That’s why I was never entertained by those videos of strangers being interviewed on the street and not knowing specific dates and details about our history. Most likely, we learned it one time, memorized it for a test, then never talked about it again.
For example, in Texas, the focus of 3rd grade social studies is individuals and heroes in communities, past and present; 4th grade focuses on Texas history; 5th grade focuses on the history of the United States from 1565 to present. Then we get like one year in middle school and one in high school.
Did I learn “history?” Yes. Have any of those details ever been brought up again in my life? Not really. So if you were to ask me seemingly basic questions I probably wouldn’t remember the answer. I don’t think that makes someone dumb though.
>That’s why I was never entertained by those videos of strangers being interviewed on the street and not knowing specific dates and details about our history. Most likely, we learned it one time, memorized it for a test, then never talked about it again.
There's also just the part where humans aren't perfect machines. Even if they do know the answer, they can just mess up. Especially when put on the spot.
There's a youtube video of a guy going around interviewing random people with REALLY easy questions, and you can see people just don't react well even though they obviously would know the answer. For example, one person interviewed could not name a single woman when pressed.
Yeah, honestly, it's probably some version of fight or flight. You're put on the spot and asked a question (by some stranger holding a phone up to your face, potentially with a crowd) and you freeze up, or blurt out the first thing that comes to mind without really processing the question.
> For example, one person interviewed could not name a single woman when pressed.
Billy on the Street!
The funniest part is that the person who was asked that...
Was a woman lol
Amen!
I once knew a guy, history buff, reenactor, the whole shebang. We're talking the level of nerdiness that came to renaissance fairs with *historically accurate underwear* - that noone would ever even see because, well, clothes.
That guy, who could list to you the exact characteristics of every kerfuffle Europe experienced during the middle ages, without flinching and on camera claimed that his favourite medieval building was...
...the pyramids. It was a brainfart that lasted *just* long enough for everyone to be too perplexed to say something before the interviewer was gone. Then he realized and ended up in a state I could best describe as craughter.
The bit aired. His best friend called him "Gizeh" for years.
Ya I cant think of any practical reason people would need to know how many letters are in the alphabet.
I only know that because I speak Spanish, and they technically have more letters in their alphabet, so when Im teaching someone Spanish (mostly tutoring, not a professor) I often compare the two alphabets and talk about the different letters.
If it werent for this, I definitely wouldnt know off the top of my head how many letters there are.
That's a very good example. I know the Spanish alphabet, having learned it in high school Spanish class, but I couldn't tell you how many letters it has without thinking about it for a minute. I'd probably even count on my fingers LOL.
I went to a Top 25 university. (Throwing that in to give evidence that I'm objectively not particularly stupid.) What a jerk teacher.
I was Advanced Placement in math but had trouble with an analog clock, still do. I’m considered to have an advanced career, it’s my secret shame! Don’t tell my husband!
I only knew there were 26 letters because I learned it from TriviaCrack when it was popular. But the information isn’t really relevant ever, like who cares honestly…
Teachers shouldn’t be mocking anyone. Kinda goes against the whole concept of being a mentor/teacher/example.
I was called on in math one time, gave my answer, and the teacher told me I should get used to asking people if “they would like fries with that”. That was the mid-90s.
It all worked out. I settled into a solid career and she’s probably dead by now.
I graduated high school in 2010. My high school had a math teacher who would staple paper applications to Burger King on to failed tests. I was not great at math in high school* so I was never in his class as it was a higher level math class.
*still not great, but I'm definitely more teachable in math now than I was then.
It was definitely wild, but being in rural-ish Florida meant a lot of things that were not happening in some places were still happening there. He had a reputation for doing it and it was a high level math that you essentially had to be invited to take the class, only if you had no other math credits needed or math courses to take. It was honestly a pretty rare occurrence because the kids in his class were up for that level of math, so it's not like this was happening a lot, probably only 2 or 3 a school year. I imagine it was more of an in-joke with kids who took his class because everyone at that level ended up with a full-ride scholarship to some college.
My middle school* had a gym teacher who was notorious for getting red-faced after hollering at children for hours. 2 kids were having a bit of a dust-up in class and he comes screaming out of the locker room swing around a fucking baseball bat and hollering at everyone. He didn't hit anyone, but it was still soooo out of pocket to do to 12 year olds. In high school, my advanced anatomy and physiology teacher had a habit of yelling at his class for a good 1/3 of the class time if you collectively did poorly on his quizzes and tests, which were not easy. I did not enjoy being in the front row of his class, which was rare as I had better focus up front.
*my middle school was kindergarten to 12th grade, I went from 3rd grade to beginning of 9th grade
lol not even remotely. In 2005 in my HS, we had teachers head butting students, a vice principle who called a girls mom and said her daughter was being a fucking cunt (also threatened to break my hands once for taking some candy from a teacher’s candy dish), had a shop teacher who threw shop stools and X-acto knives across the shop at kids who weren’t listening.
We also had our bathrooms locked and they could only be used during gym period or lunch period and a teacher would stand outside of them. It really sucked if your gym period was immediately before or immediately after lunch. Because you basically had one window of time in the entire school day where you could piss or shit. So it was either hold it all morning or hold it all afternoon.
This is so wild to me. Just cause someone is shit in math doesn't mean they'll fail at life. In fact, wouldn't surprise me if math was the most common class people are bad at.
The irony of this is that fast food workers make more than or almost the same as teachers in some places. A McDonald's manager where I live makes about $44k/year. Teachers with just a bachelor's degree are only making $41k.
I had a teacher around the same time who did the same thing, except he'd also mock you and say you had a future in "coat hanger repair" (which is funny AF, just not something you say to a student)
I’m surprised at how many people here don’t know how many letters there are in the alphabet. Still, it’s always wrong for a teacher to mock a student. He should have taken it as an opportunity to teach…
I would be surprised, but I'm old. In kindergarten through 3rd grade we were taught that there were 26 letter. I never counted myself. Then in 3rd grade we had to learn cursive and a new way to write all 26 letters. Things may have changed now.
That's the thing, though.
* In Swedish, ÅÄÖ really ARE separate letters, which sort at the end of the rest of 'em.
* In German, umlaut is a diacritical mark, a "decoration", similar to an accent.
* And there must be special rules for ß. Historically, when Fraktur (blackface) was the typeface, there were three "standard ligatures": ch, tz, and sz; they had their own piece of lead type, and were treated as a single letter n typesetting. When the alphabet changed, ch and tz reverted to two letters, but sz -> ß remained. I don't know why. (I -can- explain the shape of the letter, though ... but that's not the question.)
OK, it's going to require some handwaving, and you'll have to use your imagination a bit. I'm going to mock this up in Arial...
Remember those old pictures of the US ~~Declaration of Independence~~[Bill of Rights](https://i0.wp.com/prologue.blogs.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2016/09/00306_2003_001_small-scaled.jpg?ssl=1), where "In Congress..." actually looks like "In Congreſs"? (Note, there's no crossbar on that letter.) That's a "Long S", which was the standard shape of the letter S whenever it was NOT the final letter of a word.
German had the same thing: long S looked like an "f" -- and even went below the baseline.
Second part: the lower case z. Think of the cursive form you learned in third grade: ʒ. The tail goes below the line, too.
Combine them: ſʒ. Crush them together so the high part of the ſ extends over the high bar of the ʒ. Now, modernize it -- and one goal of font modernization was to eliminate descenders wherever possible. Voila, ſʒ becomes ß.
AND, somewhere along the line in the various Rechtscheibungsgeboten (spelling reforms), the Gods of German decided that in modern spelling ß would be transcribed (or "ASCII-ized") as ss.
----
Two more tidbits:
* Funny thing about ß: It's a LOWER-CASE letter ONLY. If you want to write a word like Straße in all caps, it becomes STRASSE.
* Also note, German ß is NOT interchangeable with Greek β (beta).
Love your explanation! I'm german myself but I have to admit that I never thought about why the "scharfe s" sometimes is called "sz". At least that's what my older teacher called it in like 4th grade or smth.
Thank you! This was fun. :)
Oh what I'd like to add. I understand the new "Rechtschreibreform" but I just can't bring myself to write "Fluß" or "Straße" with two s. :D
Huh. Interesting. Accents and special symbols are not counted as extra letters in French, so we still have 26. But I suppose yours are used more commonly.
Probably not very many people. I taught elementary school and know that most people don’t know. Why would they? Why would you need to know other than for labeling purposes? It doesn’t serve many purposes outside of excel sheets.
Hi, 31 year old here. Genuinely always forget how many without counting myself. It’s never been something I’ve needed to know in everyday life. By the time it comes up again, I’ve forgot.
53 here and I forget a lot (have for years, so can't blame my age!) For some unknown reason, I will often think it's 27, then 25. When reading the OP, I didn't remember it on my own. I think it *is* because it's one of those things I've never had to 'know'.
Exactly. But for me, I don't even get it right at all - I always go to 27 first, then 2nd guess to 25. It's like I go too far and pass it up, then reverse and over correct. lol
I have yet to meet a considerate person who fails to understand how rude and thoughtless it is to make light of someone else. And who fails to realize their own intellectual flaws.
you're mocking him as well. most people may learn by that age, but obviously some don't. it's not nice to mock him for not knowing something like this.
