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loaExMachina , (edited )

Too many teachers assume if they admit they were wrong, the students will get more insolent, as if sensing weakness. I’ve briefly been an assistant teacher in a middle school, and I found that on the contrary, students seem to appreciate an earnest admission of mistake and calmly accept the apology. Even some students that would be insolent in other situations. When it’s clear you’re wrong and the student knows it, pretending you’re right won’t do any good. Acting in a respectable manner will get you more respect.

psycho_driver ,

Some teachers are just shitheads though.

kshade ,
@kshade@lemmy.world avatar

Never left school, mentally and physically.

NormalPerson ,

youtu.be/EqZjo_gSBVM

derfunkatron ,
@derfunkatron@lemmy.world avatar

My experience with this just taught me that eventually most teachers will just default to authority. They will tell you to stop questioning or stop being difficult in order to prevent the class from getting off-track. Instead they miss a teachable moment both about academic integrity and being a decent person.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Works as a parent too. The kid thinks they’re a genius for knowing something the parent/teacher doesn’t, learns a valuable lesson that adults can be wrong, and learns how to find truth. When we conflict, I say, “let’s look that up,” whip out my phone and look for 2-3 reliable sources on whatever the subject is, and read it together. Then I explain why I thought what I thought, which is a valuable lesson in how biases can cloud our judgement, and sometimes I find I’m wrong about something related as well.

I’m usually right, but sometimes I’m wrong, and I think that’s awesome.

GarlicToast ,

I have two professors that I have strong memory of.

The first thought classes that she was not qualified to teach. Using methods outside her narrow window of understanding hurt your score. She set a rule that if you ask for her to recheck a question on the final you will lose 20 points. On my final I had a minus 20 because she doesn’t understand powers of 2.

The second is brilliant but very absent minded. Gave us a badly worded question. It was meant to be a very hard question and I didn’t know the subject well enough to solve it. Used mathematical logic to prove he didn’t ask what he thought he was asking. And solved the very easy question he actually asked.

He gave me a perfect score and a job.

Mycatiskai ,

Hand or blow?

rtxn ,

Boob.

OsrsNeedsF2P ,

Checks out https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/cc93d033-1f36-4aeb-8fc6-0ec7ce8a666c.png

EddoWagt ,

I like how the definition is that it’s meaningless

eleitl ,

It is a widely known word. All greentexts are always 100% true.

SreudianFlip ,

May I just point out the elephant in the room?

“Gook” is a nasty slur for asian person. This word literally means ‘unintelligible like the nonsense languages of asians’

Let’s just let this word fade away like so many other bullshit slurs, thanks.

nightofmichelinstars ,

Most sources indicate that it’s about turkey noises.

www.etymonline.com/word/gobbledygook

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gobbledygook#w…

www.oed.com/dictionary/gobbledygook_n?tl=true&tab…

SreudianFlip ,

Ah yes, gobble is turkey sounds. Where, in those sources, does the etymology of the rest of the word get examined?

Nowhere, except by ‘elephant in the room’ inference: “first used by Texas politician Maury Maverick (1895-1954), … chairman of U.S. Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II”

Hmm.

“so prevalent was the use of the word gook during the first few months of the war that U.S. General Douglas MacArthur banned its use, for fear that Asians would become alienated to the United Nations Command because of the insult.” [wikipedia]

Hmmmmmm.

“In modern U.S. usage, “gook” refers particularly to communist soldiers during the Vietnam War and has also been used towards all Vietnamese and at other times to all Southeast Asians in general. It is considered to be highly offensive.” [wikipedia]

It’s not complicated or obscure. No need to whitewash this. Anyone early genX or older (edit: who grew up in North America) will remember.

nightofmichelinstars ,

I mean, sure? I know about “gook” and the timing does seem to work for your theory. I don’t think the connection is as obvious as you do. I don’t see sources for that part of it. A lot of other slurs are very thoroughly documented, including “gook” as a standalone. But if people find it offensive, easy enough to stop using it.

I want to thank you genuinely for making the point but also you’re being pretty rude so I think I’m not going to continue with this discussion.

Phoeniqz ,
@Phoeniqz@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

According to wikipedia:

The term gobbledygook was coined by Maury Maverick, a former congressman from Texas and former mayor of San Antonio.[19] When Maverick was chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II, he sent a memorandum that said: “Be short and use plain English. … Stay off gobbledygook language.”[20][21] Maverick defined gobbledygook as “talk or writing which is long, pompous, vague, involved, usually with Latinized words.” The allusion was to a turkey, “always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity.”

Please do a better research next time before writing an reply about some other word and making up causations where there are just correlations. Just because a word contains “gook” does not mean it’s related to the word “gook”

SreudianFlip ,

I actually remain unconvinced by the non-scholarly sources people are providing, authoritatively claiming etymology on scant evidence, and believe they are relying on the self-reported motives of Maverick.

