This shit happened to me, but in kindergarten. I grew up in a bilingual house. I spoke English and Spanish equally. I went to the school with my mom to get assessed. She said I could read and was bilingual. The teacher didn't believe it and made me read from one of their books.
To add insult to injury, when they had Spanish class, the fucking teacher taught us that "purple" was "porpuda" and "lizard" wad "lizardo." Shit like that... My mom put me in another school.
I'm 48 and still laugh about lizardo. How absolutely stupid.
We had computer classes where we had to learn about spreadsheets.
To do a number plus ten percent we had to put in A1+A1*10/100
I did A1*1.1 like a normal person.
She then went round to make sure everyone had put it in correctly. Got annoyed at me and changed A1 to something else to expose my folly.
Was visibly annoyed when it showed the right answer.
There’s not much worse as a kid in a learning environment, or even with your parent(s), to be shut down painfully for being right about something that they don’t know or don’t think you know. Really crushes the satisfaction of nailing a win and turns it into bitterness and starts the lifelong process of keeping your mouth shut when you’re right and letting others win when wrong.
I can believe this. Not fake, not gay. The math teaching of the past was so dumb. Even now, I have 2 kids who never got a bad math teacher and still love math; two who did (one teacher who actually thought women ought not get higher education) and those two do not
And a good math teacher is a treasure beyond words. Mr. Galing, if I could have had you teach my kids through high school I would have taken them anywhere.
I still remember my teacher bitching me out in front of the class when we were learning negative numbers because when he asked me how I figured out the correct answer I said that the positive numbers and negatives cancelled each other out. Like -4 and positive 5, the negative 4 cancels out 4 on the positive side and you are left with 1. Maybe that wasn't the correct verbiage but it gave me the correct answer every time. He was a dick about correcting me though.
The bajillion stories in the comments about horrible experiences with math just reinforce the fact that I've made the right career choice.
I became an elementary teacher as a second career specifically because so many elementary teachers are absolutely terrible at teaching math. (Mostly because they don't actually understand the math that they're teaching. In my university cohort, almost 50% of my classmates failed the math entrance exam the first time. There was nothing more complex than 5th grade math on that test.)
Students should be allowed to use the strategies that work for them, and they should definitely never be punished for knowing math from higher grade levels.
If a student in my class knows something more advanced, I will challenge them to use grade-level-appropriate strategies to prove that their answers are correct. And if they demonstrate that they can do both, I'll give them more advanced work to help them grow.
Maaaaaan, I've been holding this in for almost 3 decades and it's time to vent lol..
When I was in
middle-school(lol) primary school we were doing a quiz on space and the Earth and I recall the question: how long is a year?I'd remember reading in my "Magic School Bus" book that a year is closer to ~365.25 (that's where we get the extra day in the leap years) and the class and teacher mocked me for not putting 365. I'm still salty about it!
Had a similar experience in what I think must have been my second year of primary school.
I was asked to go through a math problem that was written out, something like "4 + 7 = ?".
I said "Four plus seven equals eleven".
The teacher said that was wrong and said "Four add seven is eleven".
I'm like, what is the difference? She says, we aren't onto "plus" and "equals" yet
Six year old me spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to figure out how their was some difference between plus and add. She just could have said "they are the same, but please use these words to describe them in our lessons".
One day I'm going to frame a coloured drawing I still have from year one. The following event is also still ingrained in my mind: We had to colour in a picture with several animals, one of which was a small spotted reptile in a puddle of water. Clearly a salamander.
The teacher crossed it out in red pen and screamed that I am old enough to know lizards are green and there is no such thing as a black and yellow animal on this earth.
Americanized versioned, but with a match teacher it went something like this:
Teacher: Whoever can solve this will get an A.
me: I have a solution.
Teacher: come out and explain it.
Me: I do just that.
Teacher: that is correct, but you didn't use the method we just learned, no A, sit down.
No Child Allowed To Be Ahead
My English-as-second-language teacher hated me because I kept correcting her spelling and vocabulary. But it was okay because I hated her right back and took every opportunity to annoy her (for the sake of rigorous accuracy, of course). Fortunately she couldn't actually harm or sabotage me because I aced almost all of my tests and had good scores in national ESL competitions, and a sudden drop in grades would likely have been too obvious.
