I had a teacher in elementary school like that. She was a good teacher in spite of it (I owe everything I know about grammar to her), but as far as I could tell, she hated children. There were 2 or 3 kids in every class who she liked (all of my siblings had her too, and had the same experience), and the rest of us could go hang.

Unfortunatly my junior year I got stuck with the stereotypical male math teacher who spends all his energy on the guys and kind of ignores the girls.

He'd play chess with the guys that finished first and our only extra credit were those stupid logic puzzles where you have to figure out who went to the party or what people ate based on "Sandy can eat 5 pies in one sitting. Julie can eat 3 less pies than Deborah. Stan can eat twice as many pies as brown haired girls. Not all brown haired girls eat pie." etc

I could never get those right.

"Sandy can eat 5 pies in one sitting. Julie can eat 3 less pies than Deborah. Stan can eat twice as many pies as brown haired girls. Not all brown haired girls eat pie." etc

Those were my FAVORITE! They were always so random (deliberately, to make us use the formal logic, but still) -- If the turtle wins the kite-flying contest, he can play the piccolo. All piccolo players wear cowboy boots.

One of my favorite teachers was a guy who taught upper-level French. He was so funny and bright, but he was so burned out by the time I had him. We were supposed to be reading Les Mis and Bonjour Tristesse (it was French lit, not grammar), but he didn't really care if we did. On tests, he'd settle for a French sentence that translated into "My dog has fleas" if it was grammatically correct. You could just tell he knew that maybe one of us really cared -- graduation on the horizon! languages are just a requirement! -- about French, and he wasn't going to push it. But you could talk to him about anything.

I used to cut that class all the time. And if he saw me in the hall, he'd say, "Quiz on Thursday. You might want to pencil it in." Died of a brain tumor shortly after a I graduated.

I sucked so bad at those, but I suck at word problems in general, I can never translate the words into the right equations.

However, I did really well with basic algebra. I've attempted college algebra twice and ended up dropping the classes but I think I could conquer those. My math skills are so sad, especially when it comes to fractions and decimels. When I tested to go to one college I scored so bad they put me in an introduction to math class. There I was, 20 yrs old or so, in college, and I'm forced to learn how to write out numbers and do long division just because of the stupid fractions and ended up with a B in the class. However I sailed right thorugh the Beginning and Intermediate Algebra with no problem.

Damn, Radcliffe's a hottie.

Back off, lady! He's mine as soon as he's legal. Heh.

Back off, lady! He's mine as soon as he's legal. Heh

Hah, I'll just go look at my 18-year-old nephew, then . . . um, no, that way leads the special hell.

May I curl up and whimper under my desk till the cramps go away?

Yes. And here's some sweets and regular soda.

Yes. And here's some sweets and regular soda.

mmmm

Raq

The quality of education in public schools in the US far exceeds that of public schools anywhere else I've lived

I'm not sure we do in fact educate our people better than any other country in the world or even as well. My subjective experience is that your average person from the wealthier European nations (Germany, France, even to some extent the U.K. ) is better educated than your average USAian. Not that there are not plenty of both the ignorant and well educated everywhere ; it is just my experience that the Eurpeans skew a bit more educated than we do. Statistics do seem to support this to some extent; though mostly of a fairly iffy type. The U.S. seems to get slightly lower test scores; and there are a whole bunch of caveats on concluding anything from test scores - especially across countries. A lower percentage of the U.S. enjoys reading for pleasure than Western Europe and Scandanaiva. And that, to me, is harder to argue with.

However there are a number of reasons for this, and I doubt the teacher quality is one of them. Probably the biggest factor, and the one that seems to be paid the least attention to, is that U.S. kids spend less time in school than anybody. We have that Summer Vaction left over from when kids had to take summer off to help their parents on the farm. So fewer hourse learning, less learning takes place - a pretty big difference. Another is funding; many other countries fund a larger part of their kids education nationally; but in fact many nations still end up with big differences between both schools and funding of schools. It seems like equal funding of public education that ends up happening in a lot of places. Don't know if teachers outside the U.S. are subject to less bureacracy than inside. I know it is no-where close to zero anywhere. So I'm still guessing that the big differences are simple time in school with maybe some big differences in level and amount of inequality in funding.

Raq, does you experience include other rich countries, or only nations that were a lot poorer than the U.S./French/UK/W. European standard. Cause I admit you have a lot more personal experience than I do.