My 6th grade science teacher taught us that blood is red but that some people think it is blue until it touches air because our veins look blue under our skin. He explained how the different wavelengths of light are absorbed differently and they was why it looks that way. Two years later my 8th grade science teacher taught us that blood is blue until it touches air. She was not happy when I told her she was wrong. I even explained it and told her to go talk to the other teacher if she still did not understand. She still would not listen to me. Over half the class was in the same sixth grade class as me but I was the only one that either remembered or was willing to stand up to the teacher. I finished losing faith in the education system on that day.
Well my 6th grade science teacher told us that Chernobyl was fortold in the book of revelations and it meant that the world will end soon. Public school. In New England. In the 90s. The 1990s.
You unlocked a childhood memory of my insane conspiracy theorist father ranting about “wormwood” in connection with Chernobyl.
Wormwood, aka Artemisia absinthium, is the active ingredient in Absinthe.
These stories are so crazy to me …… sometimes it seems looks I got a better secular education from my religion school in the 1970s, with nuns. For many years the science teacher was the only lay teacher, never mentioned religion and we were certainly never fed any of that creationist crap from anyone.
It was not a Jesuit school but they really left a great impression of the long history Jesuit pursuit of knowledge and science
A teacher not able to fathom being corrected by a student. Terrible and terribly common. Afraid to lose their authority, perhaps? I had this happen to me at around 8 or 9yo : I corrected my teacher on a specific conjugation (the infinitive of a verb), but she wouldn’t admit she was wrong. That day I swore I’d respect anybody in a discussion, even when I thought I was right and they were wrong. I would consider their take at the minimum
My 7th grade science teacher told us that air is a perfect mixture. I raised my hand and said “how is it a perfect mixture when some cities have smog alerts, and the ozone layer hole?”
I want sent to the principal and told to never question teachers, they know more than I ever will. It was then I kind of gave up and saw behind the veil on education.
