Even so, your teacher was pedagogically wrong, cause telling the kid they're just wrong, without any explanation or encouragement? Wrong like a wrong thing.

Yes yes yes a thousand times yes.

Signed, Was told "there's no such thing as a negative number"

PS, equally bad is "be quiet - you're not allowed to know that yet".

Timelies all!

Happy Birthday to Beth and Beej!

Healthma to all who need it!

G's dad took us out to dinner for my birthday. Tomorrow is the only day his week we have to cook, as my folks are coming in to town Wed.

"be quiet - you're not allowed to know that yet".

Ha! Yes, very bad. But also funny. "Not allowed to know it yet"? What a freaking bizarre thing for a teacher to say.

I do wonder who was teaching math classes, you know? Because in theory (assuming... see footnote), they must have known that there are different systems, and different rules apply -- you'd really think they could have come up with something better than "not allowed to know it yet," which just results with kids growing up a) resentful and b) distrusting, because every couple of years they get told that the earlier teachers were lying to them.

(Footnote: assuming, you know, a background in ma... oh. Elementary school teachers don't, for the most part, have a background in math. This may be significant. Huh.)

And also -- dude, I knew about King George III and the madness, but I didn't know he had porphyria! Did you all know that Mary Queen of Scots had porphyria? Wicked!

They hinted at that in The Madness of King George, which I loved. I know that Mary QoS had a lot of "hysterical" illnesses during her reign--but I didn't realize it was attributed to porphyria.

At least, that's what the Interbunny is telling me. Man, I know so much more about the Revolution now than I did last week! Although it may be stuff I knew before. Regardless.

You know what we need a name for? (Other than "chick who won't stop geeking out even though it's really annoying," which we generally just call "Emily.") The sort of fact which you'd really rather not know, like Lizzie Borden being acquitted, or that E.E. Cummings didn't lowercase his name, or that Patrick Henry may not have said, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

I love knowing the thing about EE though.

Did not know about Lizzie. Hmmph.

She probably did do it, but yeah.

What a freaking bizarre thing for a teacher to say.

It was strangely empowering in its backhanded way, in that it acknowledged that yes, damn it, I was right -- but the fundamental mistrust of authority led to decades of haircolor bills like you wouldn't believe.

(But that's a thing, see, because they don't tell you there are different number systems! They just keep showing you new rules, and you go, "But last year you said I couldn't do that!" and they say, "No, you can do that" like it never happened! Anyway, there are different number systems. Just so you know. And in the natural numbers, there are no negatives.)

Huh. Anyway, for a six-year-old, "You'll learn how to do that later" would be enough. Like in grad school, they still say sometimes, "That's beyond the scope of this course."

"Not allowed to know it yet"? What a freaking bizarre thing for a teacher to say.

Some of my teachers told me that, too.