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I'm sure there's been many variations on this thread (like one about teachers being totally wrong), but I feel like it's been a while. This is the thread for stupid poo poo people have said in the classroom. Dumb questions, dumb attempts at calling the teacher/prof out, dumb answers, wrong teachers, etc. Please don't turn it into an STDH fest. I hope to god that "then why does it taste salty?" is probatable. For content: In Evolutionary Psychology my freshman year, we were discussing a study showing that humans preferred the trees that populate the African savannah--trees that they could take cover behind as well as see far beyond. One girl in the class pipes up with: "But I feel like those results are skewed by pop culture, because, I mean the Lion King is such a classic!" When the professor told her that not everyone has seen the movie, another girl exclaims "  WHO HASN'T SEEN THE LION KING?!"A girl in one of my classes contrasted literary theory to criticism by saying "It's just a theory, like gravity. We know it's there, we just can't prove it." In AP Bio a girl asked why prostate exams are administered from behind, because wouldn't it be easier to go in from the front (  ).And finally, my own idiocy: In Intro Bio in 9th grade, we were discussing Kelvin, and how everything would freeze at absolute zero. So I asked, "What if, what if what if you were like, jumping and in mid-air, and then suddenly the world hit absolute zero? Would your body just stay in the air or fall down?" I had to repeat and rephrase it three times before saying never mind, it's stupid.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 00:13 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 00:27 |
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A girl in a tenth grade Literature class I was sitting in on (affluent 14-15 year old Californians) raised her hand to ask the teacher, apropos of nothing, "What happens to your body after you die?" The teacher was surprised, but patiently explained that, depending on the wishes of the deceased, or their closest living relatives, they were usually buried or cremated. After some confused interplay, with other students interjecting in disbelief, the girl said, "So, like, everybody that's ever died is just in the Earth?" Yes. "Gross," she concluded.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 01:12 |
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Henchman of Santa posted:
Well there's your problem. Similarly a problematic setup, I took a class called Survey of Japanese Literature. It was actually really enjoyable... except for the one known only as Boots. That is not his real name, but it is what he insists on being called. Boots was "that kid" in a lot of different ways--mom jeans, bowl cut, brings his own 2 liter of Mountain Dew or pint of milk to drink during class. Surprisingly thin for that lifestyle. Of course, because we were in a Japanese literature course, everything that came out of his mouth had to circle back to anime. Portrayal of Genji as a rather effeminate, sensitive figure with a great love of poetry? Not because of courtly life ideals from the era. It's because anime. Definitely not the other way around, either. Reportedly in a developmental psychology course he claimed that children who are "messed up" can be cured by having a parrot for a pet. Because it worked for him, you see.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 01:25 |
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My favorite happened when I was teaching a high school creative writing class. One girl looks up from her writing... Her: "You know those things that frogs sit on?" Me: "uh... lily pads?" Her: "Yeah! ...Do they still have those?" Me: 
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 01:25 |
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Someone asked if the country of Europe was a continent in my US History class...
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 01:39 |
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I took a Problem Solving summer course in College. It was pretty much the easiest math course you could take and it was just like.... solving word problems and simple puzzles. I actually felt a little insulted by how easy it was. There was a girl in the class who didn't think it was so easy, though. We were given a problem to solve independently one day out of our little Doofus notebooks. I'm paraphrasing, but the chapter before the question told a story about how some great Mongolian general realized it was better to chip at the Great Wall slowly bit-by-bit rather than attack it full-on all at once. Or something stupid like that. If I didn't do a good job of explaining the story, it was supposed to be a major hint of how to solve the problem, which was something like this: You're a doctor, and a patient comes to you with a massive brain tumor. You have a tumor-shrinking ray that, if used on its low setting, won't erase the tumor. If used on its high setting, it will kill the patient. What would you do? The answer seems pretty obvious I think: You use the ray on the low setting several times. You could probably logic your way out of it making sense but it's definitely what they were aiming for. Sorry, long setup, I know. The girl is completely blown away by this question. She doesn't know what to do at all and it seems to be legitimately bothering her that there is nothing she can do to save this hypothetical man. Frustrated, she stealthily calls her father, because he is a plastic surgeon and will obviously know what to do. The problem is she never explained to him that this was a hypothetical situation for a problem solving math course. So this plastic surgeon, completely dumbfounded, reasons that the only logical thing to do would be to try the high-setting blast and hope for the best. Our professor, a TA who barely spoke any English, asks for someone to answer the question, and this girl's hand proudly darts up. She parrots what her father said, only to completely dumbfound the poor TA. I can't really do the scene justice in type without totally stereotyping the guy's voice, but seriously, he was a young Chinese dude who barely spoke any English and just couldn't wrap his mind around this girl's answer. She got completely indignant and started actually yelling at the TA when he tried his best to explain to her the real answer, because "MY DAD IS A DOCTOR AND YOU CAN'T EVEN SPEAK A drat WORD OF ENGLISH  "I can say from them titties that her dad was a good plastic surgeon though 