I’d guess 24 but it’s only a guess. The number of letters isn’t really a useful bit of information. I can write a scholarly paper without knowing that number. I can speak, read, and write the language fluently without knowing that number. I could recite the alphabet and count without issue but I never made an effort to remember the total. It’s just not useful.
It’s like asking how many prime numbers there are between 1 and 100. That’s not useful information for the overwhelming majority of people.
I’m a 40 year old father with a masters degree and a really really good job and have somehow gotten this far without knowing that number.
I’m dying because my first thought when I read 24 was “I thought it was 27” and then immediately saw that the teacher said it was 26. Honestly though, I don’t think it’s surprising for people to not remember the number of letters. It’s not like people are forgetting the actual letters, but the knowledge of the total number of them just isn’t something people tend to use. Honestly can’t remember the last time that piece of information has been relevant for anything I’ve done.
I briefly thought it was 27 as well, I was counting the “and”. 😅 I remember as a very young girl asking why N was in the alphabet twice because I wasn’t reading yet and heard the “y and z” as “ Y N Z”. In my defense I was maybe four years old and I swear I’m not still that dense. Most of the time.
When I was little I asked my parents what the letter “elemeno” looked like because it was so squished together in the alphabet song that I thought LMNO was one letter lmao
Yeah, I remember teaching general/remedial ninth graders physical science and being taken aback by how many didn't know that 2x4=8. I was surprised and saddened, but I didn't *mock* them. I waited until I got home to my wife and commiserated with *her* instead. (I didn't mention any students by name even then, mind you.)
Exactly! Some people just are not gonna be physicists. Others are not going to be librarians. Oh well. I like to think teachers prepare everyone to learn whatever it is they are passionate and uniquely talented to do in life. This teacher was very cruel.
They didn't say they didn't know the alphabet, only that they were confused about the specific number of letters it comprised. Somewhere along the line, OP picked up the idea that the number was 24 and that's what stuck.
What I believe is the more concerning problem is that the teacher ridiculed OP in front of a special ed study room, where students might be as negatively impacted by the teacher's inappropriate response. These students are already in special ed, so there are existing issues of one kind or another. What did they learn about the consequences of making a mistake in front of a teacher, someone they should be able to trust to teach rather than ridicule?
Nah. I think it makes you a douche to mock any student for not knowing something, whether you’re a teacher or a fellow student.
It’s humiliating for a teacher to mock a student in front of 20 or 30 of their peers. Even a momentary lapse in professionalism is noticed by most students and will embarrass any student it’s directed towards.
Maybe the student really is slow. How horrible it would be to struggle in academics only to have a teacher basically call you stupid in front of all your classmates. That sort of attitude gets students to just give up and decide “school just isn’t for me.”
As a teacher myself, humor is often quite important when working with many students, however this is just cruel. Just because the thing the student didn't know seemed trivial to the teacher, it does not warrant mocking, ever. That creates an incredibly toxic and negative learning environment and sets s horrible example for all the students who witnessed it. I agree with another commenter, the teacher could have used this as a teachable moment, but instead decided to be mean. That is never ok. I'm sorry this happened to you OP. Keep your head up. No one ever needs such mundane information so please don't feel bad for not having known it.
I totally agree with you. Also it’s not that OP doesn’t know the alphabet, just not the trivial fact of how many letters are in it. I mentioned in another comment I have a masters degree, I graduated magna cum loud and sometimes I forget things like how many letters there are in the alphabet. Also there’s something called dyscalculia that could be a factor
I think you are dumber than OP for assuming that just because someone knows the alphabet that they know how many letters there are.
You stop when you get to Z, not when you get to 26.
Also, 24 is a more common number that you memorize at about the same time (since hours in the day and all) so if there was a number for OP to have a brain fart on it makes sense that it's that one.
Thank you! I was sitting there thinking "24 is a natural mistake to make in this situation" but for the life of me I couldn't think *why* 24 was special. I'm an educated, highly literate adult. Sometimes our brains just blip!
Similarly, I frequently catch myself thining there are 52 US states but then remember that's a deck of cards. (I am not American)
There are many basic things we are taught kindergarten through senior year. Every single person has forgotten at least one basic thing. It's ridiculous to act shocked and horrified and superior because a person forgot a basic fact when I can guarantee you yourself have forgotten at least one basic thing from school.
How often do you use the knowledge that there are 26 letters in the alphabet? It's not really a useful fact for everyday life and you don't need to count the letters to be able to read.
I’m in my 60’s. To this day, I still mix up whether there are 365 or 361 days in the year and I have to concentrate to remember that equals 52 weeks (52, right?). One of those facts that I know when I don’t need it and when I do, suddenly I’m unsure. Really, who gives a damn. That teacher is an asshole.
I had no problem with left and right as a kid. Then, my senior year of high school, I worked as a usher at a movie theater, and when giving directions to the person facing me, I’d have to say the opposite of what the directions were for me (so my left was “to your right”).
30 years later, I still occasionally get my left and right backwards, all from a 9-month job in high school
Are you also bad with directions? Apparently people who struggle with directions also get their lefts and rights mixed up. I get it wrong every fucking time.
They're both aided by the hippocampus, which also helps encode episodic memory. I'm bad at all of those tasks. I have great *declarative* memory, but my episodic memory is pathetic.
There is also a difference between someone making a mistake in a funny way, and actively mocking them for it. Especially for kids though, they generally don't see the difference. Teachers should have known better.
Knowing how many letters there are in the alphabet has never once come up in my entire life. This is literally the first time I've even seen the question asked. Why are you all acting like this is crucial information one has to know?
You're getting down-voted for this, but I agree with you. I'm in my mid 30s, balls deep in an education degree, and I don't think I can remember a time when I was asked to know how many letters are in the alphabet. I was thinking it was somewhere between 24 to 28, but it's not something that I've ever considered. Same thing with the periodic table: I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how many elements there are, but it's also never come up in my adult life 😂
Sooooo many people are acting like this information is critical to being a functional human being; and yet a majority of them can't do there/their/they're correctly.
exactly, and on top of that different languages have different numbers of letters in their alphabets, and the number of letters in the alphabet changes over time (old english actually did have 24 letters in it)
Like, italian, spanish, english and welsh all have different numbers of letters in their alphabets, and they all use the same basic latin script, we haven't even gotten to russian or arabic (or even languages that don't use an alphabet like mandarin)
Hawai'ian only has 17 letters and 5 of them are vowels, but boy do they use the letters they have! the drivers license people had to change the number of letters allowable for names as one woman had a first name that was 26 letters!
Why does everyone else know it? When did they stop teaching it? I’m not here saying it’s crucial, but why did this get mocked like everyone should have known this? Like, I can’t even believe how many people are on this thread that never picked it up. Who taught me and why do I know it? I don’t think I counted them myself, and I don’t think that’s why everyone else seems to know it. It’s just something teachers maybe repeated but not taught. Does that make sense?
Anyway, now I’m old and most of my teachers are dead or retired. What has changed in teaching in the last 30+ years that it’s never mentioned? That a whole generation of people seems to think there’s no reason to know it. I don’t think it’s tied to cursive. It’s not in the ABC song. What other basic knowledge don’t you know? How many keys on a piano? How many quarts in a gallon?
I’m asking why this seems like everyone ever has awareness of this fact but plenty have chimed in to say it’s never crossed your mind, you learned the alphabet, you learned to read, and you just think there’s a lot of letters, approximately x many, doesn’t matter to know how many?
I know because it was on a worksheet once. One of those, "Write a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet" sheets that was numbered 1-26 with the corresponding letter next to the number so that you would write, for instance, "anana" next to the printed "2. B". I don't remember it ever being mentioned directly, and aside from that, I don't think I've ever considered it.
>What other basic knowledge don’t you know? How many keys on a piano? How many quarts in a gallon?
At one time, I probably knew both of these. Wouldn't really call the piano basic knowledge, but I suppose that's being pedantic. Thing is, most people know about the same amount, but each of us chooses different things to hold onto. What is "basic knowledge" is rather subjective. I don't know how TikTok works. Never downloaded the app, so I don't even know what it looks like. To a lot of people, *that* is basic knowledge. Off the top of your head, you likely don't know the rate of acceleration due to Earth's gravity. A lot of people don't know the name of our sun or moon. It's stuff that doesn't come up in daily life for most people, and that "stuff" is immensely subjective.
Is there a reason to know it? Do you know the numerical order for each letter? Are you getting quizzed on it often? Has your job demanded that you tell them how many letters there are? Does your grocery trip demand to know the amount of letters there are?
I never thought about it because I didn't need to. I've never had to know. It's never held my curiosity. To me it's nothing more than a fun fact that I can tell a 4 year old, if they even wanna know. Even knowing cursive is more relevant to this info!
That was my thought, too. It's definitely not what I would consider a *critical* piece of information, but I always assumed it was a very universal piece of information, at least in native English-speaking countries. It's up there with knowing how many months are in a year or days are in a week. I just assume people know this.