‘Gook’ is only generally used as a slur, and other uses are obsolete by a century or extremely regional and rare. In 1944 the slur was the predominant usage, particularly around Maverick.

Do you have a more authoritative source?

Wereduck ,

I don’t think that’s the actual etymology. From what I can find it was an onomonpia about the sounds turkeys make, and a word for gunk. The second part of it is pronounced differently from the racial epiphet (with a more middle vowel like book rather than a forward vowel like boot), and which I understand to be a separate word with a separate origin. I avoid that one due to its spelling and nearness to the slur, but in a compound word it’s less likely to be misunderstood. The original use case of the word by the person who supposedly coined it was for needless verbosity. I could see some English speakers retroactively egg corning it and using it as a pun, or maybe it has an older origin than is recorded or the coiner was dishonest, but I can’t find an example or evidence of that having happened. If you have an example or personal experience it being used like you describe I’d definitely be interested. It’s also possible that I am misconstruing your claim to be one of etymology when it isn’t.

SreudianFlip , (edited )

Yes, good point, even though everyone in the US military at the time was using it to dehumanize the enemy and a military guy coined the term, I got caught up in etymology, and really it’s usage that matters.

For a while, particularly in my youth in western Canada, the racist connotations were upfront and emphasized for added contempt.

I think ignoring that historical usage is a mistake.

[edit: I am just realizing that some accents pronounce it quite differently–in w. canada it was and still is pronounced like the slur]

EnderMB ,

I’ve had a few awful teachers or professors over the years. One professor that sticks out was a total asshole to me. I had to go for surgery and rehab on an injury, so missed two of his classes. I emailed ahead to ask if there was anything important covered that I should make sure to read about in the required text, and his response was “this is an ignorant comment, everything I teach is important, if this is your attitude you’re going to fail”. The man was such a cunt that 16 years later I still use his work and personal email address (note: don’t put your personal email in your book that every student is forced to read for your shitty intro class) as spam fodder whenever a dodgy website has a subscription or email box.

Pair that with another professor, who gave an assignment with tiers for extra credit, on the basis that you complete the first tier to be eligible for the second. I decided to go for full marks, and completed all tiers, but broke my code 10 mins before review. He reviewed, told me that it was great that I even attempted, and only marked me down for the case I failed - turning a potential zero into 90%. It was the final mark I needed to pass his class, complete my degree, and to get the prerequisite to join my masters degree programme.

Bassman1805 ,

I once got a C- on an essay, but for extra credit we could submit that paper to a state essay contest. I was a state finalist in that contest, with my only revision from the class-submitted version being spell checking Britan->Britain.

Fuck you, Mrs Wickham.

Wizard_Pope ,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

Ah essays. The most bullshit part of school because they just cannot be graded objectively and never are.

Bassman1805 ,

I mean, few things in life can be graded objectively so that’s not really the best standard to hold education to. There’s a lot of value in learning and practicing the skill of taking in information and then rearranging it into your own words, creating and supporting arguments from the knowledge you’ve gained.

But the subjectivity of it DOES mean that occasionally teachers will need to set aside their egos. Those who legitimately want to educate the next generation usually can do that, but some just enjoy having power over children and absolutely will not units forced to do so (and doing so will just create a new grudge against that student).

Wizard_Pope ,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

Well of course nothing can be graded 100% objectively but maths for example. Your answer is either correct or not. With essays the teacher can just decide they don’t like your argument and you get fucked. I my 4 years of secondary school none of the 8 guys in my class ever got the best possible grade on an essay. Even after we got a less demanding teacher the grades barely improved.

sp3tr4l ,

Wow that is bullshit. Reminds me of the teacher who failed a student for drawing a digital clock in a square that prompted ‘Draw a clock showing 4:30 pm.’

Kid wasn’t wrong at all. Poorly worded question.

Further, please enjoy my own bitching about bad teachers all the way up into college:

I had a college professor for Political Science give me a shit grade for only one of the multiple papers required of the class.

Why?

I referenced US Army soldiers out right stating, on video, and with legit newspapers covering this, that they were being instructed to guard opium/poppie farms in Afghanistan, back when even liberals were pretending that was not happening. It was a paper on conflict goods, such as blood diamonds, and she pretended I was a conspiracy theorist.

Next year I had an Econ professor give my group and I got a crap grade (got nearly 100% on every thing else) on a report and presentation about Iceland’s response to the Financial Crisis of 08.

Why’d he do that?