That DICK! fucked around with this message at Jan 6, 2013 around 01:48 |
| # ? Jan 6, 2013 01:45 |
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I remember in my AP Writing class in Highschool, occasionally we would get done early or the teacher would have to do something for the NHS so we would be left to play trivia in the back of the classroom. One of the questions that came up was, "What is the largest fresh water lake in the world?" Immediately, a girl that had a reputation for not being the brightest answered "The Great Salt Lake." She was never allowed to forget this. I'll probably remember other things if I think about them. Honors students in GT/AP classes are always fun.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 01:55 |
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"NASCAR uses gas, not oil!" Said in an 8th grade chemistry class during a discussion about environmentalism.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 02:05 |
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"Excuse me, this question says that Kesey said something about McMurphy. Which character was Kesey?" --Someone during a high school test on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Kesey was the author 
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 02:25 |
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"What do you mean, they aren't sure Shakespeare was an actual person? Didn't they have, like, recording devices in the 1800's?" -a girl in my English class Junior year of high school.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 02:35 |
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In my women's history class we were talking about Chinese immigration in the middle of the 19th century. The professor was talking about the cost of the trip and how the immigrants often had to borrow money from their family back home and that they often came over in large groups of hundreds to even thousands of people in each voyage. A girl in the back of the class raised her hand and asked, "How did they fit all of those people onto one plane?"  vvvvvvv My excuse is that it was a women's history class and there were no men in it. 
utada fucked around with this message at Jan 6, 2013 around 03:00 |
| # ? Jan 6, 2013 02:38 |
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A girl said... I remember this thread.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 02:42 |
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"Is magic real? I've seen Criss Angel levitate!" -said in a 200 level college science class
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 02:58 |
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Teacher: Michelle, don't cheat off Kelly's test. Michelle: But I don't have anything on my test. And neither does Kelly. Similarly, one of Dad's students once said when accused of being somewhere he shouldn't, "It wasn't me. But I wasn't the only one." Showing my age here: Girl in high school history class: Miss Smith, was Andre the Giant really the eighth wonder of the world?
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 03:02 |
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I don't remember how we got on the subject, but a girl in my AP US History class once shouted "Yeah, why do Mexican people always name their kid Jesus?" She ended up graduating 3rd or 4th out of my senior class. And there was a kid in my Japanese class who would repeatedly ask the Korean girl who was learning a 3rd language if she ate dog. DemonDarkhorse fucked around with this message at Jan 6, 2013 around 03:09 |
| # ? Jan 6, 2013 03:03 |
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I think this was middle school, Biology class. Teacher asks one of my classmates, pointing at a red line in a circulatory system diagram: so, if arterial blood is blood that has been oxygenated, venous blood is? Kid thinks very, very hard, looks at the diagram right in front of him, full of red and blue lines, and answers confidently: "...blue!". I guess he gets points for logical deduction.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 06:23 |
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That DICK! posted:Our professor, a TA who barely spoke any English, asks for someone to answer the question, and this girl's hand proudly darts up. She parrots what her father said, only to completely dumbfound the poor TA. I can't really do the scene justice in type without totally stereotyping the guy's voice, but seriously, he was a young Chinese dude who barely spoke any English and just couldn't wrap his mind around this girl's answer. She got completely indignant and started actually yelling at the TA when he tried his best to explain to her the real answer, because "MY DAD IS A DOCTOR AND YOU CAN'T EVEN SPEAK A drat WORD OF ENGLISH I had a macroeconomics class with a kid like this. He could not wrap his mind around using "guns and butter" to explain various concepts. He always wanted to argue how much more useful a gun was than a stick of butter.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 06:50 |
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"I think it was black people that evolved from monkeys and not white people."-Said by a distant cousin of mine in my high school biology class. Honestly couldn't believe we were even remotely related when that little jewel was said. Another stupid line by the same cousin: "What does harvest mean?"
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 06:52 |
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I believe it was my pathology II class, my teacher was quite keen on showing us slide shows of the various illness and conditions we were discussing. We were talking about hydrocephalus and looking at pictures of children with their heads swollen up ten times the size of their own bodies. This woman, who had pretty much been the bane of my existence from day one of the program, raised her hand to ask the teacher: 'Is that baby a mongoloid?' The teacher simply told her no and moved on. She did not graduate.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 07:20 |
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Argument between some people in science about eating wild animals such as deer. Dumb blonde girl: "That's gross, they have babies and stuff!"
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 07:35 |
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I still remember one bit from High School History. About a month into 'The Origins of WW2', someone sticks up their hand and says in a voice of painful sincerity "Are we ever going to find out who won?"