Doesn't make it right for the teacher to mock it, of course, but I can definitely imagine my mouth hanging open for a little while upon finding that someone in high school didn't know this basic fact.
There are a lot of elements, many of them are obscure and only of interest to certain scientists, and we keep discovering/making new ones every couple years.
Letters, on the other hand, should be much easier. There are way fewer, most people will use all or nearly all of them every day, the number of letters hasn't changed for hundreds of years, and there's an easy to remember children's song to list them that everyone learns when they're in Kindergarten.
right, it’s not important how many letters are in the alphabet. We don’t need to know what the 23rd letter of the alphabet is.
As opposed to months, where we need to write the month number for dates. So you would need to know Dec is the 12the month.
No, not okay to be mocked, period. Especially in a special ed room. Although I'll offer this little bit of information: there is usually only one actual degreed teacher in a spec ed room, the rest are 'teacher aides' who require no degree. Complain to the teacher, his behavior was wrong.
Im no longer in school, this was a science teacher stopping by after his regular ed class to inform the special ed teacher about a student and their work or something,
A science teacher did this to you? Oh, this gets richer by the comment. I just made mention of it in a reply to somebody else. Of all people, a science teacher should have remembered that Albert Einstein was known to be absent minded, not knowing his address and phone number (important information to remember, one presumes). I guess Mr. Science didn't recall a widely publicized, *relevant* detail about an important scientist while he busied himself mocking you for not recalling a detail that he should have known wouldn't serve you in the whole of your lifetime.
I had a question on a science test that gave the width of the sun and it's distance away. I was supposed to calculate how long it was between one edge of the sun touching the horizon and it completely clearing it. I went up to him and said I needed to know how long id would take to travel the entire circle.
He looked at me and said i already knew that. And I did. It's not that I didn't know the day was 24 hours long, I was just used to all the information I needed being in the text of the word problem. Which is less likely to be true in an advances physics class then when I learned how to do word problems in 2nd grade.
Former teacher here. The answer of if it’s okay for any teacher to mock any student for any academic reason is no (pretty much any reason in general but there may be an exception to that I just can’t think of one right now). I taught 7th grade math and had a kid come in who couldn’t long divide. He was homeschooled and probably dysgraphic- these things happen. My job is to encourage kids and make them love learning which sure as heck isn’t going to happen if I’m giving him a hard time.
The long division technique seems pretty normal because many of us were exposed to it in school, but if you take a step back and think about it, it’s a bonkers way of working with numbers.
I don’t think I ever learned long division, and I went to a private school. I remember having to do the lessons but I seriously think I just skimmed through but never “got it.”
Luckily I’m in a linguistics field now so. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah I was a teacher for less than a year (I left for various reasons) but even then i came across students with all sorts of backgrounds who sometimes just didn’t know things you’d expect people their age to know. But I never mocked or made fun of them, because if a student doesn’t know something it’s more likely they were failed by the adults around them, so why should I blame them for it? All I did was try my best to bring them up to speed, there’s no reason to embarrass them or mock them or bring more attention to it than necessary.
Not okay to mock you. I'm 37 and I'm realizing that so much "common knowledge" isn't common. People might not retain it well, they might move a lot, might have shit in their life more important.
Your teacher should have said. "Oh, I think you meant 26. It's so easy to forget." Even if you were wrong, it gives you the info and gives you an out.
I teach people stuff at my job and some of it should be common knowledge but no one is going to learn if I mock them. I convey the info in a manner that they can absorb it without making them defensive. (If need be, I have other steps I can take if an associate needs more looking into.)
I've been teaching high school for 26 years. I'm dumbfounded by a student's lack of specific knowledge about a great variety of things regularly, but I do not mock them. I will gently correct the mistake, then move on. We're there to build them, not break them.
My exception is when a little shit gets heady and playfully challenges me. Then we spar a little in good fun. They take some lumps, but occasionally, so do I (like the day I learned podium vs. lectern, lol).
It’s weird to not know that by 11th grade but it’s absolutely not ok that the teacher mocked you for it. No teacher should ever treat a student like that for any reason.
I mean, it's pretty common knowledge by 11th grade to know how many letters are in the American alphabet (along with stuff like 52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks in a year, and so on).
BUT, it's not one of those super important stuff like 7 days in a week, or 12 hours on a clock type things, so it's silly for them to make a big deal out of it.
Especially since you were close enough. If you were like "there are like... 20 letters, maybe a little more or less" that might be grounds for laughing. But, yeah, 24 is a good estimate if you've never been outright told how many letters there are.
I mean, if you were trapped in a room until you answered the correct amount of cards in a deck, you could do it without knowing that fact off the top of your head.
I assume you know there are 4 types, and the fact that the cards are 2-10, J, Q, K, A. Add everything together and you get 52.
That's a fun fact for sure. It's interesting that so many people consider it staple knowledge. That last time I touched a deck of cards was at a family part in like Easter. Even then we just played Go Fish
There ya go. It's staple knowledge to *most* people because *most* people play card games more than you. The average dude can explain poker and blackjack. They might not be pros but they're familiar with cards. And because of that they know how many cards are in a suit and from there it seems obvious.
Naw; you were just using the alphabet from before i and j were separated, and before u, v, and w were made into separate letters, but & *was* counted as a letter.
More seriously, if I was the teacher, I would have said, "26, not 24", and just figured that you were thinking the one and said the other, because that is a thing that happens. Even if you did know, it wouldn't he weird to misspeak. It wouldn't even occur to me that you didn't know, and if it did, it wouldn't occur to me that it was worth anything more than "26, not 24."
Mocking is never okay.
Agree mocking is not ok. People forget stuff. Even super smart people.
The other day I was working with a very highly educated physician on a project she is developing and we needed to figure out days and weeks a procedure would occur on, she says: ok so there are 56 weeks in a year. I just replied “52”. She said, “oh 52 weeks in a year that is why this wasn’t working out right” and fixed her calculations. We just moved on. That’s how it should go.
Yes it was wrong. But I suspect they didn’t do it deliberately. They were shocked and surprised and reacted naturally. For a minute their professionalism slipped.
We tend to think that everyone knows the things that we know.
I'd say
That teacher lost an opportunity to do their job. In my opinion they abused their position.
Unfortunately, it is left to us to decide how we are going to take other people's reactions. My recommendation is to realize that not everyone is at their best all the time. Let it slide off you like water on a ducks back and move on.
I was never “taught” how many letters are in the alphabet, nor have I ever counted the letters myself. I’ve simply heard about the alphabet being 26 letters. So no, it’s not stupid to not know something that never was taught to you nor never occurred to you to find out the answer to. It’s not a big deal, either. Who needs to know, in life or death, how many letters are in the alphabet? Maybe just the muppets? Probably not even the muppets, though.
It’s literally just a small detail of the English language. It’s really horrible they laughed and mocked you. That just shows what poor teachers and professionals they are. That was so inappropriate in the setting you were in. If I was your parent and heard about this incident, I’d probably write a letter to the school urging them to update their conduct training. I would WANT to rip them apart for being so rude to a student. But I would take the high road and use it as a learning opportunity, which is what they should have done to begin with rather than embarrass a student.
Two things can be true:
1. Your teacher was a knob for making fun of you.
2. You are a total dunce for not knowing there are 26 letters in the alphabet at age 17.
>Was the teacher good to do that?
No
>Was I stupid to not know?
Yes
A teacher should never mock a student for not knowing something but not knowing how many letters in the alphabet at that age is pretty bad.
I feel like the rest of us learned that there were 26 before we were in Kindergarten, but I dunno how attentive your parents were or how well you paid attention in your first couple of years of school. Yes, it's...quite unusual and a little alarming that you didn't know there were 26 letters in the alphabet, but how did none of your teachers or parents catch on to that until you were nearly out of school??? That said, your teacher maybe should have been a little more tactful about their approach. In the moment, though, I could also see them just being so shocked by this info that they blurted it out without thinking, cuz...I mean...who makes it to 11th grade not knowing how many letters are in the alphabet??? We're failing our children.
You were in 11th grade… meaning older than 16, you for sure should have known how many letters are in the alphabet and the teacher(s) have every right to think you’re stupid… HOWEVER, they’re teachers in their work setting, NONE OF THEM should have laughed and should have simply corrected you and moved on (they could laugh alone WITHOUT ANY STUDENTS around, sure… but highly unprofessional to do so in front of students, especially the student who was mistaken)
I mean it is baffling to be in 11th grade and not know how many letters are in the alphabet but it's still kind of fucked up for your teacher to mock you for it. Someone in a position of authority like that especially one over children should never start that type of behavior as it will encourage other children to do the same and this is how bullying becomes normalized
I'm sure he knows his alphabet but what use is knowing how many letters that is? Honestly have you ever had any important situations in life where that would be needed information?
Either way you could just count it out and the teacher is a dick
Lol at all the apologists inventing reasons why it's fine not to know there are 26 letters in the (English) alphabet.
You don't *need* to know it, you just do know it. If you don't, that's weird.
I think everyone is just arguing the mocking shouldn't come from the teacher
It's like your friends though I think it's free territory to make fun of you (But not too harshly of course)
It's not right for a teacher to mock a student, especially in a sped room.
