For people who are really good with words, middle school is when you either get the passion beaten out of you like this, or you encounter a teacher who is a Difficult Person, but they like you and you gain their powers
Their powers of being a difficult person?
Wow that is bullshit. Reminds me of the teacher who failed a student for drawing a digital clock in a square that prompted ‘Draw a clock showing 4:30 pm.’
Kid wasn’t wrong at all. Poorly worded question.
Further, please enjoy my own bitching about bad teachers all the way up into college:
I had a college professor for Political Science give me a shit grade for only one of the multiple papers required of the class.
Why?
I referenced US Army soldiers out right stating, on video, and with legit newspapers covering this, that they were being instructed to guard opium/poppie farms in Afghanistan, back when even liberals were pretending that was not happening. It was a paper on conflict goods, such as blood diamonds, and she pretended I was a conspiracy theorist.
Next year I had an Econ professor give my group and I got a crap grade (got nearly 100% on every thing else) on a report and presentation about Iceland’s response to the Financial Crisis of 08.
Why’d he do that?
Because Iceland’s actions and the subsequent effects on their economy did not fit into any of the possible policy choices (send all the corrupt bankers to fucking prison) and outcomes that his macroeconomic paradigm allowed to be possible, and functionally disproved it, as according to the model he was teaching us, this should have resulted in basically a total collapse of their economy. (There were some short lived negative effects, but faaar from what we should have expected)
I got a BS in Econ and a BA in PoliSci, double majored in 4 years, and what I learned was the only way to excel in either of these fields is to pick some kind of ideology to pledge your allegiance too, suck up and kiss ass and you’ll go far.
Your last point is pretty much the most likely way to excel in life too, unfortunately.
You’re lucky if you do actually like the person you have to suck up to.
Too bad I am autistic and can’t even pull that off the few times I’ve tried.
Oh well.
I’m sure it must be more difficult for you :( just to try and keep you going though, it’s definitely a numbers game and those of us who don’t have any concerns sometimes misread too.
Tbh, the recovery is probably more important than the execution in this scenario.
That is an unfortunate reality. People don’t want innovation, unless it affirms their existing beliefs. Hollywood has done the world such a disservice in portraying this ideal that if you’re right, and persistent, that you can overcome this type of bullshit. That’s romantic, sure. Everyone would love to prevail the impossible. But life doesn’t work that way.
Actually, it’s not Hollywood that’s at fault. It’s parents’ fault. Parents teach little kids that if they tell the truth, work hard, dream big, and all of this other fluffy stuff, then they will be successful. That they can be anything they want, if they want it enough. That, and, Santa, Tooth-fairy, Easter Bunny, “I don’t have a favorite child” are all lies we tell our kids; in the guise of protecting them from the harsh realities of the world, when I. Reality we are all selfishly trying to relive some innocence we lost many years ago.
If we really wanted to protect our children, we would teach them young what to expect out of life, and how to traverse the fucked up societal highways to be successful. It’s not about doom and gloom, but teaching kids to recognize the power structure of whatever situation they’re in, and how to work it to their advantage (e.g., working with the grain, versus going against it) would do them well.
Anyway, I’m ranting now. My apologies. Carry on.
It goes deeper than parents being nostalgic. The veneer of meritocracy is load-bearing to neoliberal ideology, especially post-WWII. If we, as a ~society~, acknowledged that no matter how big kids dream and how much they work they’ll probably never make it more than maybe one or two steps up the social ladder, our entire social model would collapse.
At its most fundamental level, that’s what the war against “wokism” is. It’s the privileged correctly identifying and targeting the existential threat that is the mere acknowledgement that we do not live in a meritocracy.
I once got a C- on an essay, but for extra credit we could submit that paper to a state essay contest. I was a state finalist in that contest, with my only revision from the class-submitted version being spell checking Britan->Britain.
Fuck you, Mrs Wickham.
Ah essays. The most bullshit part of school because they just cannot be graded objectively and never are.
I mean, few things in life can be graded objectively so that’s not really the best standard to hold education to. There’s a lot of value in learning and practicing the skill of taking in information and then rearranging it into your own words, creating and supporting arguments from the knowledge you’ve gained.
But the subjectivity of it DOES mean that occasionally teachers will need to set aside their egos. Those who legitimately want to educate the next generation usually can do that, but some just enjoy having power over children and absolutely will not units forced to do so (and doing so will just create a new grudge against that student).
Well of course nothing can be graded 100% objectively but maths for example. Your answer is either correct or not. With essays the teacher can just decide they don’t like your argument and you get fucked. I my 4 years of secondary school none of the 8 guys in my class ever got the best possible grade on an essay. Even after we got a less demanding teacher the grades barely improved.
