Thread by @Ben_Alfred_

🧵 some stories of my teachers being similarly incompetent:

1. when i was a kid i asked my math teacher whether 0.9̅ = 1 given that 1/3 =0 .3̅.
despite there being a simple proof showing they were in fact equal, she told me this was debated.

2.a year before, i’d been chewed out for telling another teacher that dolphins, and consequently killer whales, were mammals

3.the same teacher screamed at me + sent me to the principal for correcting the memo when my answer didn’t match it (she had us mark our math assignments)

4. in grade 4 the edu head told me i could visit him at any time to show him my ideas. my teacher saw me approaching his office, took my book, read it, laughed at me, and sent me away

i overheard her laughing about it with other teachers. embarrassed, i hid somewhere and cried

5. my grade 2 teacher told my friends’ parents that i was a bad influence and to keep their children away from me because i’d explained human sexual reproduction to them.

6. in my HS physics exam, in spite of me being 1 of 3 ppl to get the answer on a question, the teacher subtracted multiple marks because i didn’t use the ‘taught method’.
i even wrote a paragraph explaining my reasoning for the sequence of equations i used.
1h of futile arguing

my mom asked this same teacher earlier in the year whether she had any more difficult textbooks because i’d asked for more more in depth material. she said to watch ‘bill nye’ on youtube💀

idk, there’re tons of other stories.
my whole school experience was characterised by shame, confusion, and an inability to relate to my peers. by the end of it stopped going to classes and handing in assignments.

my academic record:
grade 1-3: tests weren’t graded and there weren’t any end of year rankings.
grade 4: #2 in the grade, #1 of the boys
grade 5: #3 in the grade, #1 of the boys
grade 6: did cambridge year 7 for a year at a ‘learning centre’. no ranking but gpt said i did well.
grade 7: #1 in science, highest marks on the maths finals. overall performed well.
grade 8: marks start dipping, i start ditching class and abusing substances.
grade 9: didn’t complete — got sent to a long-term rehab.
grade 10: did quite poorly. 0% on certain subjects during some terms.
grade 11: skipped even more classes, handed in even fewer assignments.
grade 12: skipped almost all of my classes, and even got special permission to do so on account of my aptitude test scores. barely passed; did ok in maths and english, but got 36% in afrikaans and 39% in ‘life orientation (which is a fake leftist subject). if i’d done slightly better i might have been able to study in the US because the SAT would’ve carried. now i’m suck here.

it’s worth clarifying that all the teachers mentioned here were either white (in most cases) or indian (in two). i went to private schools so this is presumably not a za/bantu problem but a general one.