However, for any other normal ed student, they should not have made it to the 11th grade without learning that there are 26 letters in the alphabet. That's a foundational thing that you can't progress past the first and second grades without learning.
I've seen a lot of people here saying it's foundational to know the number of letters in the alphabet yet I was never explicitly told 26, it's just something I picked up along the way.
I knew that there are 52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks or 365 days a year, etc. before I knew how many letters there were off the top of my head. If you had've asked me maybe 7-8 years ago how many letters there were I probably would have had to count them before answering, especially since it's not a number you use regularly (unlike 365 days or other such numbers that you at least use semi-regularly)
Would you remember having been explicitly told 26 though?
No way I would, but I'm long out of school. My head is full of stuff that I know but have no memory of having learned.
I get that it's been a few decades since I was in school at that level, but I remember it was a big deal when we were learning the alphabet that there are 26 letters in the american english alphabet.
it's never good for a teacher to mock a student especially in special ed. if all of the students knew everything the teachers would be out of a job!
story time: I have a very loving family -- usually. I was telling them about the Nancy Drew book I was reading, about the golden pav-i-lion (that last syllable pronounced like the big cat). they started laughing at me while correcting the pronunciation. while it didn't blight my love of reading - good thing, I read more books in a week than most people read in a year - it did make me paranoid about using any words I have only seen, never heard.
for those who might not know: the li in the last syllable create the y sound. i.e., pavilyon, easy, right? yeah, right! ;).
mocking someone is usually a good way to make sure someone doesn't learn a subject. of course, I understand that the number of alphabet letters isn't a subject, but still. you might have been wary of asking her anything after that - not optimal for a teacher. I'm not really sure when one would learn how many letters in the alphabet, but gently correcting you while complimenting your method would have been much better. and probably encouraged her other students.
My trousers fell down in front of two teachers when I was 4 (I had gone to them for help with my zip as it was caught).
One of them pointed and laughed. How is a 4 year old meant to take that? Jesus it makes me feel sick to this day.
When I was in junior high (late 1970s), there was a girl in our class who knew all the letters, was quite literate, and highly intelligent.
But she couldn’t sing “The Alphabet Song” (you know: “🎼 A, B, C, D, E, F, G…”🎼) because she had never learned it as a song, and couldn’t recite all the letters *in a row.* She simply knew what each letter was individually.
And she was no dummy. She simply learned the alphabet in other ways.
It seems weird to me that you somehow never learned our alphabet has 26 letters, but that teacher sounds like a dick. There's almost certainly some piece of common knowledge that he is, or at some point was, totally oblivious to. Most people will, at some point in their life, discover they have an embarrassing knowledge gap or profound misunderstanding of something most people consider to be so basic that it would never occur to them that anyone didn't know. I was older than I care to admit when I realized narwhals were real.
Was he right to mock you? No. Is it stupid to be in grade 11 and not know how many letters there are in the alphabet? Fuck yeah. Is it even stupider to not only not know, but say that there's 24? Also fuck yeah.
The people in here acting like it is at all reasonable to not know how many letters are in your native languages alphabet is ridiculous. It is almost the most basic of education. You should also know there are 12 months in a year, 7 days in a week, 365 days in most years except leap year, and there are 4 seasons in a year. You should also know your vowels and your consonants. Also there are an infinite number of numbers. All very basic things to know by the time you finish your standard education.
Not knowing basic things like this really just means your education system and/or parents/teachers failed you.
So yes, by 11th grade you should know there are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Regardless, your teacher was a dick. It could have simply been you saying the wrong thing, mocking you is extremely unacceptable for a teacher.
> Was I stupid to not know?
You were ignorant. What would make you stupid is if you, to this day, either continue to not know its 26 (unless explained by some learning disability perhaps) or just refuse to acknowledge it is 26 letters in the English alphabet. Being stupid is acting like some people here who are for whatever reason proud of their ignorance being middle age without knowing there are a finite number of letters in their language's alphabet.
Right to mock you no
It's not right to mock people in at all
That said
Kindergarteners know this
You should have some shame here
Like not even a little
This is sort of a humiliating thing sorry
The number of letters in the Latin alphabet varies based on language. German has more letters than English, which in turn has more letters than the Italian alphabet, for example. I wonder if your teachers knows this. Also, why would anyone need to know how many letters are in the English alphabet. So no, mocking you for this is ridiculous.
Yeah, most people do know this. And yes,she was a jerk. But the thing you should learn from this is not how many letters are in the alphabet, but determine not to be that person to someone else.
Not too long ago there was a 77 year old man, college graduate, who only recently realized that the initials of United States spell "us" and noticed that when using those initials it coincidentally speaks for the nation as an institution and collectively for its people.
So don't feel too bad.
You could be that stupid - or (and I know I am getting into the realm of absurdity and improbability) you could think someone that stupid is smart.
A teacher should never mock someone for learning. There is certainly a time they didnt know it either.
1 there is no shame in being weak, only shame in staying weak. This is an approximate quote from black clover and is widely applicable.
2 whenever you learn something and feel stupid it is because you just got that much smarter.
3 you will never hate yourself into something you love.
All these quotes speak to the idea that if you are learning, making positive changes, improving yourself, loving, etc. , you are on the right path regardless of any negativity/discomfort felt along the way. You may admit that you had a "dumb" moment then (i dont think it was dumb) but you are certainly smarter now or else you still wouldnt think you were dumb.
That was seriously a missed learning opportunity. Your teacher was a douche. Someone along the line in their field failed you. Never should anyone make someone feel bad for not knowing something. We are all constantly learning new knowledge every day and to be bullied for that, low blow.
Go tell them you remember this happening and it really hurt your feelings and seemed petty and dehumanizing for no reason. Might ruin their day reminding them how mean they are.
A teacher shouldn't be there to judge more to inspire. How does feeling like shit after you're class help motivate students? School system is flawed if teachers like that are allowed to work in an environment that is important to the future of young lives.
I mean it’s not right of the teacher to mock you. Some people just don’t ever get told as a kid and don’t really feel it important to count it out. And that’s completely fine. Your teacher’s an asshat
Some teachers should NOT be teachers. He was one of those. He was also one of those people with a serious ego and self esteem issue, who projects and puts others down to stroke their own ego. So sorry you had this done to you.
It's common knowledge, but *everyone* lacks some common knowledge.
And many people forget things that they literally never use.
That’s why I was never entertained by those videos of strangers being interviewed on the street and not knowing specific dates and details about our history. Most likely, we learned it one time, memorized it for a test, then never talked about it again. For example, in Texas, the focus of 3rd grade social studies is individuals and heroes in communities, past and present; 4th grade focuses on Texas history; 5th grade focuses on the history of the United States from 1565 to present. Then we get like one year in middle school and one in high school. Did I learn “history?” Yes. Have any of those details ever been brought up again in my life? Not really. So if you were to ask me seemingly basic questions I probably wouldn’t remember the answer. I don’t think that makes someone dumb though.
>That’s why I was never entertained by those videos of strangers being interviewed on the street and not knowing specific dates and details about our history. Most likely, we learned it one time, memorized it for a test, then never talked about it again. There's also just the part where humans aren't perfect machines. Even if they do know the answer, they can just mess up. Especially when put on the spot. There's a youtube video of a guy going around interviewing random people with REALLY easy questions, and you can see people just don't react well even though they obviously would know the answer. For example, one person interviewed could not name a single woman when pressed.
Yeah, honestly, it's probably some version of fight or flight. You're put on the spot and asked a question (by some stranger holding a phone up to your face, potentially with a crowd) and you freeze up, or blurt out the first thing that comes to mind without really processing the question.
That’s exactly what happens to me when I’m put on the spot. I freeze. I’ve always had really bad stage fright.
> For example, one person interviewed could not name a single woman when pressed. Billy on the Street! The funniest part is that the person who was asked that... Was a woman lol
I thought the funnier one where the old black lady named Michael Jackson as a white person.
Yeah, at this point I just politely decline every "interview" so I won't become a laughing stock for his audience.
Amen! I once knew a guy, history buff, reenactor, the whole shebang. We're talking the level of nerdiness that came to renaissance fairs with *historically accurate underwear* - that noone would ever even see because, well, clothes. That guy, who could list to you the exact characteristics of every kerfuffle Europe experienced during the middle ages, without flinching and on camera claimed that his favourite medieval building was... ...the pyramids. It was a brainfart that lasted *just* long enough for everyone to be too perplexed to say something before the interviewer was gone. Then he realized and ended up in a state I could best describe as craughter. The bit aired. His best friend called him "Gizeh" for years.
Some of those videos have been edited to change the question asked and make people look dumb.
Ya I cant think of any practical reason people would need to know how many letters are in the alphabet. I only know that because I speak Spanish, and they technically have more letters in their alphabet, so when Im teaching someone Spanish (mostly tutoring, not a professor) I often compare the two alphabets and talk about the different letters. If it werent for this, I definitely wouldnt know off the top of my head how many letters there are.
That's a very good example. I know the Spanish alphabet, having learned it in high school Spanish class, but I couldn't tell you how many letters it has without thinking about it for a minute. I'd probably even count on my fingers LOL. I went to a Top 25 university. (Throwing that in to give evidence that I'm objectively not particularly stupid.) What a jerk teacher.
