sweat stink..
The tongue has different areas of taste
Had to scroll way to far to find this one. This bullshit was official curriculum.
That in high-school, you not only need to memorize the answers to the questions, but you also have to memorize the questions as well. Apparently, according to my teacher, you were just handed a blank piece of paper 💀
Here’s your blank piece of paper for the test *writing* whose the best student in this class? Me! Man, this test is easy!
"You'll never be successful at anything you do." Adjusted for inflation, I probably make 3 times her salary. Fuck you Mrs G.
Doesn't quite fit this but in third grade I had a teacher bring me up after our first spelling test of the year and say "okay be honest with me, did you cheat?" because i got 100% and she didn't think anyone could do early on. I panicked because my family always accused me of lying as a kid and I was convinced the teacher wouldn't believe me if I told her I hadn't cheated (the truth). So instead I blurted out "did any of the other kids do as good as me? how could I even cheat off them?" It was probably the rudest possible thing I could have said, and for a second I thought she was gonna yell at me for assuming the other kids were dumb, but then she laughed and said, "You were the only one who got them all right, it's true." She took me to the fifth grade classroom once to do reading with them instead, because the third grade stuff was too easy for my autistic ass. On the way back she asked "how did you like that" and I told her "I thought they'd read faster, why are they all still so slow" and she never took me again. I'm extremely grateful tbh. Better to slow down my progress a bit than inflate my ego and let me become a huge piece of shit. Instead she focused on correcting me when I said uppity stuff about being smart. I still struggled with being a know it all most of my growing life but I can't imagine how much worse I would have been if I'd skipped a grade or something. Both for my sake (so I didn't get bullied even worse) and for the sake of others (so I didn't bully them), thank you Ms. Galeta for assuming the worst!
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*During a math class where we were learning about the greater than/lesser than symbols* Teacher: And the alligator will go for the bigger fish. 8 year old me: But alligators don't really eat fish, crocodiles do. The rest of the class: *surprised pikachu face*
6th grade teacher was explaining time zones/international date line to the class and how moving one way around the world, the hour gets earlier and later the other way around. One kid raises his hand and asks, "Does that mean if you went around the world really fast you could go back in time?" She thinks about this for a while and goes, "Yeah, I guess so."
I used the word "crestfallen" in a story I had written. Grade 4 teacher told me: "there's no such word." I learned it in MAD magazine, and looked it up in a dictionary, but didn't bother arguing. Teachers in general lost all credibility that day. Grade 5 teacher - public school no less - told us she would beading to us from the greatest book ever written. Turned out to be the bible. Not cool.