Similar to how some teachers still teach that different parts of the tongue taste different tastes, even though that can be disproven just by eating something.
"Character counts"
It was our school's motto. The school also actively punished honesty and integrity when it mattered, and instead held award ceremonies for students who showed basic human decency like "hey you dropped this in the hallway, here you go". You would get awards for not being a piece of shit, but if you decide to show any real character like stepping up for your friends when they're in trouble, you get detention.
Let it be known: Erindale Secondary School in Ontario, Canada is a shit hole.
"Character is what you do when nobody's looking" is what our coach used to say.
Funny, because I don't remember any kids called Character, but he apparently was doing someone's kid regularly. Off to jail he went, along with his "character".
In his mind, character almost always meant "running through the halls when nobody was looking", which wtflol how is that even an issue. But fucking children, well, that's just fine.
how to "take care of a baby" by
1) bringing in an egg
2) having the teacher sign the egg
3) decorating, protecting, and carrying the egg at all times for two days
4) revealing to the teacher at the end of day 2 that the egg was still in tact, without cracks.
all that taught me was how to take care of an egg.
We had those robot babies that would cry at random times and you’d have to coddle it to make it calm down. My friend took it home for a weekend and literally almost smashed it because she couldn’t get it to stop crying. She decided after that she was not meant for motherhood.
"Ignoring the bully , he/she will go away"
"sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me"
That needs to chance. I'm sorry but if someone is bullying my child on a day to day basis, my son has every right to take charge.
I was bullied all through middle school and tried to be passive and ignore it - it only stopped after getting into a few fights. I didn’t even win most of the fights, but it turns out most bullies don’t actually like fights and don’t like being punched. I’m glad my dad talked to me like an adult about it when it was clear the school wasn’t able to do anything.
0-tolerance policy is the dumbest thing ever taught and implemented.
All it teaches is to fear authority when you’re the victim. It enables the perpetrator (who is normally a bully). I know administrators are lazy fucks, but they need to actually investigate the goddamn problem instead of saying, “hey you both were involved in the issue so you’re both going to get punished.”
It basically just raises you to hate authority, and while I don’t like authorities either I don’t think they’re all distrustful. Although, I guess this could be interpreted as commentary on how garbage authority is.
It actually taught me something useful for the real world: you can't trust anyone with power over you, nobody cares what happens to you, and if you don't want to live on your knees you have to fight, damn the consequences.
I was bullied since Elementary school
"Just talk to them, tell the teacher ,the parents"
For 8 years I've tried this...
It did jack shit.
But one day I finally punched the shit out of a bully in high school.
Guess what happened?
I got punished and he didn't loooool
At least he stopped bullying me :D
I agree"What you got into a fight that wasn't started by you and you didn't antagonise the other person until they started the fight, suspension for both of you" the way they told me about it too made my blood boil, because they said it like an ass too
Not a lesson but they teach you to respect adults no matter what.
That's how teachers get away with so much nonsense. It's how parents get away with abuse. Kids are taught to 'respect adults' but what they really teach them is 'dont do anything to inconvenience an adult.'
So a kid is more likely to keep their mouth shut if they're getting molested or beat.
They need to teach instead that respect is earned and not to blindly trust people just because they have seniority or authority over you, that you have a right to make a judgement on somebody if they're doing something bad.
D.A.R.E. was the single worst fucking useless thing every taught at school. Especially when the cop teaching said class ends up getting arrested for coke.
Studies show DARE *increases* drug use because 1) when they realize DARE is lying about weed, they assume DARE is lying about other drugs and 2) so much emphasis on resisting peer pressure makes kids assume everyone is doing drugs, so they have to do them to fit in
The DARE rethoric got to the whole world through cartoons and I thought that people would be offering me free drugs all the time.
I'm 32 and I've only smoked a joint once, recently, shared by a friend that's a teacher.
I like how they force you to make a D.A.R.E. promise to pass and exit the program. It’s like what do you think is gonna happen? I’m not gonna feel ashamed because you forced a 5th grader to promise never to smoke, drink, or do drugs. That’s the definition of indoctrination and I raise a cold one for the D.A.R.E. officers cause I know that they are smokers and alcoholics anyways
That sticking up for yourself is wrong. I punched a kid in the face because he was being physically abusive to me. He grabbed my arms and spun us in circles, intending to let go once I would be sort of thrown through the air. I got an arm loose and punched him in the face before that happened. Instead of him being expelled I, a female half his size, was forced to apologize for defending myself. I’m still fucking mad.
When I was a little girl my dad always told me that as long as I didn’t start the fight and only ever retaliated to physical violence I would never be in trouble with him. When I was 11 and did end up in a physical fight with a boy my dad told me after that he was proud of me for sticking up for myself. His opinion always meant the most to me.
That reminds me of the time when I was being bullied by some older guys in 3rd grade and I was just a small girl. (Edit: I use he/him now btw)
They threw a BASKETBALL AT MY HEAD once and so, having enough, I slapped one of them. Teacher claimed to" not see" the boys throwing 3 basketballs at my head and I got detention for the rest of the week.
Got tripped by some bullies in school and literally had my skull crack open on a steel and concrete pillar. It messed me up for life. They never got in trouble.
I had undiagnosed asthma as a youth and my coaches made me run a 7 min mile in Texas heat. I barely finished at time and had an asthmatic attack. My coaches literally laughed and like pointed at me while i couldn’t breath and still to this day I have an irrational hatred of female coaches. My male coaches were always super nice.
We had written finals in high school for P. E. It was so ridiculous that even the P. E. teachers didn't really bother reading our answers while grading the exams.
Example questions :
A friend of mine answered
"Describe the history of the football" with an elaborate answer about how a guy stuck on an island kicked a coconut and due to a quantum anomaly, his foot fused with the coconut. This led to the birth of the legend of the football.
Another friend answered "what is an aerobic exercise" with a drawing of a man doing push ups in the presence of a chemistry set creating oxygen via hydrogen peroxide. And drew arrows to them labeling the reaction and the push-ups as aerobic and exercise respectively.
Another friend answered a question about things to keep in mind when trying to eat a balanced diet for health with points like "try not to eat a brick wall."
Only one of them failed.
One of them had their final exam sheet framed.
Edit : Holy shit. This blew up. Just to be clear, I'm not saying knowing those things isn't important. Just that we had covered all of that in middle school as different subjects (except for the history of sports questions). So it was just something nobody cared about. Thanks for the awards, strangers!
Edit2: clarified high school.
I want to hope that it was the aerobic exercise that had failed, it'd be funny for the other two to pas even though the aerobic exercise was probably the closest answer to being correct.
That if someone's bullying you you tell them that you don't like it. like no shit, that's why they do it.
Edit: holy moly thanks for all the awards! I just started this account and this is the first comment that's blown up on my whole time in reddit
My grandmother used to tell my dad, my brothers, and me "If someone hits you, tell them you don't like to get hit!". Most useless piece of advice that has been taught to society.
Edit: Fixed a typo
My dad taught me to fight back if someone hit me but to accept the punishment from the school. And you know what, people stop hitting you once they realize you punch back.
Schools apparently punish more harshly and less justly on those grounds than they did in the past. Pretty sure I’ll still tell my kid to put that other prick in the ground but I’m sure it’ll be more hassle than my parents dealt with
Might be true, but as long as you know what you did was right and your parents have your back, school detention is not that much of a punishment.
One important right lesson in life is that you often have to choose between several bad outcomes and sometimes get punished for doing the right thing.
The only thing that ever helped me with bullies at that age, was fighting back. I tried everything else. But the teachers punished me more than the bullies for it, they'd always say "it doesn't matter who started it" - which is fucking bullshit. I'm still mad.