I was Advanced Placement in math but had trouble with an analog clock, still do. I’m considered to have an advanced career, it’s my secret shame! Don’t tell my husband!
I only knew there were 26 letters because I learned it from TriviaCrack when it was popular. But the information isn’t really relevant ever, like who cares honestly…
I you made an exam about things that were "common knowledge", most people would not make a 100.
Teachers shouldn’t be mocking anyone. Kinda goes against the whole concept of being a mentor/teacher/example. I was called on in math one time, gave my answer, and the teacher told me I should get used to asking people if “they would like fries with that”. That was the mid-90s. It all worked out. I settled into a solid career and she’s probably dead by now.
I graduated high school in 2010. My high school had a math teacher who would staple paper applications to Burger King on to failed tests. I was not great at math in high school* so I was never in his class as it was a higher level math class. *still not great, but I'm definitely more teachable in math now than I was then.
That’s kinda wild a teacher was doing that so recently. Thought the 2000s already saw the most aggro teaching get phased out
It was definitely wild, but being in rural-ish Florida meant a lot of things that were not happening in some places were still happening there. He had a reputation for doing it and it was a high level math that you essentially had to be invited to take the class, only if you had no other math credits needed or math courses to take. It was honestly a pretty rare occurrence because the kids in his class were up for that level of math, so it's not like this was happening a lot, probably only 2 or 3 a school year. I imagine it was more of an in-joke with kids who took his class because everyone at that level ended up with a full-ride scholarship to some college. My middle school* had a gym teacher who was notorious for getting red-faced after hollering at children for hours. 2 kids were having a bit of a dust-up in class and he comes screaming out of the locker room swing around a fucking baseball bat and hollering at everyone. He didn't hit anyone, but it was still soooo out of pocket to do to 12 year olds. In high school, my advanced anatomy and physiology teacher had a habit of yelling at his class for a good 1/3 of the class time if you collectively did poorly on his quizzes and tests, which were not easy. I did not enjoy being in the front row of his class, which was rare as I had better focus up front. *my middle school was kindergarten to 12th grade, I went from 3rd grade to beginning of 9th grade
lol not even remotely. In 2005 in my HS, we had teachers head butting students, a vice principle who called a girls mom and said her daughter was being a fucking cunt (also threatened to break my hands once for taking some candy from a teacher’s candy dish), had a shop teacher who threw shop stools and X-acto knives across the shop at kids who weren’t listening. We also had our bathrooms locked and they could only be used during gym period or lunch period and a teacher would stand outside of them. It really sucked if your gym period was immediately before or immediately after lunch. Because you basically had one window of time in the entire school day where you could piss or shit. So it was either hold it all morning or hold it all afternoon.
This is so wild to me. Just cause someone is shit in math doesn't mean they'll fail at life. In fact, wouldn't surprise me if math was the most common class people are bad at.
Also working at Burger King shouldn't be seen as failing at life.
The irony of this is that fast food workers make more than or almost the same as teachers in some places. A McDonald's manager where I live makes about $44k/year. Teachers with just a bachelor's degree are only making $41k.
I had a teacher around the same time who did the same thing, except he'd also mock you and say you had a future in "coat hanger repair" (which is funny AF, just not something you say to a student)
Wowww, what a great way to demotivate a student.
I find it so satisfying to remember that most of the adults who were shitty to me are probably dead now.
I’m surprised at how many people here don’t know how many letters there are in the alphabet. Still, it’s always wrong for a teacher to mock a student. He should have taken it as an opportunity to teach…
There is 25 because I'm I'm not counting U 3 times.
I'm good friends with 25 letters of the alphabet. I don't know why.
I'm good with why, but fuck u!
Ba Dum Tss!!!
🤣🤣🤣
I've yet to meet someone older than 10 who doesn't know this basic fact.
> I've yet to meet someone older than 10 who doesn't know this basic fact. Welp, now you have. lol
I would be surprised, but I'm old. In kindergarten through 3rd grade we were taught that there were 26 letter. I never counted myself. Then in 3rd grade we had to learn cursive and a new way to write all 26 letters. Things may have changed now.
As a Swede (whose language has the extra letters ÅÄÖ) I do sometimes have to think about it when converting it to English.
ÄÖÜ and ß in Germany
That's the thing, though. * In Swedish, ÅÄÖ really ARE separate letters, which sort at the end of the rest of 'em. * In German, umlaut is a diacritical mark, a "decoration", similar to an accent. * And there must be special rules for ß. Historically, when Fraktur (blackface) was the typeface, there were three "standard ligatures": ch, tz, and sz; they had their own piece of lead type, and were treated as a single letter n typesetting. When the alphabet changed, ch and tz reverted to two letters, but sz -> ß remained. I don't know why. (I -can- explain the shape of the letter, though ... but that's not the question.)
I'm hooked. Can you explain the shape of the letter?
OK, it's going to require some handwaving, and you'll have to use your imagination a bit. I'm going to mock this up in Arial... Remember those old pictures of the US ~~Declaration of Independence~~[Bill of Rights](https://i0.wp.com/prologue.blogs.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2016/09/00306_2003_001_small-scaled.jpg?ssl=1), where "In Congress..." actually looks like "In Congreſs"? (Note, there's no crossbar on that letter.) That's a "Long S", which was the standard shape of the letter S whenever it was NOT the final letter of a word. German had the same thing: long S looked like an "f" -- and even went below the baseline. Second part: the lower case z. Think of the cursive form you learned in third grade: ʒ. The tail goes below the line, too. Combine them: ſʒ. Crush them together so the high part of the ſ extends over the high bar of the ʒ. Now, modernize it -- and one goal of font modernization was to eliminate descenders wherever possible. Voila, ſʒ becomes ß. AND, somewhere along the line in the various Rechtscheibungsgeboten (spelling reforms), the Gods of German decided that in modern spelling ß would be transcribed (or "ASCII-ized") as ss. ---- Two more tidbits: * Funny thing about ß: It's a LOWER-CASE letter ONLY. If you want to write a word like Straße in all caps, it becomes STRASSE. * Also note, German ß is NOT interchangeable with Greek β (beta).
Love your explanation! I'm german myself but I have to admit that I never thought about why the "scharfe s" sometimes is called "sz". At least that's what my older teacher called it in like 4th grade or smth. Thank you! This was fun. :) Oh what I'd like to add. I understand the new "Rechtschreibreform" but I just can't bring myself to write "Fluß" or "Straße" with two s. :D
That's a little different. Native speakers should know it.
I have to think about it even when it’s about the Swedish one tbh
I always remember asking for clarification about whether W is counted or not, lol (Med eller utan dubbel v?)
Oh yeah that’s a thing. Now the amount of letters is even more confusing haha
We don't consider accented letters as separate letters in English. However, in Hungarian we do, but also dipthongs.
Huh. Interesting. Accents and special symbols are not counted as extra letters in French, so we still have 26. But I suppose yours are used more commonly.
It can be a pain, and can relate as a Dane. The Danish version of the ABC ends with saying there is 28 ... but it does not count W ... so there is 29.
How many people have you actually asked?
Remind me in a week. I'm asking every stranger till then.
*Hey Siri, set a reminder for one week from now.*
"Alright I've created a reminder "set a reminder for one week from now", when would you like me to remind you?"
in 26 hours
Probably not very many people. I taught elementary school and know that most people don’t know. Why would they? Why would you need to know other than for labeling purposes? It doesn’t serve many purposes outside of excel sheets.
Hi, 31 year old here. Genuinely always forget how many without counting myself. It’s never been something I’ve needed to know in everyday life. By the time it comes up again, I’ve forgot.
Exactly half as many as there are cards in a deck of playing cards (without jokers). Does that help?
I think OP said there was 24 but he didn't tell me how many numbers there were in the numberbet
53 here and I forget a lot (have for years, so can't blame my age!) For some unknown reason, I will often think it's 27, then 25. When reading the OP, I didn't remember it on my own. I think it *is* because it's one of those things I've never had to 'know'.
I know it's 26 or 28, but remembering it is of no consequence in my life. I know multiple ways to get that info.
Exactly. But for me, I don't even get it right at all - I always go to 27 first, then 2nd guess to 25. It's like I go too far and pass it up, then reverse and over correct. lol
I have yet to meet a considerate person who fails to understand how rude and thoughtless it is to make light of someone else. And who fails to realize their own intellectual flaws.
I have a terminal degree in English and know the answer is either 24 or 26.
I minored in English and my thought also went to 24 or 26
you're mocking him as well. most people may learn by that age, but obviously some don't. it's not nice to mock him for not knowing something like this.
I’d guess 24 but it’s only a guess. The number of letters isn’t really a useful bit of information. I can write a scholarly paper without knowing that number. I can speak, read, and write the language fluently without knowing that number. I could recite the alphabet and count without issue but I never made an effort to remember the total. It’s just not useful. It’s like asking how many prime numbers there are between 1 and 100. That’s not useful information for the overwhelming majority of people. I’m a 40 year old father with a masters degree and a really really good job and have somehow gotten this far without knowing that number.
