Ask Lemmy

This one is funny, I innocently listened to Motley Crue when I was about 12, Girls Girls Girls in particular. You know that lyric about the menage a trois? There was no Internet in those days, so I just thought I'd ask my French teacher. She covered a smile and told me it meant three people were living in a house together.

Shakespeare's plays were never printed in his lifetime, they were compiled from people who saw the plays live, went home, and wrote down what they remembered.

My Spanish teacher would teach us Spaniard Spanish and claim it was Mexican Spanish. One day I found out the hard way.

Brazilian here - once had an english teacher call xadrez, the chess game, "checkers" (to be fair to her, "xadrez" could mean either the game or a checkered texture, but the game of checkers is what we call "damas"). She also called bolinhos (muffins) doughnuts (or "dou-go-nu-ty", as she spoke), and rosquinhas (doughnuts) muffins. I called out that she got the two mixed up, she ignored me.

She was a terrible teacher. She even forgot to put the correct text for an exam once, I asked her about the text during the exam and she just said "if you read it, you'll find (the answers)" - it took another kid bringing the same point for her to bother reading the exam she prepared and realizing she fucked up.

I shouldn't pursue further education

“With a mind like yours, you’re going to have no problem getting ahead in life”

I had a teacher tell me women couldn't get hemophilia because it's a sex-linked gene. True enough, but it's on the X chromosome, and what do you suppose happens if a woman has that gene on both of them... I lost points on a test because of that.

This was before the internet, so I couldn't easily find answers to prove he was wrong.

“The human eye can only perceive 60 FPS”

This was in a graduate level class studying optics for virtual reality systems.

I shit you not. I believed this for far too long.

If you study hard in school you can do anything.

We had a teacher that said phones could give you cancer due to radiation and the classic 5G causes X conspiracy theories. Certainly wasn't the worst teacher imo though.

Isn't a single teacher or statement. But how I was generally treated by the institution.

I am somewhere on the spectrum and/or have some kind of learning disability that makes the formal learning environment very hard for me.

I was tested as a kid back in the 80's, but they said I didn't score bad enough to be diagnosed and that I was just slow essentially.

So the school system stuck me at a desk in the back corner of the classrooms with a divider between me and the the rest of the room and more or less treated me like a leper.

Whatever the official diagnosis, I ended up getting into computers and turns out I am really good at it. So now I make a six figure income doing something I am interested in.

The experience ingrained in me a deep hatred for formalized education, especially when it comes to my son (who is officially diagnosed as autistic). I have a very hard time taking anything my kids teachers say seriously and as anything more than the rantings of a narrow minded fool. Thankfully, my wife being the wonderful person that she is keeps me in check with that. And reminds me not to think my experience at my backwater school was the norm. And I think she has been right this far thankfully.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

Had a science teacher back in middle school that claimed to have a buddy that "designed" a way to make gas engines more efficient by running the gas line over the engine to warm it up before entering the engine. Said that GM bought the "design" with no patent, and hid it away so that it wouldn't get out. Problem is, that's not how BTUs work and GM would obviously know that. Also that's a good way to destroy your engine by misfiring.

first day of a new school year "what are you doing in this class, didn't we made you fail last year?"

I had bad grades but mathematically good enough to pass just barely. She was the Computer Science teacher and I proved her wrong more than once in front of the class. So yeah, she had a grudge.

"You'll enjoy ice skating, it's easy!" - the teacher who took our class to an ice rink... 😂

The moment I'm over the ice I become the human equivalent of a scruffed cat and people started pushing me around like I was a hockey puck and I was smiling pretending I was having fun but inside I was like