I wouldn't even try to defend OP, but I once heard someone say that if you have more than four apples, then it is also definitely true that you have four apples.
That's true in a very literal sense, but there's a whole branch of linguistics called pragmatics that's concerned with things like why it's usually safe to conclude that when someone says they have four apples, they mean that have only four apples. When there's any ambiguity I talk like a mathematician and use phrases like "at least four apples" or "exactly four apples".
OP treating his statement as a correction requires that he’s not using this interpretation. If he were to use this defense, so could the teacher, so he’d just be changing how he’s wrong, not that he is.
As a teacher, this type of response is a great jumping off point for the discussion of curriculum vs truth, what is the extent of reality vs what is going to be on the assignment / exam etc.
It's also a great way to stick it to the know-it-all who is trying to undermine my credibility, and has the added bonus of perking up the rest of the class.
If you can actually have a reasoned discussion about it, instead of simply getting angry at being questioned, then you are better than 90% of teachers.
In my experience most teachers don't like being questioned, which of course is directly antithetical to their supposed vocation.
Because if we weren't then no class would ever learn anything, as the teaching would move at a glacial pace and cover material that isn't relevant until you start on your PhD.
My earth science teacher denied plasmas are a thing when I mentioned it
This was 8th grade
I Immediately lost all respect for her and if present day me were around for it I'd have taken her idiocy to the union rep to recommend she prove she actually has the education she claims to have had.
There is a point in everyone's education where they realize that their teachers are actually just adults, who are just old children, that went to school a couple years longer than you.
Mad respect to teachers though. I specifically remember my computer science teacher to be the coolest and most knowledgeable guy ever.
My history teacher taught us conspiracy theories and Vietnam War movie quotes. On jfk we spent two whole lessons on umbrella man, lessons on box cart hobos, missing frames of the z film, back and to the left...
Decent state school in the UK in the 90s. Kinda reassuring the world was just a crazy back then
Middle school teachers in Texas only require a generalist certification, a Bachelor's Degree, and completion of a teacher training program to teach core subjects. That cert (which also exists for elementary school teachers) requires only a basic understanding of each core subject area. There are certifications specific to each core subject (I have Math 4th-8th, also Math 8th-12th, along with a Master's in math), but there is no guarantee you're going to get a teacher certified in their field. As such, you get teachers who don't understand their subjects at a very deep level or how what they teach connects vertically to their student's prior education in that subject and what they'll learn in future grades.
It is a big reason why students to come to my high school classes hating math, I think, because it was confusing to them being taught by teachers who only had a moderate understanding themselves and probably taught them lots of memorization tricks and mnemonic devices instead of helping them understand their origins and why they work.
That's exactly why i hated maths when i was in school, i did not understand it. The teachers just tell us to memorise the formulas but i did not understand what is the concept of those formulas in the first place. Now as an adult i admire maths, it's the only language that works anywhere in the universe, math is beautiful! I really wanted to understand it but i just don't have the time and energy. Someday, if i have children, I'll get them interested in maths at an early age. I want them to see what i couldn't, the beautiful world of mathematics.
My daughter had a science assignment from her second grade teacher to record and draw the moon every night for two weeks. I emailed the teacher and asked if it was sufficient to use a moon phase tracking website. She responded saying that, as the assignment states, the children needed to observe the moon directly. When I responded back asking if she really intended the children to stay up late enough, or get up super early due to the shifting times of moonrise and moonset she lost it, telling me the moon should always be visible before the kids bedtime. Ignoring weather, what lunacy...
I pretty distinctly remember being introduced to square roots at the same or nearly the same time as complex numbers. Obviously we didn't do the whole Complex Numbers Extended Cinematic Universe, but I think my class did learn to solve quadratics with complex roots in middle school.
I mean I did go to Catholic middle school, but I don't think the math education was that weird.
Yeah advanced placement math in catholic schools gave me the same experience. Similarly I think kids can handle introducing negative numbers as you teach them subtraction.