Checks out
It is a widely known word. All greentexts are always 100% true.
I like how the definition is that it’s meaningless
May I just point out the elephant in the room?
“Gook” is a nasty slur for asian person. This word literally means ‘unintelligible like the nonsense languages of asians’
Let’s just let this word fade away like so many other bullshit slurs, thanks.
I don’t think that’s the actual etymology. From what I can find it was an onomonpia about the sounds turkeys make, and a word for gunk. The second part of it is pronounced differently from the racial epiphet (with a more middle vowel like book rather than a forward vowel like boot), and which I understand to be a separate word with a separate origin. I avoid that one due to its spelling and nearness to the slur, but in a compound word it’s less likely to be misunderstood. The original use case of the word by the person who supposedly coined it was for needless verbosity. I could see some English speakers retroactively egg corning it and using it as a pun, or maybe it has an older origin than is recorded or the coiner was dishonest, but I can’t find an example or evidence of that having happened. If you have an example or personal experience it being used like you describe I’d definitely be interested. It’s also possible that I am misconstruing your claim to be one of etymology when it isn’t.
Yes, good point, even though everyone in the US military at the time was using it to dehumanize the enemy and a military guy coined the term, I got caught up in etymology, and really it’s usage that matters.
For a while, particularly in my youth in western Canada, the racist connotations were upfront and emphasized for added contempt.
I think ignoring that historical usage is a mistake.
[edit: I am just realizing that some accents pronounce it quite differently–in w. canada it was and still is pronounced like the slur]
Most sources indicate that it’s about turkey noises.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/gobbledygook
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gobbledygook#word-history
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/gobbledygook_n?tl=true&tab=etymology
Ah yes, gobble is turkey sounds. Where, in those sources, does the etymology of the rest of the word get examined?
Nowhere, except by ‘elephant in the room’ inference: “first used by Texas politician Maury Maverick (1895-1954), … chairman of U.S. Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II”
Hmm.
“so prevalent was the use of the word gook during the first few months of the war that U.S. General Douglas MacArthur banned its use, for fear that Asians would become alienated to the United Nations Command because of the insult.” [wikipedia]
Hmmmmmm.
“In modern U.S. usage, “gook” refers particularly to communist soldiers during the Vietnam War and has also been used towards all Vietnamese and at other times to all Southeast Asians in general. It is considered to be highly offensive.” [wikipedia]
It’s not complicated or obscure. No need to whitewash this. Anyone early genX or older (edit: who grew up in North America) will remember.
I mean, sure? I know about “gook” and the timing does seem to work for your theory. I don’t think the connection is as obvious as you do. I don’t see sources for that part of it. A lot of other slurs are very thoroughly documented, including “gook” as a standalone. But if people find it offensive, easy enough to stop using it.
I want to thank you genuinely for making the point but also you’re being pretty rude so I think I’m not going to continue with this discussion.
According to wikipedia:
The term gobbledygook was coined by Maury Maverick, a former congressman from Texas and former mayor of San Antonio.[19] When Maverick was chairman of the Smaller War Plants Corporation during World War II, he sent a memorandum that said: “Be short and use plain English. … Stay off gobbledygook language.”[20][21] Maverick defined gobbledygook as “talk or writing which is long, pompous, vague, involved, usually with Latinized words.” The allusion was to a turkey, “always gobbledygobbling and strutting with ridiculous pomposity.”
Please do a better research next time before writing an reply about some other word and making up causations where there are just correlations. Just because a word contains “gook” does not mean it’s related to the word “gook”
I actually remain unconvinced by the non-scholarly sources people are providing, authoritatively claiming etymology on scant evidence, and believe they are relying on the self-reported motives of Maverick.
‘Gook’ is only generally used as a slur, and other uses are obsolete by a century or extremely regional and rare. In 1944 the slur was the predominant usage, particularly around Maverick.
Do you have a more authoritative source?
Had an English teacher do kinda this to me once. We presented our research paper to the class, teacher tells me the birthday of the dude I’m presenting on, I correct her like; “bitch, dis my mf research paper! I know my dudes fuckin birthday, it the one damn slide I memorized!” (Paraphrasing, but the meaning was there, expertly and subtly disguised of course.) She then proceeds to tell me I must be wrong and failed my whole project, my magnum opus of eighth grade.
P.S. Frank Lloyd Wright was born June 8, 1867 in Wisconsin, not 1701 like some cranky, funny smellin old English teacher insists upon
…she was wrong by MORE THAN A CENTURY AND A HALF and failed YOU on that basis??
That’s the kind of self-righteous incompetence you’d expect from a Republican politician, not someone who’s enduring crap wages and constant vilification from bigoted parents out of the love of passing on knowledge!