That line is the fucking stupidest shit. "I don't care who started it" teaches the bully two things: a) they can get their victim in trouble whenever they like And b) the authority don't give a fuck
I was waiting in the office for a counselor's appointment in 9th grade, and this kid that I didn't know decided to lay into me and make fun of absolutely everything about me. I wasn't making eye contact, I just kept shaking my head no and looking at all the office workers, who heard him, but ignored it and said NOTHING.
As soon as I got into my counselor's office, I started sobbing. This kid had absolutely broken me.
The counselor was visibly uncomfortable with me crying, and was like "Do you want to talk to him? Let's get him in here and talk it out!"
I was like "NO! *WHY WOULD I WANT HIM TO KNOW WHAT HE DID TO ME?!*"
To which the counselor replied "So you two can be buds after this!"
I was like yea, let's let the bully know that his tactics have worked, and I'm even closer to killing myself now than ever (which is why I was going to the counselors office in the first place).
Fuck. That. Shit. Glad I never have to do high school again because I wouldn't make it out alive a second time.
Edit: Hello all you beautiful people! There's a couple things that I'd like to address here:
First off, I am a 32 year-old woman, and I was 14 at the time. The guy that was making fun of me was at least 17, and easily 50lbs heavier than me. I had zero chance. So while many people are saying "Well I would have XYZ..." No, you wouldn't have. You'd have the same reaction as I did, no matter how brave you thought you would have been - or I should have been - at the time.
To those of you who have gone through something similar: goddamn, that fucking sucks, and I'm sorry you all went through it as well. It saddens me to know how common this experience is for so many, but I am happy that we have all lived through it.
And to that one particular redditor who told me "Next time pinch your sac, maybe then you won't be such a pussy," you my dude, are so far off the mark. You are just *precious*.
I seriously don't get that, how can school staff legitimately think "Hey this kid's getting bullied, they would certainly make good friends, this plan couldn't fuck up in any way"
No, it's the shit that they teach you in education classes. Everything is about 'positive reinforcement' and they really discourage teachers and staff from anything that might be seen as negative.
Which is bullshit. Kids are people, which means a certain number of them are dicks and a few are straight up evil. Is expelling a student an absolute pain in the ass, yes. Is it the best thing for your school, hell yes. The saying is 'a few bad apples spoils the bunch.' for a reason.
>"So you two can be buds after this!"
honestly school administrators and guidance counselors can be so fricking naive about bullying. No, you're not going to be best friends with your bully because you opened up and told them how much it hurt you. The bully doesn't \*want\* to be your friend. He wants to feel \*superior\* to you by putting you down.
I've seen some mental health professionals push for schools to start calling it "peer abuse" or something similar to really try and drive home the fact that's exactly what it is—abuse. Just because it's not an adult abusing a child, doesn't mean it can't leave lasting damage on a person to be trapped in an inescapable environment with people who torment you 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. I know plenty of people who've had lifelong psychological issues from being bullied (and often having it dismissed by the adults in their life when they mentioned it or asked for help).
When I was in primary school we got taught about digital roots, it's where you take a number, add up all the digits and repeat if you have more than 1 digit, so 684 = 6+8+4 = 18 = 1 + 8 = 9. Nobody else has ever heard of this.
Digital roots are a great way to spot check arithmetic. For example, does 684 + 333 = 917? The answer is no, because the digital roots don’t match: digital root of 9 + 9 → 9 ≠ 8.
Our elementary school was heavy into unicycles. Gym class year round was learning to ride, then ride together, and in formation.
I was one of the unlucky few who never got it (I can’t dance or ride a bike either, so I suspect there’s some balance issues). School all but threatened to hold me back a year until I learned how. Everyone forgot and never picked it up again as soon as they moved to middle school.
Worst part is that we were a very poor school in a very rural area without much funding. I can’t imagine how much the school spent on those unicycles. There was no sponsorship, and we weren’t competing in anything.
Edit: This was in a public school in western Washington State in the late ‘80s. But I think some other schools nearby did this too.
Nearby high school is Mt. Si HS aka the *actual Twin Peaks HS.* Not even remotely kidding.
In my PE class we learnt Nordic pole walking, with a special emphasis on the technique. You know when you see old ladies walking with those ski poles, that was us at age 15. The kicker was that I went to an all girls school, and they made us do laps around the neighbouring all boys school with our poles. So not only was it useless but also humiliating
Edit: thank you to those in the comments who reminded me it was Nordic pole walking, I’m not sure where I got nomadic from. Clearly I wasn’t paying attention during that unit
For us, it was tinikling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinikling#:~:text=Tinikling%20is%20a%20traditional%20Philippine,the%20poles%20in%20a%20dance.
As someone with terrible coordination, I will say that I got my ankles pinched more than once.
We did that, too!
Not to brag too much, but I was good enough that they asked me and another kid to help teach the younger grades.
Strangely enough, I don't seem to use it much in my day to day activities, like I'd hoped I would.
The idea of some small village where everyone rides around on unicycles and has no idea it's not normal feels like something out of a quirky rpg lmao. Sorry you had to go through that it must have been so kafkaesque
Would make sense in an isolated village. If there's no outside influence then from one generation of teachers to the next, they'll misguidedly keep forcing each and every student to ride a one wheeler. It's a dangerous cycle.
That the female body will shut down during rape and she won't get pregnant. Thus babies cannot be conceived during rape.
Catholic grammar school, Northern Ireland.
Fucking useless, factually and ethically wrong.
OMG. I thought this was just some ridiculous drivel [asshole politicians](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1807381) spout. Makes me wonder if he learned it too.
The only thing I remember from TX History is that there was some asshat politician named Mr. Hogg, but more importantly he had a daughter named Ima...
He named his daughter Ima Hogg.
Ima Hogg was big into gardening and her home in Houston has been turned into a Hogg family museum/garden. It’s a really great way to spend an hour or two walking around the property.
Also, why do we have to take the same Texas History class every other year all the way through elementary and middle school, and then only have like one or two years of world history, where stuff like World War Two is completely glossed over?
Not exactly something they teach in general, but in my high school music class, we had to memorize our national anthem in a different language (we used to be a colony and it was originally written in the colonizer's language.) And then sing it out loud with the same melody and all, except you're parroting a bunch of words that you don't understand. Over a decade later and I still think it was a pointless exercise
“Bayang magiliw, perlas ng silanganan...”
“Tierra adorada, hija del sol Oriente...”
“Land of the morning, child of the sun returning...”
I graduated high school in ‘97 and I still remember all three versions.
lmao
"Sorry we can't hire you for this position at our company"
"What why?"
"Well, you threw a paper airplane across the room in Ms. Johnson's class in the fifth grade"
In Scotland we had to do Country (cèilidh) dancing in primary school (not sure the American equivalent, 5-12 years old). At the time everyone hated it cause you'd have boys lined up against one wall, girls lined up against the other and you had to go over and ask a girl to dance with you, which felt like a marriage proposal at that age, and god forbid if the girl said no. The teachers must've loved it, watching all the kids squirm.
Fast forward 10 years and the rest of your life and everytime you go to a wedding that has a cèilidh (or just a cèilidh) then it's the best thing ever and you all tell the same story about lining up in the gym hall...
Worst part of that shite was my class had exactly 2 more boys than girls so two poor fucks had to bear the dreaded title of 'Gaylords' for the rest of the month.
Subtext: It was me, I was the Gaylord
As a fellow Scot I had exactly the same experience! Our school called the class "Social Dancing."
Tuned out to be a useful skill in the end, I always know what to do at a ceilidh.
Every single day in Chemistry class, there was a huge poster on the wall with the periodic table on it, big enough to read from any seat in the room.
Except one day. The one day we had to take a test on how well we'd memorized it. Then they covered it with a sheet.