Yes, I am the kind of person who gets upset when teachers pretend things don't exist and then gaslight students who know those things do exist and want to ask about them.
You sound like the kind of person who thinks it's wokeism to take issue with saying Columbus discovered the Americas when he A) Never landed on them, B) Didn't even think it was the Americas himself and went to his death bed swearing it was Indonesia, and C) WAS PRECEDED BY LITERAL MILLIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WHO HAD BEEN LIVING THERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
I agree this to some extent. I had a teacher who said conduction(thermal) does not happen in liquids and gases. Even according to textbook, fluids does convection and radiation but no mention of conduction, and there was an excersise question:
Conduction occurs in _______.
a) Solids b)Liquids c)Gases d) All of the above
The answer in teacher's manual was (a) and I(and my friend) disagreed on that and argued. The teacher actually belived it happens only in solids and she was against me. I even wrote the "wrong" answer as per teacher on exam and lost 1 mark in that exam. And finally we got redirected to a senior teacher who said I was correct but the manual for teachers said so because they thought that shoul be introduced in higher classes only. It was pretty unacceptable to me as they don't NEED to say the wrong answer and they can simply say conduction occurs in fluids as well. It bought more problem than what it would have been if real answer was given. Even the teacher belived fluids don't conduct and and spread the misconception to students(which was reinforced by her when we argued).
I belive there should be a small mention of theese things for 1) The sake of avoiding misconception AND 2) For enhancing the curiosity of the students.
A single sentence mentioning of complex numbers in 10th grade by my favourite Math teacher bought Great curiosity in me.
One more thing to add, I have never seen it mentioned that conduction occurs in fluids explicitly in later classes but it was kind of assumed everyone knows. I wonder if there are students in my age who still belive It doesn't.
WAS PRECEDED BY LITERAL MILLIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WHO HAD BEEN LIVING THERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
That's a very pedantic way to look at it. When teachers talk about the discovery of the Americas, there's an obvious implied "by the Europeans, for the purpose of permanent settlement" attached to it. Answering the question "who first visited Japan?" with "The Japanese" is completely useless, as an analogue.
Now, if you were to talk about how the Scandinavians settled bits of Canada at least 500 years before Columbus was born, that'd be much more interesting.
I disagree. In physics, you choose the simplest model that works for a particular purpose. If it is enough to assume that there are three phases, then that's the simplest model that works, and therefore the "correct" one to use. A model that has four phases is, then, bloated.
Did the same thing to a science teacher when they said, "light only travels in a straight line" thing. It DOES only travel in straight lines, but refraction is a thing, and geodesics are never perfectly straight.
When talking about normal refractions, it can be argued that thoose are still two peices of straight lines just like reflections.
But there was some experiment which light bends in curved path in a solution of varying concentration from top to bottom. So there was a gradient of optical density(higher at bottom) and caused smooth curving of light
When I was TAing gen chem we had a cute lil red 40 UV-VIS spectrometry lab. I got done explaining absorbance and a student raises her hand and asks, "But then what is reflection?" Like lay off kid I'm just an undergrad.
Another time when I was TAing quant one of my students was confused by the hydronium-hydroxide thing and asked if there were any other structures for water. I told him that there were loads and that it was a question for the professor who confronted me a couple days later telling me not to confuse his students lol
The approximations, assumptions, and historic artifacts we use to make science digestible to students can be frustrating, but also kinda fun. It makes it feel all secret and wizardry.
My high school taught the quantum mechanical model of the atom instead of whatever simplified model most high schools teach.
I found out this was a huge advantage taking university chemistry because I was like "cool this is all review I'm gonna ace this," but everyone else in the class was like "what the fuck is going on this isn't what they taught us!"
Four states of matter are observable in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Many other states are known such as Bose–Einstein condensates and neutron-degenerate matter but these only occur in extreme situations such as ultra cold or ultra dense matter.
You either accept a simple model (fitting the audience/context) or your being pedantic about it, then the answer is anything >=5, but definitely not 4.