Because Iceland’s actions and the subsequent effects on their economy did not fit into any of the possible policy choices (send all the corrupt bankers to fucking prison) and outcomes that his macroeconomic paradigm allowed to be possible, and functionally disproved it, as according to the model he was teaching us, this should have resulted in basically a total collapse of their economy. (There were some short lived negative effects, but faaar from what we should have expected)

I got a BS in Econ and a BA in PoliSci, double majored in 4 years, and what I learned was the only way to excel in either of these fields is to pick some kind of ideology to pledge your allegiance too, suck up and kiss ass and you’ll go far.

thetreesaysbark , (edited )

Your last point is pretty much the most likely way to excel in life too, unfortunately.

You’re lucky if you do actually like the person you have to suck up to.

sp3tr4l ,

Too bad I am autistic and can’t even pull that off the few times I’ve tried.

Oh well.

thetreesaysbark ,

I’m sure it must be more difficult for you :( just to try and keep you going though, it’s definitely a numbers game and those of us who don’t have any concerns sometimes misread too.

Tbh, the recovery is probably more important than the execution in this scenario.

dohpaz42 ,
@dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

That is an unfortunate reality. People don’t want innovation, unless it affirms their existing beliefs. Hollywood has done the world such a disservice in portraying this ideal that if you’re right, and persistent, that you can overcome this type of bullshit. That’s romantic, sure. Everyone would love to prevail the impossible. But life doesn’t work that way.

Actually, it’s not Hollywood that’s at fault. It’s parents’ fault. Parents teach little kids that if they tell the truth, work hard, dream big, and all of this other fluffy stuff, then they will be successful. That they can be anything they want, if they want it enough. That, and, Santa, Tooth-fairy, Easter Bunny, “I don’t have a favorite child” are all lies we tell our kids; in the guise of protecting them from the harsh realities of the world, when I. Reality we are all selfishly trying to relive some innocence we lost many years ago.

If we really wanted to protect our children, we would teach them young what to expect out of life, and how to traverse the fucked up societal highways to be successful. It’s not about doom and gloom, but teaching kids to recognize the power structure of whatever situation they’re in, and how to work it to their advantage (e.g., working with the grain, versus going against it) would do them well.

Anyway, I’m ranting now. My apologies. Carry on.

azertyfun ,

It goes deeper than parents being nostalgic. The veneer of meritocracy is load-bearing to neoliberal ideology, especially post-WWII. If we, as a society, acknowledged that no matter how big kids dream and how much they work they’ll probably never make it more than maybe one or two steps up the social ladder, our entire social model would collapse.

At its most fundamental level, that’s what the war against “wokism” is. It’s the privileged correctly identifying and targeting the existential threat that is the mere acknowledgement that we do not live in a meritocracy.

rickyrigatoni ,

Every time someone cries about how teachers today are so underpaid and disrespected and nobody supports them, I just want to say that maybe it’s because all of those kids who grew up constantly abused by the school system grew up into parents, taxpayers, and lawmakers who have a distrust in the whole mess.

0ops ,

I’ve had awesome teachers. I’ve had just as many really shitty teachers though. And lots of simply mediocre. I totally support higher wages for teachers, but honestly less in sympathy for today’s teachers and more to make it a viable career choice and attract some actual professionals. So many teachers seem to only want the job for the authority (over kids? I don’t get it), and only get it because the school district is desperate.

I don’t know if raising wages would fix the problem, I just know that it would increase the pool of applicants, allowing the school district to be more selective.

oatscoop ,

So higher wages, better working conditions, and in exchange maybe be held to a higher standard of professionalism?

That would never work!!!111111

khaleer ,

If you don’t get it, then you are succeffull human being.

alienanimals ,

– Teachers are paid a shitty salary

– Most teachers end up being shitty

Truly a mystery. If only we had some decent teachers so someone could figure this out.

bulwark ,

I’m for sure in this boat. I can’t think of a single teacher from highschool that has a positive impact on my life. All of them seemed to not give a shit and a few seemed to genuinely hate their job and students. At least that’s what I remember.

I will say now that I have school age kids its difficult to not impose my feelings about teachers on them, but I see the same shit I got growing up 20 years ago.

z00s ,

Maybe the shit was on your own shoe

khaleer ,

Lawmakers know perfectly how uneducated massess are batter than educated ones. and the best way to make ppl hate educating themself, is to create school system as we see it.

Duamerthrax , (edited )

I had a high school civics teacher tell the class that the the 2nd to 10th richest people in the world were the Walton Family heirs(Walmart). I knew at the time that Steve Ballmer was like the 5th or something. I brought in a printout of the Forbes Top 50 Richest people and he coped by saying that if you combine the wealth of the Walton family, they’d be in the top 5.

That was probably one of the more benign falsehoods that teacher taught.

Buddahriffic ,

Sounds like a teacher that hadn’t yet learned that you never stop learning. Was probably going off an outdated list and didn’t realize his fun fact had an expiry date on it.

Duamerthrax ,

This person had a very static view of the world, but I’m not sure the Waltons were ever that rich. Sure, Walmart is a huge chain, but there are bigger industries then retail.