Some people enjoy power wherever they find it
If that’s what you want, it’s easier to just get an MBA and go the corporate route. Easier still to become a cop, of course.
Wtf? Didn’t Wright do most of his most famous work in the 20th century? Did your teacher think he was a vampire?
Frank Lloyd Wright (1701-1959). Frank Lloyd Wright was an omniscient demimortal techno mage who took up architecture in the late 19th-century at the age of 186 after discovering the eldritch art of soul drafting. He began designing and building structures across the United States with the intention of harnessing the psycho-emotional energy of the US population. Many of his architectural plans plainly display the geometrical interplanar-harvester elements, in comparison to architects such as Ivo Shandor (cult of Gozer) who felt the need to obfuscate the intent of their structures. [1]^ Wright’s final design was commissioned from archmage Norman Lykes, who trapped Wright’s life force in a soul stone embedded in a Mission-style rocking chair. Wright’s legacy was commemorated by logistical clerics in a postage stamp in 1966 and in 1970 by Bardic duo Simon & Garfunkel.
citation needed ↩︎
Too many teachers assume if they admit they were wrong, the students will get more insolent, as if sensing weakness. I’ve briefly been an assistant teacher in a middle school, and I found that on the contrary, students seem to appreciate an earnest admission of mistake and calmly accept the apology. Even some students that would be insolent in other situations. When it’s clear you’re wrong and the student knows it, pretending you’re right won’t do any good. Acting in a respectable manner will get you more respect.
Some teachers are just shitheads though.
Never left school, mentally and physically.
My experience with this just taught me that eventually most teachers will just default to authority. They will tell you to stop questioning or stop being difficult in order to prevent the class from getting off-track. Instead they miss a teachable moment both about academic integrity and being a decent person.
Works as a parent too. The kid thinks they’re a genius for knowing something the parent/teacher doesn’t, learns a valuable lesson that adults can be wrong, and learns how to find truth. When we conflict, I say, “let’s look that up,” whip out my phone and look for 2-3 reliable sources on whatever the subject is, and read it together. Then I explain why I thought what I thought, which is a valuable lesson in how biases can cloud our judgement, and sometimes I find I’m wrong about something related as well.
I’m usually right, but sometimes I’m wrong, and I think that’s awesome.
Typical teachers in my experience. Also I remember the first time I saw the word gobbledygook, I think I might have been in middle school, and I must have laughed for 5 minutes straight. It was the most nonsense word I’d ever seen in my life and unironically hilarious. Which of course tracks with its meaning lol
Something like this happened to me as well, but it didn’t directly impact my grades. In the 7th grade my teacher accidentally locked herself out of the shitty filing cabinet that was standard issue in every classroom. I had learned from my cousin a couple of really basic Lockpicking techniques, just raking and jiggling, nothing with actual pin picking.
I told her I could try to open it with a paperclip and she was like “yeah okay sure lol” totally sarcastically. I get down there, bend open a paperclip, and start trying to jiggle or rake the pins up. This process looks a bit like I’m struggling to do anything, so she immediately goes “see? You can’t actually open it”. I told her I just needed to get the mechanism to catch the pins, she became completely insufferable, and started making fun of me for being a 7th grader who knew a 10 dollar word like “mechanism”. I honestly wish I was making this part up but for the rest of that school year she joked about me… knowing the word “mechanism”. What a fuckin’ nerd amiright?
Anyway I got the cabinet open after maybe a minute of fucking around with the lock and she barely even thanks me at all, mostly just acts sheepish because she probably never believed I could do it, and suddenly realized that a student could break into her cabinet where she keeps her teaching materials (not that I ever would have)
Started in a new school. Had to begin attending before I actually moved to the new house. First class the teacher says I am to spend the first week observing the class, and getting an idea how it functions. I will not be required to participate, or do work, until the start of the next week. At the end of that week he calls me over to his desk and, in a clearly annoyed tone, asks me why I had done no work that week. So I told him he said I wasn’t supposed to, not until the upcoming Monday. He then tells me I should have taken the initiative to do work anyway, even when told I didn’t have too. This showed I was lazy, and then he said I was being a smart ass for “using his words against him” for reminding him what the instruction, he gave me, was.
So I said, if you tell people not to do something, don’t expect them to do it. I can’t just know that they want the opposite of what is asked for. So he said he is gonna call my parents and tell them all about this. Then he asks for my phone number. I didn’t know it, we got into the new house the night before and all we had was suitcases, boxes, and mattresses on floors. So he tells me that trying to hide it won’t help, the office will have my number. So I tell him to get it from them, as I didn’t know the phone number yet. He calls my mom, and tells her “You know, your son acted like he didn’t know his own phone number, like that would stop me from calling” and my mom informs him that the phone was activated 2 days ago, and that I don’t know it. Then she said he huffed and then said “well the problem is, he didn’t do any of the work this week”. and she then told him I was informed not to, in fact, he put it in writing, and sent the outline of what he expected from me, home, on my first day.
