Obey your teacher!

[faceless]

that'll learn em!

[major.tom]

I'm reluctant to chime in because teachers are generally under-appreciated. But there's always an exception...

"1 km, 1 mile; what's the difference?"
-- A NASA scientist working on the 1st Mars probe.

[faceless]

it's more the fact that he insists on accepting a falsehood that gets me, of course, it could be fake - but I actually think it's real.

[Skylace]

If it is real, it's one screwed up teacher for sure. I think the teacher should be fired or required to go back to get some class room management courses.

[Marcella-FL]

Resistence is Futile ...

[luke]

that letter goes along with what chomsky says, in that schools primary function is to get people to do what their told, to follow orders, understand authority and know their place

The school system tries to repress independence; it tries to teach obedience. Kids and other people are not induced to challenge and question. In school one is to repeat, obey, follow orders, and so on (138). ... designed to teach obedience and conformity and prevent the child's natural capacities from developing (174). Education is a period of regimentation and control, part of which involves direct indoctrination, providing a system of false beliefs (1). Teaching should not be compared to filling a bottle with water but rather to helping a flower to grow in its own way (135). Part of real education would be to make sure people understand very early on that the burden of proof is on those who claim the legitimacy of authority

from http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Chomsky.html

“Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don’t think people didn’t know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we’re educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don’t educate them, what we call “education,” they’re going to take control — “they” being what Alexander Hamilton called the “great beast,” namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.”

from http://oneducation.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/chomsky-quotes-on-education/

[Lostinthestates]

I believe the letter is true! I had loads of teachers like that at school!! I never was to popular with the teachers I have to say

[nekokate]

I have had an experience similar to this (but not as authoritarian) when I was 16 and in a Media Studies class.

The teacher was telling us the difference between a Monopoly and an Oligopoly, and saying that an oligopoly was market domination, while a monopoly was a few big companies.

I put my hand up and said it must be the other way round because monopoly contains "mono" which means singular. He was just like "nope, you'd think that, but it's not the case" and carried on with the lesson.

Of course, I was right, and it annoyed me.

[Skylace]

One thing I can assure all of you is I was not this kind of teacher. I constantly challenged the kids to think for themselves and even question me when they thought I was wrong. If I didn't know the answer to something (which amazingly enough happened! hee hee) I would tell the class I didn't know and I even turned it into extra credit assignments and would also do the research myself. Accept for the time when a student wanted to know if a stealth bomber would work better covered in jell-o.