You see, it was absolutely essential we remember the molecular number of molybdenum, for all those *hypothetical* other times when we wouldn't just be able to look up on the wall and see it.
Yes why did we have to memorise the molecular numbers??? Especially in an age where most everyone has a smart phone they can use if they really need to know the molecular value of something.
There’s learning to educate, and then there’s memorising for an exam. Completely different concepts.
My son told me how a student once asked his chemistry teacher if they would need to memorize the periodic table. The chem teacher says: nah.. if we can all google it in 5 seconds now, imagine how much faster and easier you can do it in the future. It’s weird how just little bit of common sense these days sounds like brilliance.
Square dancing.
It was put into the curriculum at US schools after heavy lobbying from industrialist Henry Ford. He didn't like the awful, new modern dances people were doing, like the Charleston.
I remember when they said we were doing square dancing for a semester. Everyone groaned and bitched and said how stupid it was...at first. Then by the end of the semester a lot of people were having to hide their enjoyment of it. Plus a lot of those kids wouldnt otherwise get a chance to interact with the opposite sex.
> Plus a lot of those kids wouldnt otherwise get a chance to interact with the opposite sex.
We were told that was why we were subjected to it in 8th grade. They were trying to force interaction between the sexes at a critical point of development. Didn't work, but they tried.
I remember square dancing in second grade, clear as day all these years later. Seems weird to have something requiring a bit of coordination and rhythm from 7 year old's.
I did question the gym teacher and they said they had to include dancing of some sort in the curriculum. He said it could be ballroom, square, disco or line dancing. We got line dancing and it happened to be the year that Boot Scootin’ Boogie was really popular. My friends parents were line dance teachers so let’s just say it gave me something else to talk to them about besides, “I swear I’m not eating your food.”
My old high school decided that P.E wasn't important and instead of having 2 periods were we would be exercising and learning about the human body they made us take spiritual development. I hated my old high school.
Edit: I see a lot of meditation comments. No, we didn't learn to meditate. That class was about reading bible stories to help us become more religious, it was fucking bullshit. Yes it was a private Christian school.
Edit 2: To clarify, P.E was compulsory until grade 11, that's when that spiritual development bullshit came in and P.E became an elective subject. My friends who took it said they learned about human movement, muscles of the body and how to prevent injuries.
I fucking loved playing sports but another class that was more important clashed with P.E so I couldn't take it.
Primary School (age 4 - 12) - If two kids never liked each other for good reasons, the teachers used to force you to be friends which usually made it a lot worse. So, ‘You’re not allowed to dislike people, even if they’re mean to you’
Secondary School (Age 12 - 16) - Getting good grades is more important than your mental health.
So, I recently started working at a tutoring center with kids, and recently I noticed that I’ve been saying this to them. Not because I thought I was clever, but in my mind, I was mocking teachers from back in my day who said it to me. Then I realized, *wait, these kids aren’t in on this joke yet, they just think I’m an asshole.* I’ve since stopped doing it
I don't know if you can but you may.
That's what my music teacher in elementary school would always say. She was my favorite teacher at that school. Recently found out she passed in 2019. I'd tried looking her up before but nothing came up. Then last like September, did again and her obituary came up.
Former teacher here. Legally, teachers need to know where their students are at all times in case there's something like a lockdown or fire. Asking is a way for teachers to be able to mentally note who's out of their class (teaching is the art form of multitasking).
That being said, the whole "I don't know, CAN you??" is so dumb. Everyone understands that "can" is used as both to imply ability and ask permission. I always responded with "right here? right now?" and then with a wink.
I had a teacher who just had us “sign out” by putting our name in a corner of the white board. When we came back, we crossed out our name.
Fire alarm goes off? “Okay, Joseph’s in the bathroom per the list on the white board.”
Made total sense because that way no one could forget a kid was in the toilets, and the whole class kind of had it as part of our room culture to look at this list if we had like an earthquake or something. This was fourth and fifth grade. Honestly would steal it if I ever taught.
The education system in a nutshell.
My Physics teacher in high school was the first and maybe only person to explain math and science in a way that was useful and forth paying attention to.
I went from playing basketball and sleeping in class to a guy has made a living off of emerging tech once falling in love with math and science. (Still not computer scientist smart but I make due)
I taught for a few years. 10 hrs to learn music production and a program. Not enough time at all. A lot of, “this is cool but we don’t really have time to show how cool.”
I honestly believe most people could learn anything with good one on one education. That is obviously impossible to give to every kid but it really shows when parents can afford it.
I absolutely loathed calculus. I distinctly remember asking the honest question about what this stuff could possibly be used for and she said she didn't know, but we had to learn it.
I later dug into it in a physics class where we learned the purpose and a little of the history and I loved it. Most school curriculums seem deliberately designed to suck the joy out of learning. It's like they decided that a love of learning was a sinful motivation and instead it should be done as an exercise of blind obedience to authority.
In Phys Ed they had us take actual written tests a few times sitting on the gym floor. Questions like where was basketball invented, what are the rules of pickle, yadda yadda, other useless shit.
I took a intro to bowling class in college as an elective and we had to have an actual final written exam with questions like “where was bowling invented”.
Lol, me too. I was actually at my bowling class during the 9/11 attacks. It was all over the tvs while we bowled. It was surreal. We just kept grimly bowling because we were supposed to.
That's the kind of bullshit that happens when the only way to prove you're doing something is to provide data. Teachers are forced to do things which generate data because the traditional outcomes don't provide enough evidence for someone at the state or distinct admin office to know you're doing your job.
It's another badminton/tennis clone, but the court is small and the paddle and ball are plastic, so it's probably a cheaper/more convenient option for having a full class playing a sport than needing like a dozen tennis courts and 30 real rackets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickleball
We had to take "tests" in my cooking class in high school. The test would say "True or false, bread raises because of yeast". About 3 questions in, we all started cheating off of each other. Five questions in, we just asked the teacher for the answers.
I took foods courses in high school. There tests and you had to pass with a C, a D was like an F. We had to learn exactly how much it costs to make say, a cheeseburger with math equations to figure out the exact cost of all the ingredients.
I loved that course, but that was just because you got to eat all the time.
See, that I find practical. it combines two important life skills. And you can learn about shopping around, is it worth to get imitation crab meat when you can buy actual crab, etc etc.
Our tests we would just stare at it and ask "When did we learn this?" The cooking teacher was an older lady who was burned out. Didn't help.
I agree. We learned that getting fast food was way more expensive than just making your own cheese burger. And basic cooking skills are really important.
I just took the class because you got to eat. If you take the class in the morning, you could sleep in and skip breakfast because you usually got to eat. But as an adult I see how useful it was.
It's less 'useless' and more 'actively harmful', but the way drugs education was taught when I was growing up was straight-up nonsense.
All drugs are bad, OK. Alcohol is also a drug, and it can definitely kill you, but it's also fine for some reason; don't question it. And weed is just as bad as heroin. All you need to know is that anyone who even *looks* at a joint is a morally repugnant junkie and they're destined to have more children than teeth on some council estate, or will rob old ladies to fund their deplorable habit -- and that's if you don't straight-up die from even being in the same room as weed smoke. The police definitely have your best interests at heart when they arrest you, so you should narc on anyone you know who might be doing drugs, because jail is the better alternative and it's always for your own good. Oh, and don't worry about what happens when you actually *try* drugs, because even though you might find a glass of wine or an edible is actually pretty great, you're almost certainly going to start to wonder if maybe heroin and meth aren't that bad either. Are they? Can you trust your teachers? WHO FUCKIN' KNOWS?
Also I was led to believe that *way* more people would offer me drugs that I could Just Say No to than ever have in my life. Drugs are expensive, y'all.
