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While I can’t vouch for the authenticity or anything else other than it was submitted to a website that publishes humorous, but generally real stuff, and given some of the education related stories we’ve carried over the years, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is real.
And people wonder why our public education systems has become second-rate (at least) compared to so many others around the world.
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It’s not second rate. It’s different, and we have our share if idiots just like every other country. Aftrer you spend some time examining how other countries run their education systems, say Japan, Germany, Singapore, etc…get back to us with your thoughts.
And don’t just quote test scores…look at how they run their education systems. You might be amazed.
Respect my AUTHOR-I-TAY!! — Eric Cartman
Dear Parent,
I’m an idiot. You’re son called me on it because he has 2 brain cells to rub together. Tell him to conform with the rest of my idiot lemming students or else he’ll never grow up to become a decent politician.
Sincr… sinserio…. SENSSSS…
…
Regards,
Teacher
Well, Snopes doesn’t mention it. If it was really written in 1994 I’d have thought that they would have mentioned it by now whether it was real or fake.
UNREAL!!!
Had I have done this when I was in school, I would be in PERMANENT detention.
I always had a knack for asking teachers questions that they could not answer. Often times they would get frustrated. My sixth grade teacher told me to “figure it out” when I asked him how far the earth travels around the sun in a year. From time to time I was told to ‘look it up,’ not only by teachers, but by my parents.
Had I been given detention, or a time out, I would not have learned anything on my own. Learning on my own is how I live my life. When I started getting interested in computers about 25 (is it THAT long) years ago, it was absolutely necessary to learn things on my own.
Kids would be better served, if their educators would yield to them when they have a contradiction to the educators’ ‘facts’ or reason. Educators should put their ego away when teaching.
By the letter, I believe that the student did not start with insult, but got there after being told the wrong information multiple times.
Those that stand on their position for discipline instead of their competence should be beaten. That “teacher” is a loser and a half.
1,
My daughters go to school in Germany, and I thank the stars that they do. They are multilingual, competent in math, and can hold up their side of a conversation.
My daughter’s textbook teaches that “Things weigh less in space because gravity is weaker there.” For those not in the know, while gravitational attraction decreases with distance (e.g., from the earth), that’s not why cosmonauts float around in the ISS.
Her teacher explained it to me this way: we teach in a ladder approach, teaching a little now, and teaching more later. I guess that means we teach them falsehoods now, then later on we show them why their thinking is wrong. Because we know it’s too difficult to teach sixth graders that gravitational attraction decreases with distance.
We also had an automated call from the school yesterday telling us that a student was caught with a toy gun outside the school, after school. And that no shots had been fired.
7: The German system is good too, but it decides very early on whether you will be a “refuse collection engineer”, apprentice, or go to university. If you’re not picked for the college prep track, you don’t ever go to college. So where Germany ‘drives’ students to their future, here in the US all opportunities are always available.
It seems reasonable that the German college track schools are probably higher achieving than the average US high school, but let’s toss the lower two-thirds of that US high school student body, revamp the curruculum to match the remainder’s skills, and the comparison becomes fair.
FWIW Tracking in the US has largely been eliminated, although I believe it could be a valuable approach. Too many parents of lower-achieving kids screamed, so we don’t do it anymore.
…my info about Germany is maybe ten years old, so they may have revamped since then.
You’re a liar!
You’re lying, Uncle Dave.
Even though you may be right, you’re a liar.
A little unsettling, isn’t it? Now try that in a classroom full of kids. It’s a little unsettling there too. I’d say moreso. The lesson here isn’t about length; it isn’t about blind obedience – it’s about basic classroom order and civility. It’s about the incorrectness of calling a teacher a liar in front of the class. While you may not respect the person, you respect the position. If this kid is so smart, he might realize that people are prone to error and mistaken beliefs. But you don’t see me calling you all liars, I merely politely point out the truth, often with references, and allow you to correct yourselves.
RBG
10,
The important thing to remember is that the culling you refer to is strictly merit-based; if you are a good student, you will go to college, no real money worries (they’ve started to charge, but only 500 Euro a semester).
Most kids would have just pulled out their Gloc and taken care of business. This one was trying to be nice.
The teacher is a moron that is a given. But the kid should learn how to disagree with those in authority without making the situation worse. If he fails to learn this leson he will have lots of trouble in the real world.
Examples…
Bosses
Police with guns.
For all of you who say that the kid is in the wrong for the WAY he said she was wrong, I direct you to the line:
“In the future, Alex would be better off accepting my teachings without resistance.”
She doesn’t want ANYONE to tell her she’s wrong, she doesn’t care how they do it.
The important thing to remember is that the culling you refer to is strictly merit-based; if you are a good student, you will go to college
Merit changes over time. Someone who is a poor student at an early age can become a better one at a later age. I think that’s the deficiency in the euro system that Olo was pointing out. Under the German system, I probably would not have earned my degree.