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 07:38 |
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In my 10th grade year of high school I was eligible to take some of my courses at SDSU for college credit. If I remember correctly you had to have a 4.0 or something to qualify- either way, I ended up taking Japanese since I had taken it 3 years prior and hoped it would be a little bit more challenging at a college level. Since admittance was somewhat selective, a lot of the people in my class were pretty cool and more into learning language and studying abroad than the typical high school otaku in my other classes. There was, however, one girl in my class who was the stereotypical overweight, socially awkward, black Death Note T-Shirt/Full Metal Alchemist pendant wearing weeaboo and she would constantly butt in on other people's conversations/class discussions to talk about poo poo she didn't know anything about. During one discussion we were going over a very brief timeline of Japanese history when we hit on the topic of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-- very offended (she was a pasty white redhead), she raised her hand to interrupt the class to explain how she didn't understand why the Americans would "bully" and "attack" the defenseless Japanese people who were innocent and hadn't done anything wrong. Even though it was pretty obvious she was completely ignorant to Japan's antagonistic role in WW2, I think the teacher tried to legitimize her statement by turning it into a broad discussion of nuclear warfare and asking her if she felt the use of nuclear weapons would ever be appropriate, even against those less-innocent. She then proceeded to explain how "We should nuke the North Koreans before they nuke us" and that it would be legitimized because "if they're going to threaten us with nukes then they should be prepared to be nuked themselves." She later told me during a class lunch about how she goes to a school made up mostly of minorities and didnt "understand why they choose to act like animals!" and that "if they act like animals than we should be able to treat them like animals!" 
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 07:41 |
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I still remember one bit from High School History. About a month into 'The Origins of WW2', someone sticks up their hand and says in a voice of painful sincerity "Are we ever going to find out who won?" I repeatedly made this joke in High School history and thought it was hilarious every time.  Once in 8th grade a girl raised her hand during a discussion of the Civil War and said "what does any of this have to do with what I saw in The Patriot?"
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 08:21 |
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Chemistry. The TA asked for us to give examples of bases, and I raised my hand eagerly with an answer: "Soap." TA: "Soap. Why?" Me: "To neutralize the acids on our body." (wtf) Class: LOL There's an actual chemical reason why soap is a base, like the way it interacts with grease and bacteria, and the fact that if it were acid then it would be bad for ("corrode") our bodies. But I wasn't having any of it.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 08:28 |
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"So is sugar just salt and water mixed together?" I'm cheating though, this wasn't said in a classroom It was a National Honor Society meeting
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 08:32 |
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Mr. Snyder, what is cum? Yup.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 09:13 |
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Saint Seafoam posted:She later told me during a class lunch about how she goes to a school made up mostly of minorities and didnt "understand why they choose to act like animals!" and that "if they act like animals than we should be able to treat them like animals!" I go to SDSU and I need to figure out why I never encounter these type of people in my classes.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 09:28 |
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In my final year of high school, in Maths class, someone raises his hand to ask a question. "So, teach, what's that big S up there mean?" We had only like, spent the last month on integrals, so gently caress knows what he'd been doing up till then.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 09:57 |
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This doesn't have context. I don't remember why we were discussing it. We probably weren't discussing it. "Sir, isn't the sea salt water because of all the salt tankers that have sank in it?" - On the other hand, there was the time I was quietly doing my routine diabetic blood sugar test in the corner before lunch and the teacher said I should do it in the cupboard because she's diabetic too and she knows we should be ashamed of the way we are 
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 11:55 |
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Chemistry class in high school, talking about global warming and how it could be fixed/prevented. A girl raises her hand and says, "Well, we're going to get ice from the Antarctic with helicopters and throw it into the ocean to cool it down, right?" I swear to God. Everyone was goddamn dumbfounded and I thought FOR SURE she had to be loving around with us or something but no. Teacher explains to her that, no, we can't do that. She accepted that she was wrong fairly gracefully though. Well, the high school only has a 50% graduation rate, so maybe not too unbelievable.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 11:58 |
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cubivore posted:Chemistry class in high school, talking about global warming and how it could be fixed/prevented. A girl raises her hand and says, "Well, we're going to get ice from the Antarctic with helicopters and throw it into the ocean to cool it down, right?" I swear to God. Well, it worked in Futurama.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 12:52 |
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I had a student teacher in fourth grade who didn't know that "talon" was a real word. It was from our vocabulary list for the week. 
