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Stupid Things Teachers Have Said

ShadowSot said:
The lady made the statement that the discoverer of DNA had made the conclusion that DNA was shaped as it was due to the discoverer looking at a spiral staircase after the discovery.

She followed the statement by saying "I wonder how we would portray DNA if he'd seen a elevator instead of a staircase."
Implying that his perception affected the shape of DNA.
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Wasn't that a joke from a Terry Pratchett book? "If he had taken the lift instead, the whole history of biology would have been different. But faster. And only licensed to carry twelve people."
 
"Now, it says here in your books that brain tissue does not feel pain, but personally, I don't believe it."

-My junior high biology teacher
 
"Every society has its own creation myth. Our modern one is evolution." - A teacher from my wife's old school.
 
"The Mafia pressured Microsoft into putting solitaire into windows. They make it so you think it's easy to win, so when you go to the casinos, you think you can win there." - My WordPefect (yes I'm that old) teacher from High School.
 
paiute said:
The word "year" is also used of periods loosely associated but not strictly identical with either the astronomical or the calendar year, such as the seasonal year, the fiscal year or the academic year, etc. By extension, the term year can mean the orbital period of any planet: for example, a "Martian year" is the time in which Mars completes its own orbit. The term is also applied more broadly to any long period or cycle, such as the Platonic "Great Year".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year
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That's all well and good, but Mercury's year is 88 days long, not 53. :D

And then there's the story about the chemistry professor who had a penchant for showmanship in his lectures. He would fill two glasses, one with water and one with methanol, speak at length, then drink from one of the glasses after saying something like "now let's see if I'm an idiot". He always chose the right glass... except for that last time.
 
Biggest mistake I remember is the teacher who said a scientific idea progressed from hypothesis through theory to law. But the most annoying teacher overall was one who used the class to preach her deluded ideas on just about everything, but particularly on how horrible a country the US was, to the class, without taking too kindly to contrary opinion. She also rejoiced in pretending to be an expert on subjects she knew next to nothing about. My faourite was when I brought up One Laptop Per Child and she convinced herself it was litterally being given to every kid in the world, particularly children living in stone age-level tribes in the jungle with no contact with the outside world.
 
seewhatflows said:
Professor: Gay people are their own race.

same professor (to a couple of black kids in the class): YOU'RE ACTING LIKE YOU'RE STILL SLAVES!

same professor: Are people with mental disabilities, you know, like retards, are they as disabled as people in wheelchairs? I really don't know.

Substitute teacher (high school): You can't go home until you've told me your favorite Olivia Newton-John movie.
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A lot of kids would have never been able to go home.
 
I think this is stupid, or maybe I'm just ignorant, but a teacher once told me that if you put a cup of hot water in a freezer, it would freeze faster than if you put a cup of cold water in the freezer. I asked if he was sure about it, because it didn't make sense to me. I didn't get an explanation of the physics, but a hostile attitude, like, how dare I question him (he was not a physics teacher). This can't be true, can it? Because hot water would first become cold water before freezing, so cold water would have a head start, right?
 
To Cainkane1:

Oh, if you think that's bad-

I had a racist and conservative Catholic teacher in high school who said that sex education was a conspiracy by condom manufacturers to sell condoms and an overall conspiracy to limit the numbers of white people so that blacks and Latinos could multiply and take over.

She said that white girls should strive to be chaste and pure as teenagers and not rush because they are beautiful and their beauty will last for years- while a black woman in her 30s "already looks like a beaten bag of potatoes" and so "needs to start having sex and having babies when she's 14".

Amazingly, this woman also appeared to be sober.
 
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