• deadbeef@lemmy.nz
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    16 minutes ago

    Had a similar experience in what I think must have been my second year of primary school.

    I was asked to go through a math problem that was written out, something like “4 + 7 = ?”.

    I said “Four plus seven equals eleven”.

    The teacher said that was wrong and said “Four add seven is eleven”.

    I’m like, what is the difference? She says, we aren’t onto “plus” and “equals” yet

    Six year old me spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to figure out how their was some difference between plus and add. She just could have said “they are the same, but please use these words to describe them in our lessons”.

  • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    11 minutes ago

    This or something similar has happened to everyone I know 🇨🇦

  • jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk
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    2 hours ago

    That’s just bad teaching. If you’re not allowed to use negatives then the teacher shouldn’t be asking questions where negatives are the answer. 20-25 is NOT equal to zero whether you’ve learnt negatives or not.

    • silasmariner@programming.dev
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      2 hours ago

      It’s just a greentext. It’s fake.

      Also gay.

      Mostly it’s a fetishization of being the minderstood smart kid with scenarios that aren’t true but feel true.

      Pretty fake. Pretty gay.

      I don’t really like the slur I’ve been using here, but authenticity requires it. Oi moi.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    13 minutes ago

    Did I write this fucking greentext and then forgot or something, because this exact same thing happened to me, except they took my yugioh cards, not pokemon csrds

  • wpb@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    7 when the story happened, tells it 15 years later in 2020, so I’m supposed to believe this guy is 7 - 15 + 2025 - 2020 = -3 today. Something doesn’t check out about this story.

  • nickiwest@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    The bajillion stories in the comments about horrible experiences with math just reinforce the fact that I’ve made the right career choice.

    I became an elementary teacher as a second career specifically because so many elementary teachers are absolutely terrible at teaching math. (Mostly because they don’t actually understand the math that they’re teaching. In my university cohort, almost 50% of my classmates failed the math entrance exam the first time. There was nothing more complex than 5th grade math on that test.)

    Students should be allowed to use the strategies that work for them, and they should definitely never be punished for knowing math from higher grade levels.

    If a student in my class knows something more advanced, I will challenge them to use grade-level-appropriate strategies to prove that their answers are correct. And if they demonstrate that they can do both, I’ll give them more advanced work to help them grow.

    • scarilog@lemmy.world
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      38 minutes ago

      Seeing several of the most brain-dead people I knew in high school going into teaching really made me lose a little respect for teachers. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some great teachers, but this really explains all the shitty ones.

    • psud@aussie.zone
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      2 hours ago

      There’s good out there too. I was good at maths in school and was encouraged to do more advanced stuff

  • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zip
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    4 hours ago

    Oof, i can feel anon. Actually true probably, similar stuff happened to me. Also getting this writte in as bad behaviour as well. I started so many arguments with teachers because they were bullshitting. Maths is one thing, i was really into it as a child(still am) but i understand why a teacher has to teach things in order. Of course this could be solved with more resources, and more importantly, distrobuting resources better by having a bit more personalized education. But what i was on about is that its very common(in eastern europe at least) for teachers to spread actual complete fucking bullshit. The amount of times they took disciplinary action against me because i corrected their batshit insane claims is just sad. This mainly happened until 5th and 6th grade where i got to the conclusion that just discussing what we covered during the class, after the class, was a good way of clearing up the mess. Of course i knew way too much for a 10 year old(had an autistic sister who loved to infodump me, we still engage in it time to time _) but the point is that if a 10 year old is constantly correcting his teachers theres a problem in the system. I hoped that more western systems would be better but actually i dont see (sweden in my case) being much better for children even with everyone hyping it up. Well sorry for the rant, idk what could actually solve these problems exactly as im not an expert but i really hope we adress it one day…

    • faintwhenfree@lemmus.org
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      2 hours ago

      Reminds me of a time where I shortened the code for pointers in c++ at age 15, so quite old, and my teacher said it wouldn’t work (we didn’t have computers in that class, next class we would type the code and execute it in computer lab). Anyway I said it’d work, he said it would never work, I said well we can test it next class and teacher said we can’t waste time in computer lab like that, and I said I will ask principal for extratime in computer lab after school to prove that my code works. I got sent to principals office anyway for rude and unruley behavior and not only did I get scolded for trying to embarrass my teacher, I wasn’t granted extra time in the lab either. Next time in lab I managed to write the shorter code and get same results and I called teacher to show my code works, he just unplugged the cable and sent me to principals office again.