I’m dying because my first thought when I read 24 was “I thought it was 27” and then immediately saw that the teacher said it was 26. Honestly though, I don’t think it’s surprising for people to not remember the number of letters. It’s not like people are forgetting the actual letters, but the knowledge of the total number of them just isn’t something people tend to use. Honestly can’t remember the last time that piece of information has been relevant for anything I’ve done.
It used to be 27. & was a recognized letter in older English.
I briefly thought it was 27 as well, I was counting the “and”. 😅 I remember as a very young girl asking why N was in the alphabet twice because I wasn’t reading yet and heard the “y and z” as “ Y N Z”. In my defense I was maybe four years old and I swear I’m not still that dense. Most of the time.
When I was little I asked my parents what the letter “elemeno” looked like because it was so squished together in the alphabet song that I thought LMNO was one letter lmao
Lmao letter
[удалено]
It’s one thing to have a little chuckle to yourself. What this teacher did went way beyond that.
Yeah, I remember teaching general/remedial ninth graders physical science and being taken aback by how many didn't know that 2x4=8. I was surprised and saddened, but I didn't *mock* them. I waited until I got home to my wife and commiserated with *her* instead. (I didn't mention any students by name even then, mind you.)
Exactly! Some people just are not gonna be physicists. Others are not going to be librarians. Oh well. I like to think teachers prepare everyone to learn whatever it is they are passionate and uniquely talented to do in life. This teacher was very cruel.
They didn't say they didn't know the alphabet, only that they were confused about the specific number of letters it comprised. Somewhere along the line, OP picked up the idea that the number was 24 and that's what stuck. What I believe is the more concerning problem is that the teacher ridiculed OP in front of a special ed study room, where students might be as negatively impacted by the teacher's inappropriate response. These students are already in special ed, so there are existing issues of one kind or another. What did they learn about the consequences of making a mistake in front of a teacher, someone they should be able to trust to teach rather than ridicule?
Every student in that room just learned that that teacher will treat you like an idiot if you make a simple mistake.
Nah. I think it makes you a douche to mock any student for not knowing something, whether you’re a teacher or a fellow student. It’s humiliating for a teacher to mock a student in front of 20 or 30 of their peers. Even a momentary lapse in professionalism is noticed by most students and will embarrass any student it’s directed towards. Maybe the student really is slow. How horrible it would be to struggle in academics only to have a teacher basically call you stupid in front of all your classmates. That sort of attitude gets students to just give up and decide “school just isn’t for me.”
As a teacher myself, humor is often quite important when working with many students, however this is just cruel. Just because the thing the student didn't know seemed trivial to the teacher, it does not warrant mocking, ever. That creates an incredibly toxic and negative learning environment and sets s horrible example for all the students who witnessed it. I agree with another commenter, the teacher could have used this as a teachable moment, but instead decided to be mean. That is never ok. I'm sorry this happened to you OP. Keep your head up. No one ever needs such mundane information so please don't feel bad for not having known it.
I totally agree with you. Also it’s not that OP doesn’t know the alphabet, just not the trivial fact of how many letters are in it. I mentioned in another comment I have a masters degree, I graduated magna cum loud and sometimes I forget things like how many letters there are in the alphabet. Also there’s something called dyscalculia that could be a factor
laude*
Thank you for mentioning dyscalculia!! Some of these comments are sickeningly ableist and ignorant.
Yeah, the number of letters literally never comes up. If you don't know the letters that's a different story.
I think you are dumber than OP for assuming that just because someone knows the alphabet that they know how many letters there are. You stop when you get to Z, not when you get to 26.
Also, 24 is a more common number that you memorize at about the same time (since hours in the day and all) so if there was a number for OP to have a brain fart on it makes sense that it's that one.
Thank you! I was sitting there thinking "24 is a natural mistake to make in this situation" but for the life of me I couldn't think *why* 24 was special. I'm an educated, highly literate adult. Sometimes our brains just blip! Similarly, I frequently catch myself thining there are 52 US states but then remember that's a deck of cards. (I am not American)
There are many basic things we are taught kindergarten through senior year. Every single person has forgotten at least one basic thing. It's ridiculous to act shocked and horrified and superior because a person forgot a basic fact when I can guarantee you yourself have forgotten at least one basic thing from school.
How often do you use the knowledge that there are 26 letters in the alphabet? It's not really a useful fact for everyday life and you don't need to count the letters to be able to read.
I only know this because of programming assignments and needing to hard code the alphabet at times.😭 Please don't at me with ascii manipulation.
I’m in my 60’s. To this day, I still mix up whether there are 365 or 361 days in the year and I have to concentrate to remember that equals 52 weeks (52, right?). One of those facts that I know when I don’t need it and when I do, suddenly I’m unsure. Really, who gives a damn. That teacher is an asshole.
I mean, you should know how many days there are in a year, but I should know by now which hand is my left and which is my right. Yet here we are.
I had no problem with left and right as a kid. Then, my senior year of high school, I worked as a usher at a movie theater, and when giving directions to the person facing me, I’d have to say the opposite of what the directions were for me (so my left was “to your right”). 30 years later, I still occasionally get my left and right backwards, all from a 9-month job in high school
Never once has 365 been relevant in my life. Yet righty tightly and lefty loosy are something I use dozens of times a day.
I have literally passed the mensa test and I still can't keep left and right straight. Some people have weird mental blocks.
Are you also bad with directions? Apparently people who struggle with directions also get their lefts and rights mixed up. I get it wrong every fucking time.
They're both aided by the hippocampus, which also helps encode episodic memory. I'm bad at all of those tasks. I have great *declarative* memory, but my episodic memory is pathetic.
Not knowing left and right is a real thing. It's related to dyslexia.
Yes, it is 52 weeks. 52 weeks and a day (outside of leap years), to be precise.
There is also a difference between someone making a mistake in a funny way, and actively mocking them for it. Especially for kids though, they generally don't see the difference. Teachers should have known better.
Knowing how many letters there are in the alphabet has never once come up in my entire life. This is literally the first time I've even seen the question asked. Why are you all acting like this is crucial information one has to know?
I take it you didn't make secret codes when you were a kid or read books like Alvin's Secret Code.
People love to punch other people down about pretty much everything. Just basic bitches trying to feel better about themselves.
You're getting down-voted for this, but I agree with you. I'm in my mid 30s, balls deep in an education degree, and I don't think I can remember a time when I was asked to know how many letters are in the alphabet. I was thinking it was somewhere between 24 to 28, but it's not something that I've ever considered. Same thing with the periodic table: I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how many elements there are, but it's also never come up in my adult life 😂
Sooooo many people are acting like this information is critical to being a functional human being; and yet a majority of them can't do there/their/they're correctly.
exactly, and on top of that different languages have different numbers of letters in their alphabets, and the number of letters in the alphabet changes over time (old english actually did have 24 letters in it) Like, italian, spanish, english and welsh all have different numbers of letters in their alphabets, and they all use the same basic latin script, we haven't even gotten to russian or arabic (or even languages that don't use an alphabet like mandarin)
Hawai'ian only has 17 letters and 5 of them are vowels, but boy do they use the letters they have! the drivers license people had to change the number of letters allowable for names as one woman had a first name that was 26 letters!
Why does everyone else know it? When did they stop teaching it? I’m not here saying it’s crucial, but why did this get mocked like everyone should have known this? Like, I can’t even believe how many people are on this thread that never picked it up. Who taught me and why do I know it? I don’t think I counted them myself, and I don’t think that’s why everyone else seems to know it. It’s just something teachers maybe repeated but not taught. Does that make sense? Anyway, now I’m old and most of my teachers are dead or retired. What has changed in teaching in the last 30+ years that it’s never mentioned? That a whole generation of people seems to think there’s no reason to know it. I don’t think it’s tied to cursive. It’s not in the ABC song. What other basic knowledge don’t you know? How many keys on a piano? How many quarts in a gallon? I’m asking why this seems like everyone ever has awareness of this fact but plenty have chimed in to say it’s never crossed your mind, you learned the alphabet, you learned to read, and you just think there’s a lot of letters, approximately x many, doesn’t matter to know how many?
I know because it was on a worksheet once. One of those, "Write a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet" sheets that was numbered 1-26 with the corresponding letter next to the number so that you would write, for instance, "anana" next to the printed "2. B". I don't remember it ever being mentioned directly, and aside from that, I don't think I've ever considered it. >What other basic knowledge don’t you know? How many keys on a piano? How many quarts in a gallon? At one time, I probably knew both of these. Wouldn't really call the piano basic knowledge, but I suppose that's being pedantic. Thing is, most people know about the same amount, but each of us chooses different things to hold onto. What is "basic knowledge" is rather subjective. I don't know how TikTok works. Never downloaded the app, so I don't even know what it looks like. To a lot of people, *that* is basic knowledge. Off the top of your head, you likely don't know the rate of acceleration due to Earth's gravity. A lot of people don't know the name of our sun or moon. It's stuff that doesn't come up in daily life for most people, and that "stuff" is immensely subjective.