Whether or not that’s a good thing is another story.
I don’t think Alex actually called the teacher a liar as the letter seems exaggerated.This seems like a grade 4 class subject, so I doubt that Alex would be “commanding” anyone. He may have asked out loud what the other students thought, but command? And I bet the teacher asked a rhetorical question, “do you think I’m lying?”
IMO, the teacher should be fired for incompetence.
If only I could transport myself into Alex at that moment in time I would ask for a demonstration…. Mr/Ms Moron, here’s a cliff 5 kilometers from here. Please drive toward it for 5 miles.”
Anyone else just want to punch the teacher in the face?
I could go into semantics and all that blah blah blah. But in the end, wouldn’t a god punch to the face solve some of these problems with moronic educators? How is the youth of this nation supposed to learn, explore, discover, invent, produce if they are made to conform without question and taught that no matter if they are being given lies about basic facts, they should accept and never challenge authority?
#7 – Those that stand on their position for discipline instead of their competence should be beaten.
I hope the irony of that stance isn’t lost on you… in fact, you are a bright cookie, so I am sure it isn’t 🙂
This teacher needs to be taken to task by the parent. Teacher’s across America, rejoice! My son will soon be out of high school and unless I knock up another floozy, you are safe from my wrath.
19,
I like to think my position is based on my competence, although some would argue that point!
😉
RGB
Assuming this story is true. I simply can’t believe you would defend or attempt to justify this teacher and their action.
The letter is 12 yrs old. There is no school identified so there is now no way to track its veracity. I put this down as unprovable bull crap.
There is always the probability that very similar teachers still exist today.
Many years ago, and I mean many, somewhere around the second or third grade, I was a mouthy little scut and would regularly call the rest of the class dummies ’cause I could read about ten time faster than they, and as a result spent a lot of time sitting on a stool looking into the corner of the room. But it was a better deal than the normal punishment, my whacko teacher would shuffle around the room with a ping pong paddle, smacking her palm with it and mumbling something about she really wanted to paddle some kid. I think she was a space alien.
It was only years later that I came to realize that perhaps something wasn’t quite right with my teacher, that this was not normal behavior.
Well, you’ve got to figure that these kids are going to one of two places:
1. Jail
2. McDonalds/Burger King/etc.
Why do they NEED to know if a mile is longer than a kilometer? Knowing the equations to figure out the conversion isnt going to help them make a prison-break
Of course very similar teachers exist since teachers generally come from the bottom third of college graduates. When teacher testing is implemented it’s generally followed by a weakening of standards for the tests or the testing is dropped. Then Governor Clinton was at the forefront of education reform, but even they watered down their testing when a shockingly high number of teachers failed.
Now I want to defend the teacher, but just for a moment…clearly this is a new teacher. She (assumption, but likely) is probably fresh out of college, as smart as anyone coming out of college looking to teach 3rd/4th graders, and completely inexperienced. That means she probably lacks the ability to turn the question onto the student to prove his point, rather she feels it more necessary to retain discipline in the classroom.
As somebody noted in the original sex-change thread, some people have the ability to deal with 25 young kids, and most of us don’t. Then she runs into a wise-ass kid and handles it badly, including the letter and the demand for obedience. It happens…there are only 20,000 teachers in that age range and some of them don’t make it.
(I have a feeling a lot of us on this blog were that wise-ass kid when we were at that age…)
Look at the letter again. The teacher’s not talking about the distance of a kilometer vs a mile. The question is which is longer. This means we’re talking 9 letters vs 4, so if they’re in the same font, of course a kilometer is longer. 😉
This happened to me.
It was about 5th grade. We were discussing the rotation speed of the Earth. I had read that at the equator this speed is about 1000 miles per hour. The bitch (perhaps I’m still a bit bitter on this) laughed at me and got the rest of the class to laugh at me. She said: “if the world was spinning that fast, every one would fly off the surface of the planet!”
When my 10th grade geometry teacher explained the grading structure I noticed that you could actually get a B, possibly an A, without doing any homework whatsoever. This is exactly what I proceeded to do. I was placed on ‘infinite detention’.
The teacher should have called security in and tazered his “disrespectful, lack of authority” ass…
The letter was written over 12 years ago. Time to move on, don’t you think?
Its always amazed me, that we are taught as IF we didnt have minds as children. And it has been proven, that children have the most adaptable brains in our Lives.
As I was growing up, when many problems with learning hadnt been discovered, I was always finding that we were reading and learning the SAME crap, over and over and over, and it was changing… So, my old answers Didnt match or work.
they teach us to memorize Everything, then tell us we are WRONG. Its very discouraging and dis-heartening.