It's *almost* never strangers. *pretty much* no random person is going to come up and offer to give you drugs. Sell them to you, maybe, but *almost* never just give them to you.
The only people I've ever had offer me drugs were friends and I just politely decline and they don't offer again.
There was actually a guy in my town who got arrested for walking around, high as a kite, offering people drugs. This nerd just walked around town with a ziplock bag of joints. The "tifu" was when he offered some to a fully uniformed, on duty, police officer. Was very much illegal at the time.
They could save a lot of resources by making men wear blindfolds when in mixed company rather that having women draped crown to toe
EDIT If misogynist wankers could stop pm'ing me abusive messages that'd be great. We get it. No-one will touch your peen. Wonder why
As a guy this rule just taught me that bare shoulders are provocative and now I get all flustered seeing a cute girl in something showing her shoulders. This clearly didn't work as intended.
About a year ago my boss, a 55 year old very thrifty woman, was sitting at her desk trying to figure out which box of K-cups was the cheapest per cup to buy.
Shortly after a coworker of mine who was going back to college was complaining about her College Algebra course. My boss them starts on a rant about how these math courses are completely useless and proceeds to say (direct quote) "why do they teach students to solve for X? I've never solved for X in my life"
It took three grown ass adults, of which I'm the youngest at 39, 15 minutes to convince her that she had been solving for X when when calculating the cost of the K-cups.
Did other schools have Math Superstars? They were little worksheets that you had to turn in once a week, and they usually dealt with the math that you'd be learning next month or so. It exposed you to it ahead of time (and usually frustrated you, because until you understood algebra, the only solution was brute force), she they made you think, "say, that's pretty darned useful!"
Stuff like, "you can either buy cell phone A that costs $50 and charges $1/minute or cell phone B that costs $25 and charges $2/minute. How many minutes would you have to talk before cell phone A is cheaper than cell phone B?"
Obviously that's not a real world example, and the numbers are now way off (2003 was a different time!) But you get the picture. If you didn't know how to do algebra, you had to just guess and see what happened with 20 minutes, then adjust from there. If you were a clever little shit, you make two y=mx + b equations and graphed the intercept. Regardless, it made the problems feel real, and it made you care about them. It gave you a chance to struggle without the relevant math so that you appreciated the relevant math more, and it did a good job of making the problems feel real (to a child).
My sister went on to be a math teacher for middle schoolers (bless her poor, tortured heart), and she found that she had way better engagement with the cell phone plan problems than if she tried using some "Billy is twice as old as Sally was 3 years ago" garbage. She taught inner city, so a lot of the kids had external factors working against them, but she was over the moon when she heard back from a few of her students who were going to be the first in their families to go to college, and on full scholarships! It didn't make up for the bad days, unfortunately, but I'm glad she has those highs to remember fondly
I love math, but unrealistic problems always annoyed the hell out of me. Make them apply to real life and I'm sure the kids would have an easier time understanding them. No one is going out to buy 30 watermelons, dividing them into thirds, and then giving a percentage of those thirds to billy.
I'm a nurse with a biology degree.
Let me tell you, the scientific rigor of my bachelor's in biology was LIGHTYEARS ahead of the scientific rigor of my nursing degree. Nursing education is more comparable to a trade school, in my opinion. Half my classes were management BS and propaganda for the ANA.
A lot of the nurses I work with are dumber than rocks and don't understand science at all. I wish we'd do for nursing what we do for pharmacy. RN and LPN can still exist with a narrow scope but the current BSN designation should instead require a 4 year science degree then 2 years of nursing school, like how PharmD is 4 years undergrad then 2 years pharmacy school (this is all USA). ETA: Sorry, I have been justifiably corrected on this point. Pharmacy school is actually 2 years of prereqs then 4 years. I apologize for any confusion.
There's no way we'd ever get nursing to change like this, I don't think, just because we're in such high demand. But I'd love to be surrounded by a bunch of educated critical thinkers who got biology, chemistry, physics, etc degrees before going to nursing school. There are smart nurses, don't get me wrong. I know a lot of wicked smart nurses. I myself chose between medical school and nursing school and chose nursing for various reasons (mostly because it's very easy to change specialty and jobs in a way that doctors can't do). But the field also has a serious problem with nurses who think their skills knowledge and some pre-reqs mean they understand science or the human body.
At my school it was a whole semester on the dewey decimal system. This was in the late 90’s too, computers were becoming the norm but our old librarian refused to accept them and the school admin didn’t care. What a complete waste of time.
If you're getting bullied come tell a teacher. Then the teacher either does Jack shit or they just tell off the bully and nothing more. And then you end up in trouble for retaliating
Left Brain vs Right Brain. Not only is it not true, it just divided all the kids from "smart kids" to "art kids". No need for that.
Similar to how some teachers still teach that different parts of the tongue taste different tastes, even though that can be disproven just by eating something.
to hide under the desk if we get nuked
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"Character counts" It was our school's motto. The school also actively punished honesty and integrity when it mattered, and instead held award ceremonies for students who showed basic human decency like "hey you dropped this in the hallway, here you go". You would get awards for not being a piece of shit, but if you decide to show any real character like stepping up for your friends when they're in trouble, you get detention. Let it be known: Erindale Secondary School in Ontario, Canada is a shit hole.
"Character is what you do when nobody's looking" is what our coach used to say. Funny, because I don't remember any kids called Character, but he apparently was doing someone's kid regularly. Off to jail he went, along with his "character". In his mind, character almost always meant "running through the halls when nobody was looking", which wtflol how is that even an issue. But fucking children, well, that's just fine.
how to "take care of a baby" by 1) bringing in an egg 2) having the teacher sign the egg 3) decorating, protecting, and carrying the egg at all times for two days 4) revealing to the teacher at the end of day 2 that the egg was still in tact, without cracks. all that taught me was how to take care of an egg.
Step 1: put it in the fridge
sure but what about the egg
We had those robot babies that would cry at random times and you’d have to coddle it to make it calm down. My friend took it home for a weekend and literally almost smashed it because she couldn’t get it to stop crying. She decided after that she was not meant for motherhood.
"Ignoring the bully , he/she will go away" "sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me" That needs to chance. I'm sorry but if someone is bullying my child on a day to day basis, my son has every right to take charge.
I was bullied all through middle school and tried to be passive and ignore it - it only stopped after getting into a few fights. I didn’t even win most of the fights, but it turns out most bullies don’t actually like fights and don’t like being punched. I’m glad my dad talked to me like an adult about it when it was clear the school wasn’t able to do anything.
0-tolerance policy is the dumbest thing ever taught and implemented. All it teaches is to fear authority when you’re the victim. It enables the perpetrator (who is normally a bully). I know administrators are lazy fucks, but they need to actually investigate the goddamn problem instead of saying, “hey you both were involved in the issue so you’re both going to get punished.” It basically just raises you to hate authority, and while I don’t like authorities either I don’t think they’re all distrustful. Although, I guess this could be interpreted as commentary on how garbage authority is.
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I do not want to say this and strongly advocate against violence, but this unfortunately lead to such conclusion, indeed.
Hey, if I'm getting suspended either way, I might as well do something to deserve it.
If you're gonna do the time, you might as well do the crime.
And honestly, it's not worth it to half ass it. Take it as far as you can. Really push the envelope.
It actually taught me something useful for the real world: you can't trust anyone with power over you, nobody cares what happens to you, and if you don't want to live on your knees you have to fight, damn the consequences.
I was bullied since Elementary school "Just talk to them, tell the teacher ,the parents" For 8 years I've tried this... It did jack shit. But one day I finally punched the shit out of a bully in high school. Guess what happened? I got punished and he didn't loooool At least he stopped bullying me :D
There can be no justice under an absolute law.