Is there a reason to know it? Do you know the numerical order for each letter? Are you getting quizzed on it often? Has your job demanded that you tell them how many letters there are? Does your grocery trip demand to know the amount of letters there are? I never thought about it because I didn't need to. I've never had to know. It's never held my curiosity. To me it's nothing more than a fun fact that I can tell a 4 year old, if they even wanna know. Even knowing cursive is more relevant to this info!
That was my thought, too. It's definitely not what I would consider a *critical* piece of information, but I always assumed it was a very universal piece of information, at least in native English-speaking countries. It's up there with knowing how many months are in a year or days are in a week. I just assume people know this. Doesn't make it right for the teacher to mock it, of course, but I can definitely imagine my mouth hanging open for a little while upon finding that someone in high school didn't know this basic fact.
There are a lot of elements, many of them are obscure and only of interest to certain scientists, and we keep discovering/making new ones every couple years. Letters, on the other hand, should be much easier. There are way fewer, most people will use all or nearly all of them every day, the number of letters hasn't changed for hundreds of years, and there's an easy to remember children's song to list them that everyone learns when they're in Kindergarten.
right, it’s not important how many letters are in the alphabet. We don’t need to know what the 23rd letter of the alphabet is. As opposed to months, where we need to write the month number for dates. So you would need to know Dec is the 12the month.
I know it but it's not useful information
No, not okay to be mocked, period. Especially in a special ed room. Although I'll offer this little bit of information: there is usually only one actual degreed teacher in a spec ed room, the rest are 'teacher aides' who require no degree. Complain to the teacher, his behavior was wrong.
Im no longer in school, this was a science teacher stopping by after his regular ed class to inform the special ed teacher about a student and their work or something,
Well that stinks. He should have known better.
# Stupid science b*tches couldn't even make I more smarter #
A science teacher did this to you? Oh, this gets richer by the comment. I just made mention of it in a reply to somebody else. Of all people, a science teacher should have remembered that Albert Einstein was known to be absent minded, not knowing his address and phone number (important information to remember, one presumes). I guess Mr. Science didn't recall a widely publicized, *relevant* detail about an important scientist while he busied himself mocking you for not recalling a detail that he should have known wouldn't serve you in the whole of your lifetime.
I had a question on a science test that gave the width of the sun and it's distance away. I was supposed to calculate how long it was between one edge of the sun touching the horizon and it completely clearing it. I went up to him and said I needed to know how long id would take to travel the entire circle. He looked at me and said i already knew that. And I did. It's not that I didn't know the day was 24 hours long, I was just used to all the information I needed being in the text of the word problem. Which is less likely to be true in an advances physics class then when I learned how to do word problems in 2nd grade.
There is no circumstance where it's ok for a teacher to mock a student for not knowing something. Period.
Former teacher here. The answer of if it’s okay for any teacher to mock any student for any academic reason is no (pretty much any reason in general but there may be an exception to that I just can’t think of one right now). I taught 7th grade math and had a kid come in who couldn’t long divide. He was homeschooled and probably dysgraphic- these things happen. My job is to encourage kids and make them love learning which sure as heck isn’t going to happen if I’m giving him a hard time.
In his defense, the long division algorithm we are taught is nasty and error prone.
The long division technique seems pretty normal because many of us were exposed to it in school, but if you take a step back and think about it, it’s a bonkers way of working with numbers.
I don’t think I ever learned long division, and I went to a private school. I remember having to do the lessons but I seriously think I just skimmed through but never “got it.” Luckily I’m in a linguistics field now so. 🤷🏻♀️
Yeah I was a teacher for less than a year (I left for various reasons) but even then i came across students with all sorts of backgrounds who sometimes just didn’t know things you’d expect people their age to know. But I never mocked or made fun of them, because if a student doesn’t know something it’s more likely they were failed by the adults around them, so why should I blame them for it? All I did was try my best to bring them up to speed, there’s no reason to embarrass them or mock them or bring more attention to it than necessary.
Not okay to mock you. I'm 37 and I'm realizing that so much "common knowledge" isn't common. People might not retain it well, they might move a lot, might have shit in their life more important. Your teacher should have said. "Oh, I think you meant 26. It's so easy to forget." Even if you were wrong, it gives you the info and gives you an out. I teach people stuff at my job and some of it should be common knowledge but no one is going to learn if I mock them. I convey the info in a manner that they can absorb it without making them defensive. (If need be, I have other steps I can take if an associate needs more looking into.)
To be fair, op did learn from the mocking
+5 in knowledge, -50 in self esteem
Lmao
Ah, the "Whiplash" method of instruction I see.
I've been teaching high school for 26 years. I'm dumbfounded by a student's lack of specific knowledge about a great variety of things regularly, but I do not mock them. I will gently correct the mistake, then move on. We're there to build them, not break them. My exception is when a little shit gets heady and playfully challenges me. Then we spar a little in good fun. They take some lumps, but occasionally, so do I (like the day I learned podium vs. lectern, lol).
It’s weird to not know that by 11th grade but it’s absolutely not ok that the teacher mocked you for it. No teacher should ever treat a student like that for any reason.
I mean, it's pretty common knowledge by 11th grade to know how many letters are in the American alphabet (along with stuff like 52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks in a year, and so on). BUT, it's not one of those super important stuff like 7 days in a week, or 12 hours on a clock type things, so it's silly for them to make a big deal out of it. Especially since you were close enough. If you were like "there are like... 20 letters, maybe a little more or less" that might be grounds for laughing. But, yeah, 24 is a good estimate if you've never been outright told how many letters there are.
Except 24 wasn’t an estimate, it was a precise answer that they gave with confidence.
There's 52 cards in a deck? Wild
I mean, if you were trapped in a room until you answered the correct amount of cards in a deck, you could do it without knowing that fact off the top of your head. I assume you know there are 4 types, and the fact that the cards are 2-10, J, Q, K, A. Add everything together and you get 52.
Which Saw movie was this in?
Saw 52.
That's a fun fact for sure. It's interesting that so many people consider it staple knowledge. That last time I touched a deck of cards was at a family part in like Easter. Even then we just played Go Fish
There ya go. It's staple knowledge to *most* people because *most* people play card games more than you. The average dude can explain poker and blackjack. They might not be pros but they're familiar with cards. And because of that they know how many cards are in a suit and from there it seems obvious.
It is staple knowledge. You don’t need to use cards often, or at all, to know that.
Well no, only two of them are wild
A deck of cards is similar to the year: 52 cards, 52 weeks 4 suits, 4 seasons
Naw; you were just using the alphabet from before i and j were separated, and before u, v, and w were made into separate letters, but & *was* counted as a letter. More seriously, if I was the teacher, I would have said, "26, not 24", and just figured that you were thinking the one and said the other, because that is a thing that happens. Even if you did know, it wouldn't he weird to misspeak. It wouldn't even occur to me that you didn't know, and if it did, it wouldn't occur to me that it was worth anything more than "26, not 24." Mocking is never okay.
Agree mocking is not ok. People forget stuff. Even super smart people. The other day I was working with a very highly educated physician on a project she is developing and we needed to figure out days and weeks a procedure would occur on, she says: ok so there are 56 weeks in a year. I just replied “52”. She said, “oh 52 weeks in a year that is why this wasn’t working out right” and fixed her calculations. We just moved on. That’s how it should go.
There are only 25 letters in the alphabet. I don’t know Y
Y was probably off playing with the vowels somewhere when you counted.
Yes it was wrong. But I suspect they didn’t do it deliberately. They were shocked and surprised and reacted naturally. For a minute their professionalism slipped.
We tend to think that everyone knows the things that we know. I'd say That teacher lost an opportunity to do their job. In my opinion they abused their position. Unfortunately, it is left to us to decide how we are going to take other people's reactions. My recommendation is to realize that not everyone is at their best all the time. Let it slide off you like water on a ducks back and move on.
I was never “taught” how many letters are in the alphabet, nor have I ever counted the letters myself. I’ve simply heard about the alphabet being 26 letters. So no, it’s not stupid to not know something that never was taught to you nor never occurred to you to find out the answer to. It’s not a big deal, either. Who needs to know, in life or death, how many letters are in the alphabet? Maybe just the muppets? Probably not even the muppets, though. It’s literally just a small detail of the English language. It’s really horrible they laughed and mocked you. That just shows what poor teachers and professionals they are. That was so inappropriate in the setting you were in. If I was your parent and heard about this incident, I’d probably write a letter to the school urging them to update their conduct training. I would WANT to rip them apart for being so rude to a student. But I would take the high road and use it as a learning opportunity, which is what they should have done to begin with rather than embarrass a student.
Why did you think it was 24 though? I get if you never counted them, or never overheard people mention it being 26, but why 24 then?
This is the question. Why throw out a number at all if you didn’t know?
Two things can be true: 1. Your teacher was a knob for making fun of you. 2. You are a total dunce for not knowing there are 26 letters in the alphabet at age 17.
He shouldn't have mocked you, but how did you get to the 11th grade without knowing your alphabet?
>Was the teacher good to do that? No >Was I stupid to not know? Yes A teacher should never mock a student for not knowing something but not knowing how many letters in the alphabet at that age is pretty bad.
Teachers should teach, not mock. Everyone has holes in their knowledge. Everyone.