      Luckily this time they called my parents and my mom unleashed hell on them threatening with talking to press and media and name and shame the teacher and principal for being stupider than a student is when they stopped harassing me.

      And I quit paying attention in that class, I got bad marks for low class participation but hey I had already stopped giving fucks at that point.

      • AItoothbrush@lemmy.zip
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        36 minutes ago

        Ohh lol i just wrote c instead of c++. It was so low level anyway that i could just write clean c and it usually compiled as c++. But thst was already in highschool for me where they actually gave a fuck about us unlike in primary.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    I can believe this. Not fake, not gay. The math teaching of the past was so dumb. Even now, I have 2 kids who never got a bad math teacher and still love math; two who did (one teacher who actually thought women ought not get higher education) and those two do not

    And a good math teacher is a treasure beyond words. Mr. Galing, if I could have had you teach my kids through high school I would have taken them anywhere.

      • RBWells@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        4 I gave birth to plus 5 step kids - when we married 3 were already grown and 4 were in high school, only 2 were small (and we doubled up on birth control) so we didn’t have an impossible household situation. Enough kids to draw conclusions about the school system though.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          That’s a lot! Props to you for keeping your sanity.

          Can I ask what your cultural background is? Mormon? Indian? Catholic? South-east asian?

          • RBWells@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            Ha! Not religious, but yes from Catholic background both me & husband. I do like kids, and they are all glad now to have such an extensive network of siblings. White mostly by way of Southern Europe on my side, husband mostly by way of Eastern Europe.

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              Sounds like there were a lot of fights growing up but now they’re at somewhat peace with one another

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          16-24 slices per loaf, I have eaten on average 1.39‰ six dozen loaves today

  • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Ah I recall my “science” teacher when I was 13 explaining to us that all materials expand when heated and shrink when cooled.

    So I ask how ice floats, or how ice cubes swell above the tray.

    • psud@aussie.zone
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      2 hours ago

      And a good teacher would have told you that water freezing is one of the weird cases, as water has a less dense solid form than its liquid form. Although even water is less dense at 2° than at 20°

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    6 hours ago

    We had computer classes where we had to learn about spreadsheets.

    To do a number plus ten percent we had to put in A1+A1*10/100

    I did A1*1.1 like a normal person.

    She then went round to make sure everyone had put it in correctly. Got annoyed at me and changed A1 to something else to expose my folly.

    Was visibly annoyed when it showed the right answer.

    • needanke@feddit.org
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      5 hours ago

      (I don’t think that was your teachers point at all, but) couldn’t the different formulas have produced different rounding errors due to floating point percision?

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 hours ago

          yeah because excel does rounding stuff automatically for you

          try entering 0.1 + 0.2 - 0.1 - 0.2 == 0.0 in any programming language of your choice and see what happens.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        5 hours ago

        Doubtful, but if anything mine would be more accurate. Fewer calculation steps to lose precision on. I think most spreadsheet software fudges floating point precision anyway. A computer programmer may accept that 0.1+0.2 is not 0.3 but an accountant or mathematician would not be having it.

        I think she was just shit at maths tbh. As a kid you sort of assume all the teachers know more than you about every subject, and that’s not the case at all.

  • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Americanized versioned, but with a match teacher it went something like this:

    Teacher: Whoever can solve this will get an A.

    me: I have a solution.

    Teacher: come out and explain it.

    Me: I do just that.

    Teacher: that is correct, but you didn’t use the method we just learned, no A, sit down.