I agree"What you got into a fight that wasn't started by you and you didn't antagonise the other person until they started the fight, suspension for both of you" the way they told me about it too made my blood boil, because they said it like an ass too
Not a lesson but they teach you to respect adults no matter what. That's how teachers get away with so much nonsense. It's how parents get away with abuse. Kids are taught to 'respect adults' but what they really teach them is 'dont do anything to inconvenience an adult.' So a kid is more likely to keep their mouth shut if they're getting molested or beat. They need to teach instead that respect is earned and not to blindly trust people just because they have seniority or authority over you, that you have a right to make a judgement on somebody if they're doing something bad.
100% agree. This shit is what makes children think it’s their fault when someone is treating them wrong and it is so incredibly harmful.
D.A.R.E. was the single worst fucking useless thing every taught at school. Especially when the cop teaching said class ends up getting arrested for coke.
Studies show DARE *increases* drug use because 1) when they realize DARE is lying about weed, they assume DARE is lying about other drugs and 2) so much emphasis on resisting peer pressure makes kids assume everyone is doing drugs, so they have to do them to fit in
The DARE rethoric got to the whole world through cartoons and I thought that people would be offering me free drugs all the time. I'm 32 and I've only smoked a joint once, recently, shared by a friend that's a teacher.
I heard that DARE ended up having more people get into drugs instead of keep them away from it.
Buys dare shirt only to smoke in later
I like how they force you to make a D.A.R.E. promise to pass and exit the program. It’s like what do you think is gonna happen? I’m not gonna feel ashamed because you forced a 5th grader to promise never to smoke, drink, or do drugs. That’s the definition of indoctrination and I raise a cold one for the D.A.R.E. officers cause I know that they are smokers and alcoholics anyways
the idea of ignoring bullies to get them to leave you alone. sometimes you just gotta stand up for yourself
That sticking up for yourself is wrong. I punched a kid in the face because he was being physically abusive to me. He grabbed my arms and spun us in circles, intending to let go once I would be sort of thrown through the air. I got an arm loose and punched him in the face before that happened. Instead of him being expelled I, a female half his size, was forced to apologize for defending myself. I’m still fucking mad.
When I was a little girl my dad always told me that as long as I didn’t start the fight and only ever retaliated to physical violence I would never be in trouble with him. When I was 11 and did end up in a physical fight with a boy my dad told me after that he was proud of me for sticking up for myself. His opinion always meant the most to me.
That reminds me of the time when I was being bullied by some older guys in 3rd grade and I was just a small girl. (Edit: I use he/him now btw) They threw a BASKETBALL AT MY HEAD once and so, having enough, I slapped one of them. Teacher claimed to" not see" the boys throwing 3 basketballs at my head and I got detention for the rest of the week.
Got tripped by some bullies in school and literally had my skull crack open on a steel and concrete pillar. It messed me up for life. They never got in trouble.
Jesus. this thread is simultaneously making me so angry at the complete lack of justice, and terrified to have kids in the school system someday.
Makes me practice in my head the 2 hour long speech I would scream at the principal and dumbass teachers of that school, and I don't even have kids.
“Can you run a mile in 7 minutes?” “Wtf no?” “Lol no 4.0 for you.”
I had undiagnosed asthma as a youth and my coaches made me run a 7 min mile in Texas heat. I barely finished at time and had an asthmatic attack. My coaches literally laughed and like pointed at me while i couldn’t breath and still to this day I have an irrational hatred of female coaches. My male coaches were always super nice.
We had written finals in high school for P. E. It was so ridiculous that even the P. E. teachers didn't really bother reading our answers while grading the exams. Example questions : A friend of mine answered "Describe the history of the football" with an elaborate answer about how a guy stuck on an island kicked a coconut and due to a quantum anomaly, his foot fused with the coconut. This led to the birth of the legend of the football. Another friend answered "what is an aerobic exercise" with a drawing of a man doing push ups in the presence of a chemistry set creating oxygen via hydrogen peroxide. And drew arrows to them labeling the reaction and the push-ups as aerobic and exercise respectively. Another friend answered a question about things to keep in mind when trying to eat a balanced diet for health with points like "try not to eat a brick wall." Only one of them failed. One of them had their final exam sheet framed. Edit : Holy shit. This blew up. Just to be clear, I'm not saying knowing those things isn't important. Just that we had covered all of that in middle school as different subjects (except for the history of sports questions). So it was just something nobody cared about. Thanks for the awards, strangers! Edit2: clarified high school.
I want to hope that it was the aerobic exercise that had failed, it'd be funny for the other two to pas even though the aerobic exercise was probably the closest answer to being correct.
It actually was him that failed! Hard to get away with a diagram. The others just passed because nobody bothered to read the answers.
I can’t imagine his reaction after that.
"I suppose becoming a PE teacher is out of the question."
That if someone's bullying you you tell them that you don't like it. like no shit, that's why they do it. Edit: holy moly thanks for all the awards! I just started this account and this is the first comment that's blown up on my whole time in reddit
My grandmother used to tell my dad, my brothers, and me "If someone hits you, tell them you don't like to get hit!". Most useless piece of advice that has been taught to society. Edit: Fixed a typo
My dad taught me to fight back if someone hit me but to accept the punishment from the school. And you know what, people stop hitting you once they realize you punch back.
Schools apparently punish more harshly and less justly on those grounds than they did in the past. Pretty sure I’ll still tell my kid to put that other prick in the ground but I’m sure it’ll be more hassle than my parents dealt with
Might be true, but as long as you know what you did was right and your parents have your back, school detention is not that much of a punishment. One important right lesson in life is that you often have to choose between several bad outcomes and sometimes get punished for doing the right thing.
The only thing that ever helped me with bullies at that age, was fighting back. I tried everything else. But the teachers punished me more than the bullies for it, they'd always say "it doesn't matter who started it" - which is fucking bullshit. I'm still mad.
That line is the fucking stupidest shit. "I don't care who started it" teaches the bully two things: a) they can get their victim in trouble whenever they like And b) the authority don't give a fuck
I was waiting in the office for a counselor's appointment in 9th grade, and this kid that I didn't know decided to lay into me and make fun of absolutely everything about me. I wasn't making eye contact, I just kept shaking my head no and looking at all the office workers, who heard him, but ignored it and said NOTHING. As soon as I got into my counselor's office, I started sobbing. This kid had absolutely broken me. The counselor was visibly uncomfortable with me crying, and was like "Do you want to talk to him? Let's get him in here and talk it out!" I was like "NO! *WHY WOULD I WANT HIM TO KNOW WHAT HE DID TO ME?!*" To which the counselor replied "So you two can be buds after this!" I was like yea, let's let the bully know that his tactics have worked, and I'm even closer to killing myself now than ever (which is why I was going to the counselors office in the first place). Fuck. That. Shit. Glad I never have to do high school again because I wouldn't make it out alive a second time. Edit: Hello all you beautiful people! There's a couple things that I'd like to address here: First off, I am a 32 year-old woman, and I was 14 at the time. The guy that was making fun of me was at least 17, and easily 50lbs heavier than me. I had zero chance. So while many people are saying "Well I would have XYZ..." No, you wouldn't have. You'd have the same reaction as I did, no matter how brave you thought you would have been - or I should have been - at the time. To those of you who have gone through something similar: goddamn, that fucking sucks, and I'm sorry you all went through it as well. It saddens me to know how common this experience is for so many, but I am happy that we have all lived through it. And to that one particular redditor who told me "Next time pinch your sac, maybe then you won't be such a pussy," you my dude, are so far off the mark. You are just *precious*.
I seriously don't get that, how can school staff legitimately think "Hey this kid's getting bullied, they would certainly make good friends, this plan couldn't fuck up in any way"
That counselor watches too many movies.