The point where I'd had enough was a test about the anatomy of vehicles. She had crossed out my answer to "left side of a ship" because I'd written port or larboard (not that I expected someone with a master's diploma to know the etymology of nautical terms*, or not to confuse larboard with starboard because they looked similar), but what made my blood fucking boil was when she crossed out my answers of hood and trunk because I'd used the American words instead of the British bonnet and boot, and when I pointed out that she'd marked those same answers as correct in others' tests, she went back and fucking changed the scores on the other tests. I told her it was "deplorable conduct for a teacher" (approximate translation, and as polite as I was going to get that day) and she dragged me to the principal for disrupting the class.
That was the third year of high school (I think "junior" is the American equivalent). I took an option to graduate one year early from ESL, in part out of spite. I'm sure she was glad to be rid of me.
* I knew "larboard" and "starboard" and the names of individual sails from Assassin's Creed 4. Much of my vocabulary comes from games (including some Russian from STALKER, Metro, and MGSV).
edit: A resurfaced memory! Still regarding sailing -- she thought "in distress" meant that things were calm and safe because "di-stress" was the opposite of "stress". I swear I'm not making this shit up!
Similarly I got accused of plagiarism in ninth grade on a 3 page essay, because I used big words.
This was before the days of the internet. I suppose I could have used something like Encarta, but I don’t even remember if you could copy and paste into ClarisWorks from it, and it was about a fictional book we’d read anyway.
My brother got accused by the same teacher 3 years later. He had an even better vocabulary than me and went on to study theoretical physics.
You've got some weird teachers. My teachers were all pretty keen to nurture curiosity. When we'd just learned about combustion and how fire needs oxygen, I asked my teacher after the lesson about the sun and how it could be burning without oxygen, and she just explained nuclear fusion and what the sun actually was, and that the words "burning ball of gas" is a bit of a misnomer because that's not what's happening.
God that teachers dumb.. Why even as the question? Why not just do 20 - 20 if you are going to be upset when a kid knows the answer. Simple! Don't ask questions you don't want the correct answers to. Teaching kids the wrong answers only messes them up the next year when they have to unlearn the bullshit you taught them.
I switched from a French immersion to an English school in grade 3, so pretty much coasted French class until one day we were doing some exercise where we would say our names. Friends name is Green and he read it out as Verde. The teacher was ecstatic, praising him for a job well done. Of course I knew this was incorrect that you don't translate proper names and kept trying to correct them. I argued so vehemently that I got suspended for the day. Still hate French to this day.
At the written maths finals in my country there's first a timebox where the teacher goes through all tasks to make sure that everyone understands what is asked. During that portion the headmaster is present and students are allowed to ask questions. After that the headmaster leaves and nobody is allowed to talk any more.
So the teacher shows us this one task, and it's a 3D geometry task. I look through it and notice that there's one angle missing. There's an infinite number of correct solutions with the given requirements. So I raise my hand and ask about that.
My teacher looks straight past me at the back wall of the classroom, completely stone faced and says "I am sure that the requirements are complete. They cannot be incomplete." I hold my tongue.
As soon as the headmaster leaves, my teacher all but runs up to my desk and asks me what he missed.
Turns out, I was right and he just put a random number on the chalkboard to be used as the missed requirement.
If he had admitted in front of the headmaster that the requirements were incomplete, then the whole maths finals would have to be postponed and redone.
Oof, i can feel anon. Actually true probably, similar stuff happened to me. Also getting this writte in as bad behaviour as well. I started so many arguments with teachers because they were bullshitting. Maths is one thing, i was really into it as a child(still am) but i understand why a teacher has to teach things in order. Of course this could be solved with more resources, and more importantly, distrobuting resources better by having a bit more personalized education. But what i was on about is that its very common(in eastern europe at least) for teachers to spread actual complete fucking bullshit. The amount of times they took disciplinary action against me because i corrected their batshit insane claims is just sad. This mainly happened until 5th and 6th grade where i got to the conclusion that just discussing what we covered during the class, after the class, was a good way of clearing up the mess. Of course i knew way too much for a 10 year old(had an autistic sister who loved to infodump me, we still engage in it time to time _) but the point is that if a 10 year old is constantly correcting his teachers theres a problem in the system. I hoped that more western systems would be better but actually i dont see (sweden in my case) being much better for children even with everyone hyping it up. Well sorry for the rant, idk what could actually solve these problems exactly as im not an expert but i really hope we adress it one day...
