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Stupid Things Teachers Have Said

Safe-Keeper said:
Nope. To the best of my understanding, a theory in science jargon is an idea (backed by evidence, otherwise it's a hypothesis) that explains a law. So the law of gravity states that things fall, while the theory of gravity explains how and why.
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NO!! - in the first place, there is no Theory of Gravity: if we ever find out exactly how gravity works, we will have such but.... The Law of Gravity is a mathmatical formula that describes the force of gravity between any two objects in the Universe. A Theory in science essentially explains how something works, a Law points out that it works (often in the form of a formula describing/showing the calculation of a relationship that is the subject of said Law).
Note there is no Law of Evolution (a formula describing it)so Evolution is the reverse of Gravity.
 
schrodingasdawg said:
My third grade teacher insisted seasonal cycles were due to how close the Earth was to the sun. I told her it had to do with axial tilt, and in fact the Earth was closer to the sun during winter [in the Norther hemisphere]. Not that she believed me.
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If it helps, and I hope it doesn't, there is a film lots of teachers have been shown of a Harvard graduation some years back wherein an extremely disappointing number of new Harvard grads AND profs answered that question as your teacher....WRONG!!:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp
 
BillC said:
My headmistress told me that there was no such English word as ere, meaning "before", and argued with me at great length before telling me flatly I was wrong.
Even at the age of ten, I knew she was wrong.
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Ere long, she erred!:)
Did she give good......never mind!!
 
Man, this thread is embarassing me. I am going to be very careful about what I say to my kids. I wonder how many totally dimwitted things I've uttered over the last quarter century. :o

I know kids remember snippets of lecture out of context, and then the memory of course does not work like a VCR. Memories are recreated so-to-speak every time they're reimagined, so there's no telling what horror stories there are floating around out there about me.

I dread the thought of inadvertantly putting a student down simply because he actively disagreed with me, whether right or wrong. School was so easy for me. Perhaps that's why I became a teacher. But I know that's not the way it is for most kids.

My point is that well-meaning teachers can spout intellectual flatulance. It's one of the risks of the vocation.

ETA I'm not defending it. I'm learning from it.
 
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fuelair said:
If it helps, and I hope it doesn't, there is a film lots of teachers have been shown of a Harvard graduation some years back wherein an extremely disappointing number of new Harvard grads AND profs answered that question as your teacher....WRONG!!:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp
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Sigh... I might regret asking this, but:

Have a video?
 
Hazel said:
Eight grade science teacher sometime around 1933 give/take. "Some scientists think they can split the atom but they are wrong. The atom cannot be split because it is the smallest element in the universe".

I wonder where she was in the forties.
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So that makes you 90 years old? With such a keen memory of 8th grade too.
 
it's possible

Doghouse Reilly said:
So that makes you 90 years old? With such a keen memory of 8th grade too.
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My Pop's 93, and if he were blogging here you wouldn't know it until he told you the story of taking his civil war veteran uncle to a silent movie. His mind is sharp as a scalpel. :)
 
ShadowSot said:
Couple of more I remembered:

We were holing class on the U.S. Civil War in our American History class in High School.

In the middle of the lecture, the teacher stopped calls, announced that she had these really great shoes she'd recently gotten from her husband, and then passed them around class for the students to smell.

In sixth grade we were supposed to list different forms of matter.
Me, I read ahead. I couldn't remember all of the ones we were supposed to know for the test, so I put down plasma, and got marked wrong.
I contested it, my dad contested it.
She explained that since we hadn't covered it yet, it did not count as a correct answer. I should have memorized the correct answers from the book.

Same lady who made the DNA comment, I think I stopped paying attention in class after that.

What was really sad is she replaced a great science teacher who passed on. The following science teacher who replaced the idiot after I left that school gave me one of his boxes of rocks and fossils he'd collected - I still have it.
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I had something similar happen in 9th grade science. We had been told that mass is a better way to measure the 'amount' of stuff than volume. We were quizzed on this, and I pointed out that this is because different materials have different densities.

I was only given partial credit because they had not talked about density yet.
 
fossilhound said:
My Pop's 93, and if he were blogging here you wouldn't know it until he told you the story of taking his civil war veteran uncle to a silent movie. His mind is sharp as a scalpel. :)
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But the thing is, he isn't blogging here. I have no doubt that there are many sharp-minded individuals of very advanced age. They just don't tend to post on message boards. I am curious to find out if Hazel is the extremely rare exception.
 
It sux being smarter than your teachers or ahead of your lessons.

It makes bright kids get bored with the educational system.
 
Oh, yeah

"The most widespread racism in the world is against whites." - 8th grade social studies teacher based on his experiences in the Caribbean.
 
schrodingasdawg said:
My third grade teacher insisted seasonal cycles were due to how close the Earth was to the sun. I told her it had to do with axial tilt, and in fact the Earth was closer to the sun during winter [in the Norther hemisphere]. Not that she believed me.
fuelair said:
If it helps, and I hope it doesn't, there is a film lots of teachers have been shown of a Harvard graduation some years back wherein an extremely disappointing number of new Harvard grads AND profs answered that question as your teacher....WRONG!!:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp:jaw-dropp
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Awesome, your third grade teacher was a Harvard Grad!

welshdean said:
I'm afraid he was right!:)
Congratulations you were right!:(

Sometimes hot water does freeze more quickly than cold, but to muddy the (hot or cold) waters a little, the reverse is also true.
I read the answer in one of the 'Last Word' series (New Scientist) a few years ago and from memory it's all about nucleation points being lessened by the heating, removal of impurities and convection currents being far more active in the heated sample.
Google the Mpemba Effect and see if that gives you a better answer.
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Mythbusters also took that on that at one point I think. Or was it the exploding hot water out of the microwave that I'm thinking of?
 
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