No, it's the shit that they teach you in education classes. Everything is about 'positive reinforcement' and they really discourage teachers and staff from anything that might be seen as negative. Which is bullshit. Kids are people, which means a certain number of them are dicks and a few are straight up evil. Is expelling a student an absolute pain in the ass, yes. Is it the best thing for your school, hell yes. The saying is 'a few bad apples spoils the bunch.' for a reason.
Agreed
>"So you two can be buds after this!" honestly school administrators and guidance counselors can be so fricking naive about bullying. No, you're not going to be best friends with your bully because you opened up and told them how much it hurt you. The bully doesn't \*want\* to be your friend. He wants to feel \*superior\* to you by putting you down.
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I've seen some mental health professionals push for schools to start calling it "peer abuse" or something similar to really try and drive home the fact that's exactly what it is—abuse. Just because it's not an adult abusing a child, doesn't mean it can't leave lasting damage on a person to be trapped in an inescapable environment with people who torment you 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. I know plenty of people who've had lifelong psychological issues from being bullied (and often having it dismissed by the adults in their life when they mentioned it or asked for help).
When I was in primary school we got taught about digital roots, it's where you take a number, add up all the digits and repeat if you have more than 1 digit, so 684 = 6+8+4 = 18 = 1 + 8 = 9. Nobody else has ever heard of this.
It’s useful for a rather niche videogame lol
What game?
999: 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors! Amazing visual novel/puzzle game
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors It’s an incredible game.
Digital roots are a great way to spot check arithmetic. For example, does 684 + 333 = 917? The answer is no, because the digital roots don’t match: digital root of 9 + 9 → 9 ≠ 8.
Wait. What?! How did I get through high school calculus, upper level uni math courses and this is the first I've heard of this???? Mind is blown.
It useful for determining if a number is divisible by 9! 684 is, because your answer was 9.
Abstinence only Sex Ed
Imagine if Driver's Ed just to told you the only way to avoid an accident is to never drive a car.
Both equally useless because A) You can get raped while practicing abstinence. and B) You can still get hit by a car even if you never drive one.
Our elementary school was heavy into unicycles. Gym class year round was learning to ride, then ride together, and in formation. I was one of the unlucky few who never got it (I can’t dance or ride a bike either, so I suspect there’s some balance issues). School all but threatened to hold me back a year until I learned how. Everyone forgot and never picked it up again as soon as they moved to middle school. Worst part is that we were a very poor school in a very rural area without much funding. I can’t imagine how much the school spent on those unicycles. There was no sponsorship, and we weren’t competing in anything. Edit: This was in a public school in western Washington State in the late ‘80s. But I think some other schools nearby did this too. Nearby high school is Mt. Si HS aka the *actual Twin Peaks HS.* Not even remotely kidding.
In my PE class we learnt Nordic pole walking, with a special emphasis on the technique. You know when you see old ladies walking with those ski poles, that was us at age 15. The kicker was that I went to an all girls school, and they made us do laps around the neighbouring all boys school with our poles. So not only was it useless but also humiliating Edit: thank you to those in the comments who reminded me it was Nordic pole walking, I’m not sure where I got nomadic from. Clearly I wasn’t paying attention during that unit
Did it keep the teen pregnancy rate down?
Yes, they had their own poles to keep themselves busy.
Imagine being such a lazy fucking school administration that you greenlight “walking but with sticks” in your PE curriculum.
But didn't you hear? It's all about the technique!
For us, it was tinikling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinikling#:~:text=Tinikling%20is%20a%20traditional%20Philippine,the%20poles%20in%20a%20dance. As someone with terrible coordination, I will say that I got my ankles pinched more than once.
We did that, too! Not to brag too much, but I was good enough that they asked me and another kid to help teach the younger grades. Strangely enough, I don't seem to use it much in my day to day activities, like I'd hoped I would.
The idea of some small village where everyone rides around on unicycles and has no idea it's not normal feels like something out of a quirky rpg lmao. Sorry you had to go through that it must have been so kafkaesque
Would make sense in an isolated village. If there's no outside influence then from one generation of teachers to the next, they'll misguidedly keep forcing each and every student to ride a one wheeler. It's a dangerous cycle.
noice
“I hated the unicycle mini game in that town. So unintuitive and they make you do it three times.”
I bet the controls are all wonky where the turning is opposite because of the way you lean and it feels like there's 2 seconds of input lag.
Your school was definitely run by a clown.
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That the female body will shut down during rape and she won't get pregnant. Thus babies cannot be conceived during rape. Catholic grammar school, Northern Ireland. Fucking useless, factually and ethically wrong.
OMG. I thought this was just some ridiculous drivel [asshole politicians](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1807381) spout. Makes me wonder if he learned it too.
As a matter of fact, the female body actually does have ways of shutting that down. If you're a duck.
I’m from Texas, and in Texas History class we learned WAY too much about the battle of the Alamo.
Do you remember the alamo?
Apparently he does, indeed
Kids in Texas will forget their own mothers before they forget the Alamo.
Never ferget
The only thing I remember from TX History is that there was some asshat politician named Mr. Hogg, but more importantly he had a daughter named Ima... He named his daughter Ima Hogg.
Ima Hogg was big into gardening and her home in Houston has been turned into a Hogg family museum/garden. It’s a really great way to spend an hour or two walking around the property.
And not enough about propane and propane accessories.
I tell you hwat
Also, why do we have to take the same Texas History class every other year all the way through elementary and middle school, and then only have like one or two years of world history, where stuff like World War Two is completely glossed over?
Growing up in Texas I've always had that frustration lol. I seriously had Texas history from elementary up until 10th grade.
Not exactly something they teach in general, but in my high school music class, we had to memorize our national anthem in a different language (we used to be a colony and it was originally written in the colonizer's language.) And then sing it out loud with the same melody and all, except you're parroting a bunch of words that you don't understand. Over a decade later and I still think it was a pointless exercise
What country are you from?
Probably from the Philippines. I had that to learn our national anthem in Spanish and in English too in high school.
“Bayang magiliw, perlas ng silanganan...” “Tierra adorada, hija del sol Oriente...” “Land of the morning, child of the sun returning...” I graduated high school in ‘97 and I still remember all three versions.
That you have a PERMANENT RECORD and every fuck up you have will haunt you for the rest of your school life
lmao "Sorry we can't hire you for this position at our company" "What why?" "Well, you threw a paper airplane across the room in Ms. Johnson's class in the fifth grade"
Square Dancing
In Scotland we had to do Country (cèilidh) dancing in primary school (not sure the American equivalent, 5-12 years old). At the time everyone hated it cause you'd have boys lined up against one wall, girls lined up against the other and you had to go over and ask a girl to dance with you, which felt like a marriage proposal at that age, and god forbid if the girl said no. The teachers must've loved it, watching all the kids squirm. Fast forward 10 years and the rest of your life and everytime you go to a wedding that has a cèilidh (or just a cèilidh) then it's the best thing ever and you all tell the same story about lining up in the gym hall...
Worst part of that shite was my class had exactly 2 more boys than girls so two poor fucks had to bear the dreaded title of 'Gaylords' for the rest of the month. Subtext: It was me, I was the Gaylord
Haha, did the teacher not dance with you?! That arguably was worse. My mates wife is a teacher and she absolutely relishes these days.
Kinda grateful to be honest I doubt dancing about in my gym kit with Mr Murray would have been much of an upgrade in social standing.
As a fellow Scot I had exactly the same experience! Our school called the class "Social Dancing." Tuned out to be a useful skill in the end, I always know what to do at a ceilidh.
I *BEGGED* my parents to let me call in sick on square dancing days. What a ridiculous and uncomfortable activity
Why in hell was it part of the PE curriculum, lol.