This motherfucker held a grudge until the day I no longer saw him again. He even lied about the situation to other teachers, so when I started their classes, I got a lot of “Oh, Mr. Heckman (real name, fuck him) told me about you” in a sardonic tone. This started a 2.5 year shit storm with this school, that ended with them paying my tuition to go somewhere else.
I have two professors that I have strong memory of.
The first thought classes that she was not qualified to teach. Using methods outside her narrow window of understanding hurt your score. She set a rule that if you ask for her to recheck a question on the final you will lose 20 points. On my final I had a minus 20 because she doesn’t understand powers of 2.
The second is brilliant but very absent minded. Gave us a badly worded question. It was meant to be a very hard question and I didn’t know the subject well enough to solve it. Used mathematical logic to prove he didn’t ask what he thought he was asking. And solved the very easy question he actually asked.
He gave me a perfect score and a job.
Hand or blow?
Boob.
Wins argument
“Quit being a sore loser”
“the crowd decided you were wrong therefore you’re wrong, stop bringing reality into this”
Every time someone cries about how teachers today are so underpaid and disrespected and nobody supports them, I just want to say that maybe it’s because all of those kids who grew up constantly abused by the school system grew up into parents, taxpayers, and lawmakers who have a distrust in the whole mess.
I’ve had awesome teachers. I’ve had just as many really shitty teachers though. And lots of simply mediocre. I totally support higher wages for teachers, but honestly less in sympathy for today’s teachers and more to make it a viable career choice and attract some actual professionals. So many teachers seem to only want the job for the authority (over kids? I don’t get it), and only get it because the school district is desperate.
I don’t know if raising wages would fix the problem, I just know that it would increase the pool of applicants, allowing the school district to be more selective.
So higher wages, better working conditions, and in exchange maybe be held to a higher standard of professionalism?
That would never work!!!111111
If you don’t get it, then you are succeffull human being.
– Teachers are paid a shitty salary
– Most teachers end up being shitty
Truly a mystery. If only we had some decent teachers so someone could figure this out.
Lawmakers know perfectly how uneducated massess are batter than educated ones. and the best way to make ppl hate educating themself, is to create school system as we see it.
I’m for sure in this boat. I can’t think of a single teacher from highschool that has a positive impact on my life. All of them seemed to not give a shit and a few seemed to genuinely hate their job and students. At least that’s what I remember.
I will say now that I have school age kids its difficult to not impose my feelings about teachers on them, but I see the same shit I got growing up 20 years ago.
Maybe the shit was on your own shoe
I called a college professor out on a wrong math equation on the board (missing a 0, not a huge deal) and he argued for a few minutes and carried on. A few hours later I got an email and he apologized, said I was right and sent me the right equation. HE DIDN’T DO THIS FOR THE REST OF THE CLASS. There are another 30-40 students who all wrote down the wrong math to study off of.
Crazy. Did reply with a polite acceptance of his apology and accidentally CC the entire class email list?
Had something similar in an english class back in 6th grade (Brazil, 12yo students) - I knew some english words better than her and I wish I was making it up. She would say to class that checkers is chess game, call muffins doughnuts and vice versa (and say it like “dougonoot”). Of course, she always ignored my corrections and told me I was wrong whenever she could, like with checkers (she probably assumed that because “checkered” translates to “xadrez” despite the meaning there being for the texture/stamp, an adjective, rather than the game “xadrez”, a noun)
So, one bright day, she gives us an exam where the first 10 or so questions are just True or False according to the text. I read the text, I read the questions and notice that they don’t reference the text at all. I quietly ask her if the text is right, because several words being referenced in the question are nowhere in the text and she just dismisses me, “Just read and you’ll find the answers”, so I sit back slightly pissed and do what every other student did: randomly guess. Next week, we receive the exams back with our grades, another kid asks the teacher if she could show where in the text the answers for the T/F questions were. She starts reading and realizes her mistake. “Sorry class, I forgot the second half of the text” - which was a total lie because “second half” implies that at least something would have used the first half. I guess she learned how to revise her exams, because the others we had during the year were fine.
Anyway, if you ever wonder why most Brazilians know jack shit about English, it’s because the mandatory English classes are fucking shit. My conspiracy theory headcanon is that this is on purpose to sell extracurricular English courses
In middle school I had to argue with a teacher that “Floral” was a word. I was unsuccessful in convincing him.