Man... This sucks. I can't believe how many lemmings have had similar experiences. I'm just remembering one now where I was excited about math, went ahead in the curriculum to fractions, and answered everything in ratios. Instead of the teacher seeing the simple mistake, I just remember them being "wrong". How deflating.
Kids need connection before correction. I'm sort of glad my kid is glued to a screen doing adaptive math. It sucks in its own way, but better than unfeeling correction. Though, at least in my district, there's a big emphasis on empathy development so I think the teachers try to model that.
I would understand "unsolvable" or something but 0 just hurts. Later you learn to specify "within natural numbers" and it's totally reasonable to stay within the number range you have learned so far and it would be fine to tell the kid "you're not wrong but let's keep it simple". Just don't teach things they have to unlearn later.
My brother was in a similar situation where he said the square root of -1 is i and the teacher was impressed and it was discussed as a positive thing at home
My parents got called to school more than once because i was "disruptive" and kept doing things like wandering around class talking to people or not turning up after breaks. I was bored. My parents said, if I've done the work and it's all correct can't they give me something else to do? So they made me answer the same set of questions again once I finished them.
Similar story of my own: Had a middle school computer teacher who told us to use "File -> Open URL" on Internet Explorer/Netscape (can't remember which) which opened a prompt window with a text field to enter in a URL. And I pointed out that you can just use the address bar and do the same thing and she angrily told me that I had to do it the proper way. While I thought she wasn't looking, I used the address bar anyway. She apparently had been trying to spy if I disobeyed, caught me, and told me that I failed the assignment (I did not even know I was being graded).
Another different computer teacher at my high school I had seemed to more or less admit she had no idea what she was doing (she originally taught a different subject, she seemed legitimately nervous/insecure about possibly losing her job) though she tried by just reading the text book to us verbatim for a few days. Eventually, she gave up and the students just taught each other computer stuff in her class, then when they ran out of things to teach each other they just played Age of Empires all class and the she let us.
They don't pay teachers enough and sometimes it shows.
I'm pretty sure a currently 4yo nephew of mine will suffer some sort of bullshit like that in the coming years. Little bud is already able to read big numbers like 368 (also in english no less!) and full words despite the preschool not teaching either.
This happened to me in 6 grade and the teacher was like annoyed bruh when I confidently raised hand to give a more accurate answer. Maybe she thought I was showing off the way she reacted
Dude, School was the worst f'ing psyop.
Give me a straight question and answer on the material, and I'll 100% it. No, we can't do that... Here's four answers that are all technically correct, choose the MOST correct one.
Ohh so it's pros and cons of a situation and you need to pick the one with the most upsides or least downsides? No, they're all just mostly ok, but we were REALLY thinking about answer B when we wrote the question.
The autistic experience summarized
Same here, elementary school. Teacher: "When water boils, it produces a lot of steam." Me: "One liter of water produces 1700 liters of steam under normal pressure conditions." Teacher: "Write down: When water boils, it produces a lot of steam.".
School really does prepare you for real life sometimes, it seems ...
Failed a high school required class because I have poor writing abilities. (I word good.. just my penmanship is trash)
Literally got a 0 on a midterm because the teacher "couldn't read my writing"
Crap like the green text and my high school experience is why parents need to be involved in a child's education.
thats been 30 years ago.. I'm still bitter. But it'll make me a better father to school aged kids
"youre not supposed to know that yet" then why in fucks name did you ask lady?
Never stop fighting their lies
Wisdom is knowing when to say "fuck it" to save yourself the pain.
Why are you going to be learning negative numbers while you are 8? Edit: Reading the comments I see that your schools are pretty shit compared to my public school was way better (even when the building was on the verge of collapsing for like the whole time I was there)
This or something similar has happened to everyone I know 🇨🇦
And now, I feel rage too. Be very afraid, unnamed teacher!
AI is coming for your job!
This is always the case. Whenever you deal with any educational institution, they don't want you to give them the right answer ever. They want you to give them the answer that they told you that you should give; whether it's right or wrong
Flashbacks to shitty math teachers. It was either this or "WHY DON'T YOU KNOW THIS YET!?" I quit participating and made a C for the rest of my academic career including college. I also got "I don't how you got this answer, but it's the right answer." . Hell I don't even know how I got that right answer but I refused to ask questions.
Still with the lame pokemon. Shit was lame then and is lame now.