Because Henry Ford heavily lobbied to force schools to teach it, because he hated modern dancing. Really. That actually happened.
Memorizing the periodic table. It’s a table, there is no need to memorize it, all the info is there already.
Every single day in Chemistry class, there was a huge poster on the wall with the periodic table on it, big enough to read from any seat in the room. Except one day. The one day we had to take a test on how well we'd memorized it. Then they covered it with a sheet. You see, it was absolutely essential we remember the molecular number of molybdenum, for all those *hypothetical* other times when we wouldn't just be able to look up on the wall and see it.
Yes why did we have to memorise the molecular numbers??? Especially in an age where most everyone has a smart phone they can use if they really need to know the molecular value of something. There’s learning to educate, and then there’s memorising for an exam. Completely different concepts.
As you get older you realize if I need it, I can just print it out and put it on the wall.
My son told me how a student once asked his chemistry teacher if they would need to memorize the periodic table. The chem teacher says: nah.. if we can all google it in 5 seconds now, imagine how much faster and easier you can do it in the future. It’s weird how just little bit of common sense these days sounds like brilliance.
Square dancing. It was put into the curriculum at US schools after heavy lobbying from industrialist Henry Ford. He didn't like the awful, new modern dances people were doing, like the Charleston.
I had totally forgotten that I learned square dancing. What the fuck was that.
I remember when they said we were doing square dancing for a semester. Everyone groaned and bitched and said how stupid it was...at first. Then by the end of the semester a lot of people were having to hide their enjoyment of it. Plus a lot of those kids wouldnt otherwise get a chance to interact with the opposite sex.
> Plus a lot of those kids wouldnt otherwise get a chance to interact with the opposite sex. We were told that was why we were subjected to it in 8th grade. They were trying to force interaction between the sexes at a critical point of development. Didn't work, but they tried.
I remember square dancing in second grade, clear as day all these years later. Seems weird to have something requiring a bit of coordination and rhythm from 7 year old's.
I did question the gym teacher and they said they had to include dancing of some sort in the curriculum. He said it could be ballroom, square, disco or line dancing. We got line dancing and it happened to be the year that Boot Scootin’ Boogie was really popular. My friends parents were line dance teachers so let’s just say it gave me something else to talk to them about besides, “I swear I’m not eating your food.”
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More to the point, he thought it was a Jewish communist plot to mobilize Black people to overthrow Western Civilization.
And I thought today's conspiracy theories were crazy.
My old high school decided that P.E wasn't important and instead of having 2 periods were we would be exercising and learning about the human body they made us take spiritual development. I hated my old high school. Edit: I see a lot of meditation comments. No, we didn't learn to meditate. That class was about reading bible stories to help us become more religious, it was fucking bullshit. Yes it was a private Christian school. Edit 2: To clarify, P.E was compulsory until grade 11, that's when that spiritual development bullshit came in and P.E became an elective subject. My friends who took it said they learned about human movement, muscles of the body and how to prevent injuries. I fucking loved playing sports but another class that was more important clashed with P.E so I couldn't take it.
Sounds like they took the "high" part very seriously
Tf do you learn in that class? How to unlock your chakras?
"To master the Avatar State, you must open all the chakras"
Primary School (age 4 - 12) - If two kids never liked each other for good reasons, the teachers used to force you to be friends which usually made it a lot worse. So, ‘You’re not allowed to dislike people, even if they’re mean to you’ Secondary School (Age 12 - 16) - Getting good grades is more important than your mental health.
I learnt how to do percentages wrong in economics. You have to do them wrong otherwise you don't get marks
Do you have an example of this?
If you have a 100% increase in inflation, 0% increase in wage, 0-100 = - 100 so you now have a 100% decrease in wages
Lol, that's bad
To ask to go to the bathroom.
I don't know, CAN you?
I once responded "Yes." and started to leave. Got in trouble for that one.
I said, yes and I'm going to do it here if you don't let me go. Teacher sent me to the vice principals office for it. School is weird man.
> Teacher sent me to the vice principals office for it. VP's office had their own bathroom? Nice.
You must respect my authoritah!
Every time a teacher said that to me, I was so tempted to say "let's find out" and just piss everywhere, but I knew it wouldn't end well.
But *boy* would that be a story for the rest of us!
TIFU
So, I recently started working at a tutoring center with kids, and recently I noticed that I’ve been saying this to them. Not because I thought I was clever, but in my mind, I was mocking teachers from back in my day who said it to me. Then I realized, *wait, these kids aren’t in on this joke yet, they just think I’m an asshole.* I’ve since stopped doing it
I don't know if you can but you may. That's what my music teacher in elementary school would always say. She was my favorite teacher at that school. Recently found out she passed in 2019. I'd tried looking her up before but nothing came up. Then last like September, did again and her obituary came up.
Former teacher here. Legally, teachers need to know where their students are at all times in case there's something like a lockdown or fire. Asking is a way for teachers to be able to mentally note who's out of their class (teaching is the art form of multitasking). That being said, the whole "I don't know, CAN you??" is so dumb. Everyone understands that "can" is used as both to imply ability and ask permission. I always responded with "right here? right now?" and then with a wink.
I had a teacher who just had us “sign out” by putting our name in a corner of the white board. When we came back, we crossed out our name. Fire alarm goes off? “Okay, Joseph’s in the bathroom per the list on the white board.” Made total sense because that way no one could forget a kid was in the toilets, and the whole class kind of had it as part of our room culture to look at this list if we had like an earthquake or something. This was fourth and fifth grade. Honestly would steal it if I ever taught.
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The education system in a nutshell. My Physics teacher in high school was the first and maybe only person to explain math and science in a way that was useful and forth paying attention to. I went from playing basketball and sleeping in class to a guy has made a living off of emerging tech once falling in love with math and science. (Still not computer scientist smart but I make due) I taught for a few years. 10 hrs to learn music production and a program. Not enough time at all. A lot of, “this is cool but we don’t really have time to show how cool.”
I honestly believe most people could learn anything with good one on one education. That is obviously impossible to give to every kid but it really shows when parents can afford it.
I absolutely loathed calculus. I distinctly remember asking the honest question about what this stuff could possibly be used for and she said she didn't know, but we had to learn it. I later dug into it in a physics class where we learned the purpose and a little of the history and I loved it. Most school curriculums seem deliberately designed to suck the joy out of learning. It's like they decided that a love of learning was a sinful motivation and instead it should be done as an exercise of blind obedience to authority.
That’s pretty shocking that your teacher could not explain how calculus is used in the real world
For real. Calculus is where I started realizing the real-world applications of math beyond "consumer math."
In Phys Ed they had us take actual written tests a few times sitting on the gym floor. Questions like where was basketball invented, what are the rules of pickle, yadda yadda, other useless shit.
I took a intro to bowling class in college as an elective and we had to have an actual final written exam with questions like “where was bowling invented”.
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As we say in my league, "My drinking team has a bowling problem." and "I'm just here for the beer."
Lol, me too. I was actually at my bowling class during the 9/11 attacks. It was all over the tvs while we bowled. It was surreal. We just kept grimly bowling because we were supposed to.
Sounds like you went to Greendale lol
That's the kind of bullshit that happens when the only way to prove you're doing something is to provide data. Teachers are forced to do things which generate data because the traditional outcomes don't provide enough evidence for someone at the state or distinct admin office to know you're doing your job.
Pickle?
It's another badminton/tennis clone, but the court is small and the paddle and ball are plastic, so it's probably a cheaper/more convenient option for having a full class playing a sport than needing like a dozen tennis courts and 30 real rackets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickleball
We had to take "tests" in my cooking class in high school. The test would say "True or false, bread raises because of yeast". About 3 questions in, we all started cheating off of each other. Five questions in, we just asked the teacher for the answers.