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 13:26 |
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First science class of high school. The teacher asked us what the scientific term for a living thing was, and I stuck my hand up. The correct answer was "organism" but I didn't say organism - what I said sounded quite like organism but was missing a couple of letters, and I said it very proudly. It wasn't a very good start to my high school career.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 13:48 |
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Recently: Student: Do bears make honey? Me: (sighs) Yes, they do. Student: how do I get my braces off? Me: Go to the orthodontist Student: He won't see me anymore because I missed so many appointments. Me: go to a different orthodontist. Student: My mom says she is going to take them off with pliers. Me: Good luck with that. Last semester, teaching Vergil's Aeneid to a bunch of HS Seniors. I was talking about the moment when the reader first sees Aeneas, and he is stretching his hands to the sky, in the middle of the storm at sea, lamenting the fact that he did not die at Troy at the hands of the Greek warrior Diomedes (instead of, at sea, like he thinks he is about to die). I went through this dramatic moment, trying to convey how the idea of country and being a warrior was everything to these men and that is why Aeneas would have rather had a more "honorable" death at the hands of Diomedes. Students were rapt with attention. When I finished, a girl raised her hand and said "you know, I get it, that he wanted to die in battle, but why did he want to get diabetes?". Then I stabbed myself in the eye. Teaching Latin I, a 16yo girl was impressed to know that people in Italy have cars and electricity.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 14:12 |
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In Classical Civilisation we were studying The Aeneid. As a large chunk of the tale takes place in Carthage, we ended up discussing Hannibal and his crossing of the alps. After ten minutes or so, someone pipes up and asks "So when did he eat people?" 
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 14:20 |
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In my grade nine health (sex ed) class we were having one of those blow off days where you just asked the teacher general questions that you wanted the answer to. So most of the class is asking questions that are mostly sensible and completely unremarkable when I notice that there's a group in the back of the room just talking among themselves very quietly, now these kids were what I would have referred to at the time as the popular kids, your athletes and class clown types, generally not the brightest of folks. Eventually they seem to settle on something and choose one among them to speak, he raises his hand and asks, "So if you're having like anal sex with a girl is there a chance you could paralyze her?" Needless to say everyone including the Teacher lost it but when she finally composed herself she said, "I'm not sure what you mean." Well these boys in the back looked a little confused and maybe a little affronted by our amusement at their thoughtful question so the speaker clarifies, "Well you know, when you put your penis in could hit her spinal cord and paralyze her." The same guy also asked if you could hit a Baby in the head with your penis if you had sex with a pregnant Woman.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 14:25 |
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I was teaching English to a group of 14-15 year olds, and we had just read a text on a charity dealing with illiteracy and were discussing it, when one student seriously asks how they learned to speak if they couldn't read. She genuinely thought reading was somehow a prerequisite to speaking. Her best friend couldn't read an analog clock.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 15:37 |
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Ursus Veritas posted:In my grade nine health (sex ed) class we were having one of those blow off days where you just asked the teacher general questions that you wanted the answer to. So most of the class is asking questions that are mostly sensible and completely unremarkable when I notice that there's a group in the back of the room just talking among themselves very quietly, now these kids were what I would have referred to at the time as the popular kids, your athletes and class clown types, generally not the brightest of folks. Eventually they seem to settle on something and choose one among them to speak, he raises his hand and asks, "So if you're having like anal sex with a girl is there a chance you could paralyze her?" Needless to say everyone including the Teacher lost it but when she finally composed herself she said, "I'm not sure what you mean." Well these boys in the back looked a little confused and maybe a little affronted by our amusement at their thoughtful question so the speaker clarifies, "Well you know, when you put your penis in could hit her spinal cord and paralyze her." Health class is hilarious. A dude asked if you could get AIDS if there was an AIDS infected bandaid in the public swimming pool. Because he'd heard that Saddam Hussein was putting AIDS bandaids in public swimming pools to kill us all. In Australia. In 1996. The teacher managed to keep a straight face, but everyone else mocked him for the next 3 years. Edit: We were 16 at the time, the first gulf war had been over for 5 years. The dude had been harbouring this fear since he was 10 or 11. AlphaDog fucked around with this message at Jan 6, 2013 around 16:14 |
| # ? Jan 6, 2013 16:09 |
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In AP European history, we were doing a unit on the Renaissance. During part of the teacher's lecture, it suddenly hits me- a complete revelation. I lean over to my friend in the seat next to me and whisper: "Holy poo poo dude- the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were all named after Renaissance men!" To which he looked at me and responded, "uh... you didn't know that?" It was me. I said the stupid poo poo.
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 16:15 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 00:27 |
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High school biology teacher had 2 good ones. When I had the class, she said that unborn babies get oxygen via inhaling amniotic fluid. I didn't feel like arguing and neither did anyone else in the class. Four years later my brother was in her class. In addition to the above gem, they were going over a unit on sexuality and she was explaining the composition of semen. ... and then the seminal vesicles, like, pour gatorade on the sperm. That's what makes it taste sweet!After about 5 seconds of stunned silence the classroom erupted in laughter and after a couple of feeble attempts to salvage the situation, the teacher fled the room. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Jan 6, 2013 16:52 |
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