Buddahriffic ,

You’re right, a number of them have individually risen decently high on the list, even at the same time, but the family has never dominated it like the original statement said.

This is actually news to me, too, because I was under the impression that there had been a time period where the Waltons’ wealth dominated most others, either before Gates rose to the top, or maybe with him in the top spot but then cleaning up most of the rest of the top 10 list.

Gradually_Adjusting ,
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

For people who are really good with words, middle school is when you either get the passion beaten out of you like this, or you encounter a teacher who is a Difficult Person, but they like you and you gain their powers

FreshLight ,

Their powers of being a difficult person?

Eggyhead ,

OP was probably saved by that final exam score. Judging from the opening from the text, it seems they were not putting much effort into the class. Sometimes a teacher needs to be stupid for a student to realize they can be smarter.

pearsaltchocolatebar ,

Yeah, that was me in school. Never did homework, but aced the tests. A few teachers made me take tests sitting next to them because they thought I was cheating.

SuddenDownpour ,

The fine line between being put on a podium for being gifted (and thus getting bullied), being severely mistrusted because your genius shows up inconsistently (and not getting diagnosed ADHD), and getting victimized by a teacher because you unintentionally brought light on their own mediocrity (because you’re autistic).

SLfgb ,

😢

DiploRaucous ,

Personal experience says there is no line there. It can certainly be both -_-

Eggyhead ,

Well if you give the teacher nothing to properly judge you by, it’s not unexpected for them to judge you incorrectly.

conciselyverbose ,

Maybe if they took 30 seconds to explain to me why I still needed trivial busywork instead of just failing me when I got 100 on every test because the material wasn’t at all challenging, I would have done better 🤷🏼‍♀️

Fucking people over when they’re objectively right definitely does not improve engagement or effort.

SomethingBurger ,

Two biggest groups of assholes in the world: cops and teachers.

andxz , (edited )

As I’ve worked most of my life in schools, and am married to a teacher I realize I have a bias, but some teachers do try their best to help every possible student.

I can’t count the evenings we’ve discussed certain cases and how to approach them.

We’ve been lucky in that we’ve mostly had the same students, as I worked with them as they were younger and when they switched up my wife got them.

We did work in special ed. though, focusing mostly on autism, so we’ve seen a lot of bad situations throughout the years, but I wouldn’t go blaming only teachers for that. There are also administrators, headmasters, outside influences and last but not least the parents that all play a role in every students education.

Then again this isn’t the US and I know how things look there in the educational sector, so your mileage may vary.

SomethingBurger ,

I’m not in the US; I’m French.

Teachers are the biggest losers ever. They enable bullying because they either don’t care or enjoy it (and a lot of times actively encourage it), they never admit to any wrongdoing ever, and worst of all do all of this for barely above minimum wage yet somehow are proud of their job.

Strawberry ,

worst of all do all of this for barely above minimum wage yet somehow are proud of their job.

What the fuck?

SomethingBurger ,

French teachers are paid around 2000€/month, so not quite minimum wage (which is at 1766€), but still insultingly low for a job that requires 5 years of higher education.

Strawberry ,

I was responding to the phrasing that seemingly implied that they should not be proud of their jobs because it doesn’t pay well

andxz ,

I mean, sure, I had a few bad teachers myself at certain ages, but there were good ones too.

Making it up to be some kind of power-trip seems wrong to me, although there certainly are a few of those.

I will say though, that teaching the same curriculum year in year out grinds down almost anyone.

I felt lucky that each student was truly different since their various issues needed such radically different approaches, but that was spec. ed., not normal school.

Farts ,

Teacher acted like a dick but it’s fairly easy to get a 98% on the final and get a C. Anyone who has taken a class in a standard us school and given a shit about their grade will recognize that they are typically also graded on the other tests, homework, class participation, quizzes, projects, etc.

Might also explain why the teacher was kind of a dick. Maybe anon was the pain in the ass student that clearly had the intelligence to easily pass the class but rarely paid attention, never did homework, was often disrespectful, etc and then was shocked when the educator wasn’t willing to work with them.

Wav_function ,

Those kids are neurodivergent. Class isn’t set up for them.

Meds or lol C

Rinna ,
@Rinna@lemm.ee avatar

“Funner is not a word”

FireRetardant ,

I called a college professor out on a wrong math equation on the board (missing a 0, not a huge deal) and he argued for a few minutes and carried on. A few hours later I got an email and he apologized, said I was right and sent me the right equation. HE DIDN’T DO THIS FOR THE REST OF THE CLASS. There are another 30-40 students who all wrote down the wrong math to study off of.

nightofmichelinstars ,

Crazy. Did reply with a polite acceptance of his apology and accidentally CC the entire class email list?

HexadecimalSky ,

In middle school I had to argue with a teacher that “Floral” was a word. I was unsuccessful in convincing him.

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