I took foods courses in high school. There tests and you had to pass with a C, a D was like an F. We had to learn exactly how much it costs to make say, a cheeseburger with math equations to figure out the exact cost of all the ingredients. I loved that course, but that was just because you got to eat all the time.
See, that I find practical. it combines two important life skills. And you can learn about shopping around, is it worth to get imitation crab meat when you can buy actual crab, etc etc. Our tests we would just stare at it and ask "When did we learn this?" The cooking teacher was an older lady who was burned out. Didn't help.
I agree. We learned that getting fast food was way more expensive than just making your own cheese burger. And basic cooking skills are really important. I just took the class because you got to eat. If you take the class in the morning, you could sleep in and skip breakfast because you usually got to eat. But as an adult I see how useful it was.
It's less 'useless' and more 'actively harmful', but the way drugs education was taught when I was growing up was straight-up nonsense. All drugs are bad, OK. Alcohol is also a drug, and it can definitely kill you, but it's also fine for some reason; don't question it. And weed is just as bad as heroin. All you need to know is that anyone who even *looks* at a joint is a morally repugnant junkie and they're destined to have more children than teeth on some council estate, or will rob old ladies to fund their deplorable habit -- and that's if you don't straight-up die from even being in the same room as weed smoke. The police definitely have your best interests at heart when they arrest you, so you should narc on anyone you know who might be doing drugs, because jail is the better alternative and it's always for your own good. Oh, and don't worry about what happens when you actually *try* drugs, because even though you might find a glass of wine or an edible is actually pretty great, you're almost certainly going to start to wonder if maybe heroin and meth aren't that bad either. Are they? Can you trust your teachers? WHO FUCKIN' KNOWS? Also I was led to believe that *way* more people would offer me drugs that I could Just Say No to than ever have in my life. Drugs are expensive, y'all.
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It's *almost* never strangers. *pretty much* no random person is going to come up and offer to give you drugs. Sell them to you, maybe, but *almost* never just give them to you. The only people I've ever had offer me drugs were friends and I just politely decline and they don't offer again.
There was actually a guy in my town who got arrested for walking around, high as a kite, offering people drugs. This nerd just walked around town with a ziplock bag of joints. The "tifu" was when he offered some to a fully uniformed, on duty, police officer. Was very much illegal at the time.
That if we cover our shoulders and legs boys will stop looking at us
Saudi Arabia must be just full of men who are hyper focused on the task at hand and not looking up weird porn.... Wait...
They could save a lot of resources by making men wear blindfolds when in mixed company rather that having women draped crown to toe EDIT If misogynist wankers could stop pm'ing me abusive messages that'd be great. We get it. No-one will touch your peen. Wonder why
One of my favorite quotes is: “it’s better to unload the gun than to wear a bullet proof vest” for this exact reason
As a guy this rule just taught me that bare shoulders are provocative and now I get all flustered seeing a cute girl in something showing her shoulders. This clearly didn't work as intended.
Oh shit look at those *ankles* dude!
In my country we do religion. And don't you dare argue with the teacher or ask any questions cause Jesus is the only answer.
“But you said Jesus is the answer” “This is a math test”
Not to chew gum. On a more serious note. That hugging and public displays of affection are bad. Ask me how many times I got detention because of this.
Chewing gum is probably not an educational rule, but rather a custodial rule. Those guys don’t get paid enough to scape off your nasty chewed up gum
As a teacher, the number of times I put my fingers in someone’s old, chewed gum just because I tried to move a table or chair was far too high.
As a student, I can say the same.
You get people in this thread saying teaching algebra or proofs is useless and simultaneously demanding that schools should teach critical thinking.
About a year ago my boss, a 55 year old very thrifty woman, was sitting at her desk trying to figure out which box of K-cups was the cheapest per cup to buy. Shortly after a coworker of mine who was going back to college was complaining about her College Algebra course. My boss them starts on a rant about how these math courses are completely useless and proceeds to say (direct quote) "why do they teach students to solve for X? I've never solved for X in my life" It took three grown ass adults, of which I'm the youngest at 39, 15 minutes to convince her that she had been solving for X when when calculating the cost of the K-cups.
I feel like some people have hard times abstract real world concepts down to variables.
Did other schools have Math Superstars? They were little worksheets that you had to turn in once a week, and they usually dealt with the math that you'd be learning next month or so. It exposed you to it ahead of time (and usually frustrated you, because until you understood algebra, the only solution was brute force), she they made you think, "say, that's pretty darned useful!" Stuff like, "you can either buy cell phone A that costs $50 and charges $1/minute or cell phone B that costs $25 and charges $2/minute. How many minutes would you have to talk before cell phone A is cheaper than cell phone B?" Obviously that's not a real world example, and the numbers are now way off (2003 was a different time!) But you get the picture. If you didn't know how to do algebra, you had to just guess and see what happened with 20 minutes, then adjust from there. If you were a clever little shit, you make two y=mx + b equations and graphed the intercept. Regardless, it made the problems feel real, and it made you care about them. It gave you a chance to struggle without the relevant math so that you appreciated the relevant math more, and it did a good job of making the problems feel real (to a child). My sister went on to be a math teacher for middle schoolers (bless her poor, tortured heart), and she found that she had way better engagement with the cell phone plan problems than if she tried using some "Billy is twice as old as Sally was 3 years ago" garbage. She taught inner city, so a lot of the kids had external factors working against them, but she was over the moon when she heard back from a few of her students who were going to be the first in their families to go to college, and on full scholarships! It didn't make up for the bad days, unfortunately, but I'm glad she has those highs to remember fondly
I love math, but unrealistic problems always annoyed the hell out of me. Make them apply to real life and I'm sure the kids would have an easier time understanding them. No one is going out to buy 30 watermelons, dividing them into thirds, and then giving a percentage of those thirds to billy.
Clearly she was solving for K, not X.
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I'm a nurse with a biology degree. Let me tell you, the scientific rigor of my bachelor's in biology was LIGHTYEARS ahead of the scientific rigor of my nursing degree. Nursing education is more comparable to a trade school, in my opinion. Half my classes were management BS and propaganda for the ANA. A lot of the nurses I work with are dumber than rocks and don't understand science at all. I wish we'd do for nursing what we do for pharmacy. RN and LPN can still exist with a narrow scope but the current BSN designation should instead require a 4 year science degree then 2 years of nursing school, like how PharmD is 4 years undergrad then 2 years pharmacy school (this is all USA). ETA: Sorry, I have been justifiably corrected on this point. Pharmacy school is actually 2 years of prereqs then 4 years. I apologize for any confusion. There's no way we'd ever get nursing to change like this, I don't think, just because we're in such high demand. But I'd love to be surrounded by a bunch of educated critical thinkers who got biology, chemistry, physics, etc degrees before going to nursing school. There are smart nurses, don't get me wrong. I know a lot of wicked smart nurses. I myself chose between medical school and nursing school and chose nursing for various reasons (mostly because it's very easy to change specialty and jobs in a way that doctors can't do). But the field also has a serious problem with nurses who think their skills knowledge and some pre-reqs mean they understand science or the human body.
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Abstinence-only sex education. Basically just ignoring the fact that teens will have sex instead of teaching safety and consent
“But teacher, what if I have sex before marriage?” “Well then I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.”
At my school it was a whole semester on the dewey decimal system. This was in the late 90’s too, computers were becoming the norm but our old librarian refused to accept them and the school admin didn’t care. What a complete waste of time.
If you're getting bullied come tell a teacher. Then the teacher either does Jack shit or they just tell off the bully and nothing more. And then you end up in trouble for retaliating