A Luther Burbank High School freshman was surprised to read his full name included on a biology final. Not only that, but he was being ridiculed. “In high school, there are individuals who are cross-eyed like (the name of a fellow student) and (the name of the student previously mentioned), which is a dominant trait. We call those individuals ‘weirdoes’. So, if you crossed two weirdoes (the two students named again), that are heterozygous for being cross-eyed, what is the offspring that would result?” Many students in the class were targeted by first and last name on the exam. Teacher Alex Nguyen chose to describe these students by their ethnicities and physical features, and then paired them up, posing questions about what traits a theoretical child of these two students would have. On one question, the teacher wrote a disclaimer, saying “in no way do I promote students being sexually active,” but the student’s parents and other teachers at the school said that the implication of any sexual relationship between students is inappropriate.
I mean, if we wanted our best and brightest (and most compassionate) to teach, we would pay them the best salary they could get with their degrees.
Note to good teachers out there (I’m a teacher too): I’m not saying there aren’t any! I’m just saying that those doing the hiring can’t afford to be terribly picky.
Teacher pay is supposed to be near the best in the nation in California too. But we still don’t pay teachers enough and this is the result we get.
But is that normalized for cost of living? Highest in the nation might still be near subsistence level in one of the highest COL states.
An education system that requires martyrs as teachers is not a sustainable plan.
“For some reason, the African American culture has influenced most of the student body. How? In African Americans, they have a gene for the pimp walk, which is dominant. What is the result if you cross (student name) homozygous dominant Latina with a homozygous recessive Hmong like (student name)?”
The question goes on to refer to the dominant trait as walking with a limp and the recessive trait as normal.
The teacher also claimed falling asleep in class was dominant.
And all the examples seem to be the same basic question, just different insults shoehorned in.
Sounds like they were trying to test students on how dominant/recessive genes work, but trying to make jokes so it’d feel relatable. But the jokes are just not funny at all. You have to be REAL close to someone for that to be a joke instead of an insult.
To me it sounds like none of us have context, and although inappropriate I suspect it’s far less devastating to the kids being tested than it would be to outside observers imagining themselves in the kids shoes.
My senior year had a teacher who slipped in a bunch of insider knowledge “material” into their exams to see who was paying attention/wasn’t there that day (“this ocean current should not be confused with this similarly named walk that we used to do when I was in school, if you see it spelled this incorrect way it’s the walk and not the current” (only without the latter qualifier), if any of you have ever taken this class, and didn’t miss lecture that day, you’ll know exactly which high school I went to and who’s class I’m talking about, hit me up!)
What the fuck.
Wouldn’t it be wierdos, not wierdoes? My autocorrect seems to think so.
Also in the UK, where I’m from, we have standardised testing, when i was a kid the tests were all made by exam boards like AQA, OCR and EdExcel. I believe they still are.
Despite the flaws that come with that it was better than allowing an individual to come up with the test as it removed personal bias and, obviously, derogatory remarks about students in the class.
I have also learned that “weirdos” is hugely offensive and California, USA. Almost as bad as “goof” in parts of Canada (goof means paedo in Canada)
I’ve lived in a handful of different provinces and have family in basically every region of Canada and I have never heard of goof being used that way. Where did you hear that?
Calling someone a goof is just another way to say they’re being silly/ ridiculous, which I’m pretty sure is the same way it’s used everywhere else.
I call my son a goof when he does something silly! In the UK, it just means silly. The image in my head is of Goofy, the disney character.
Good to know if i ever go to canada.
Also, weirdo is so innocuous in the UK. It wouldn’t turn a head. But then i suppose we call people a “cunt” or a “dickhead” and it can be as friendly as saying “love you” or “you are hilarious” and as nasty as saying “die in a fire”
So i suppose i shouldn’t be surprised by the nuances found in language even if we are speaking the same language, especially when there’s an ocean of space between us.
I suspect there’s nuance or personal nicknames being lost from context here. I strongly doubt a teacher (unless they want to be fired) calls students out like this without prior development of the material.
But I’m sure my take is far too rational for the knee jerk wing of my peers.
Goldberg said that due to the test being pulled, “there were challenges with the grading process,” which the district staff is working to correct. “We will evaluate the exams of the students who received the test and our Academic Department will contact students whose final grade has been impacted.” The Allens have not yet heard from administrators about their son’s test.
Throw out the test for all students. This isn’t difficult.
This guy needs a better outlet for his frustrations. I don’t doubt that teaching high schoolers is a special form of torture (having been a high schooler once upon a time) but test questions are not the place to vent.
I want to believe that these were questions he wrote out in a drunken stupor one night and then printed off the wrong file though doubling down on it with the projector kinda kills that idea. Dude maybe shouldn’t have been a teacher but it took him about a decade too long to figure it out.
He also needs to not be a racist, ablist piece of shit. This goes way beyond venting, this dude believes in ethnic cleansing and shit. I’m surprised there were no phrenology-related questions.