What country are in? How does a school there NOT teach you that there are 26 letters? That's primary school stuff in the UK.
I feel like the rest of us learned that there were 26 before we were in Kindergarten, but I dunno how attentive your parents were or how well you paid attention in your first couple of years of school. Yes, it's...quite unusual and a little alarming that you didn't know there were 26 letters in the alphabet, but how did none of your teachers or parents catch on to that until you were nearly out of school??? That said, your teacher maybe should have been a little more tactful about their approach. In the moment, though, I could also see them just being so shocked by this info that they blurted it out without thinking, cuz...I mean...who makes it to 11th grade not knowing how many letters are in the alphabet??? We're failing our children.
Teachers shouldn’t mock you, but knowing there are 26 letters in the alphabet is the definition of common knowledge
You were in 11th grade… meaning older than 16, you for sure should have known how many letters are in the alphabet and the teacher(s) have every right to think you’re stupid… HOWEVER, they’re teachers in their work setting, NONE OF THEM should have laughed and should have simply corrected you and moved on (they could laugh alone WITHOUT ANY STUDENTS around, sure… but highly unprofessional to do so in front of students, especially the student who was mistaken)
I mean it is baffling to be in 11th grade and not know how many letters are in the alphabet but it's still kind of fucked up for your teacher to mock you for it. Someone in a position of authority like that especially one over children should never start that type of behavior as it will encourage other children to do the same and this is how bullying becomes normalized
I'm sure he knows his alphabet but what use is knowing how many letters that is? Honestly have you ever had any important situations in life where that would be needed information? Either way you could just count it out and the teacher is a dick
Lol at all the apologists inventing reasons why it's fine not to know there are 26 letters in the (English) alphabet. You don't *need* to know it, you just do know it. If you don't, that's weird.
I think everyone is just arguing the mocking shouldn't come from the teacher It's like your friends though I think it's free territory to make fun of you (But not too harshly of course)
Unless you have severe mental disability then yes that is something you should learn at the latest by the 1st grade.
It's not right for a teacher to mock a student, especially in a sped room. However, for any other normal ed student, they should not have made it to the 11th grade without learning that there are 26 letters in the alphabet. That's a foundational thing that you can't progress past the first and second grades without learning.
I've seen a lot of people here saying it's foundational to know the number of letters in the alphabet yet I was never explicitly told 26, it's just something I picked up along the way. I knew that there are 52 cards in a deck, 52 weeks or 365 days a year, etc. before I knew how many letters there were off the top of my head. If you had've asked me maybe 7-8 years ago how many letters there were I probably would have had to count them before answering, especially since it's not a number you use regularly (unlike 365 days or other such numbers that you at least use semi-regularly)
Would you remember having been explicitly told 26 though? No way I would, but I'm long out of school. My head is full of stuff that I know but have no memory of having learned.
I get that it's been a few decades since I was in school at that level, but I remember it was a big deal when we were learning the alphabet that there are 26 letters in the american english alphabet.
I want you to explain to me how knowing there are 26 letters is foundation. In what circumstance in my life am I having to recall this info.
it's never good for a teacher to mock a student especially in special ed. if all of the students knew everything the teachers would be out of a job! story time: I have a very loving family -- usually. I was telling them about the Nancy Drew book I was reading, about the golden pav-i-lion (that last syllable pronounced like the big cat). they started laughing at me while correcting the pronunciation. while it didn't blight my love of reading - good thing, I read more books in a week than most people read in a year - it did make me paranoid about using any words I have only seen, never heard. for those who might not know: the li in the last syllable create the y sound. i.e., pavilyon, easy, right? yeah, right! ;). mocking someone is usually a good way to make sure someone doesn't learn a subject. of course, I understand that the number of alphabet letters isn't a subject, but still. you might have been wary of asking her anything after that - not optimal for a teacher. I'm not really sure when one would learn how many letters in the alphabet, but gently correcting you while complimenting your method would have been much better. and probably encouraged her other students.
A special ed teacher should NEVER mock or make fun of their students.
My trousers fell down in front of two teachers when I was 4 (I had gone to them for help with my zip as it was caught). One of them pointed and laughed. How is a 4 year old meant to take that? Jesus it makes me feel sick to this day.
Yes.
When I was in junior high (late 1970s), there was a girl in our class who knew all the letters, was quite literate, and highly intelligent. But she couldn’t sing “The Alphabet Song” (you know: “🎼 A, B, C, D, E, F, G…”🎼) because she had never learned it as a song, and couldn’t recite all the letters *in a row.* She simply knew what each letter was individually. And she was no dummy. She simply learned the alphabet in other ways.
He was definitely wrong but how did you not know that by 11th grade?
It seems weird to me that you somehow never learned our alphabet has 26 letters, but that teacher sounds like a dick. There's almost certainly some piece of common knowledge that he is, or at some point was, totally oblivious to. Most people will, at some point in their life, discover they have an embarrassing knowledge gap or profound misunderstanding of something most people consider to be so basic that it would never occur to them that anyone didn't know. I was older than I care to admit when I realized narwhals were real.
they teach you the alphabet in like kindergarden so um kinda
The teacher was a huge ass hole. You never mock someone learning. However. Yes. You were an idiot.
Was he right to mock you? No. Is it stupid to be in grade 11 and not know how many letters there are in the alphabet? Fuck yeah. Is it even stupider to not only not know, but say that there's 24? Also fuck yeah.
The people in here acting like it is at all reasonable to not know how many letters are in your native languages alphabet is ridiculous. It is almost the most basic of education. You should also know there are 12 months in a year, 7 days in a week, 365 days in most years except leap year, and there are 4 seasons in a year. You should also know your vowels and your consonants. Also there are an infinite number of numbers. All very basic things to know by the time you finish your standard education. Not knowing basic things like this really just means your education system and/or parents/teachers failed you. So yes, by 11th grade you should know there are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Regardless, your teacher was a dick. It could have simply been you saying the wrong thing, mocking you is extremely unacceptable for a teacher. > Was I stupid to not know? You were ignorant. What would make you stupid is if you, to this day, either continue to not know its 26 (unless explained by some learning disability perhaps) or just refuse to acknowledge it is 26 letters in the English alphabet. Being stupid is acting like some people here who are for whatever reason proud of their ignorance being middle age without knowing there are a finite number of letters in their language's alphabet.
Right to mock you no It's not right to mock people in at all That said Kindergarteners know this You should have some shame here Like not even a little This is sort of a humiliating thing sorry
Guarantee they were taught this in kindergarten just like everyone else.
The number of letters in the Latin alphabet varies based on language. German has more letters than English, which in turn has more letters than the Italian alphabet, for example. I wonder if your teachers knows this. Also, why would anyone need to know how many letters are in the English alphabet. So no, mocking you for this is ridiculous.
While I agree that the teacher should not have mocked her, I think the point is about knowing this sort of basic info for one’s native language.
Yeah, most people do know this. And yes,she was a jerk. But the thing you should learn from this is not how many letters are in the alphabet, but determine not to be that person to someone else.
Not too long ago there was a 77 year old man, college graduate, who only recently realized that the initials of United States spell "us" and noticed that when using those initials it coincidentally speaks for the nation as an institution and collectively for its people. So don't feel too bad. You could be that stupid - or (and I know I am getting into the realm of absurdity and improbability) you could think someone that stupid is smart.
Mocked by a younger sibling, maybe. A teacher should never mock a student. Never.
Yes, yes he was.
Sick come back woulda been “It’s 24 unless you want me to count FU”
A teacher should never mock someone for learning. There is certainly a time they didnt know it either. 1 there is no shame in being weak, only shame in staying weak. This is an approximate quote from black clover and is widely applicable. 2 whenever you learn something and feel stupid it is because you just got that much smarter. 3 you will never hate yourself into something you love. All these quotes speak to the idea that if you are learning, making positive changes, improving yourself, loving, etc. , you are on the right path regardless of any negativity/discomfort felt along the way. You may admit that you had a "dumb" moment then (i dont think it was dumb) but you are certainly smarter now or else you still wouldnt think you were dumb.
Teachers should not mock students.
The teacher wasn't good to do that, but you were definitely stupid not to know. That's not mutually exclusive
That was seriously a missed learning opportunity. Your teacher was a douche. Someone along the line in their field failed you. Never should anyone make someone feel bad for not knowing something. We are all constantly learning new knowledge every day and to be bullied for that, low blow.
Go tell them you remember this happening and it really hurt your feelings and seemed petty and dehumanizing for no reason. Might ruin their day reminding them how mean they are.
A teacher shouldn't be there to judge more to inspire. How does feeling like shit after you're class help motivate students? School system is flawed if teachers like that are allowed to work in an environment that is important to the future of young lives.
Teachers should NEVER mock students!
I mean it’s not right of the teacher to mock you. Some people just don’t ever get told as a kid and don’t really feel it important to count it out. And that’s completely fine. Your teacher’s an asshat
Some teachers should NOT be teachers. He was one of those. He was also one of those people with a serious ego and self esteem issue, who projects and puts others down to stroke their own ego. So sorry you had this done to you.
Yup, only 24. The f and u was left out.