Ignorance in the classroom

benol · Post by **benol** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:07 pm

Footprint pictures?

Limewater · Post by **Limewater** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:21 pm

illustriouschin wrote:my high school chemistry teacher did not believe in evolution

That you list this under "Ignorance in the Classroom" says as much about you as it does your teacher.

benol · Post by **benol** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:27 pm

Limewater wrote:
illustriouschin wrote:my high school chemistry teacher did not believe in evolution
That you list this under "Ignorance in the Classroom" says as much about you as it does your teacher.

Correct. Ignorance is not based on opinion. If I had a different opinion than you, would I be ignorant? Ignorance is not being open to the theory of evolution, not believing against it.

Ecksem Diem · Post by **Ecksem Diem** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:48 pm

benol wrote:Ignorance is not being open to the theory of evolution, not believing against it.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Bible-thumper wasn't open to the "theory" of evolution.

benol · Post by **benol** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:09 pm

Ecksem Diem wrote:
benol wrote:Ignorance is not being open to the theory of evolution, not believing against it.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Bible-thumper wasn't open to the "theory" of evolution.

Why did you put theory in quotes? It is a theory. Gravity is a theory. Newton's Laws of motion are theories. The existence of the planet Neptune is a theory. Anything accepted as a scientific law is a theory. Can you prove that five years from now, The Earth will keep spinning, friction will still exist, or the sky will still be blue? No, you can't. </rant>

Oh, and I </3 bible thumpers.

Ecksem Diem · Post by **Ecksem Diem** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:16 pm

benol wrote:
Ecksem Diem wrote:
benol wrote:Ignorance is not being open to the theory of evolution, not believing against it.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Bible-thumper wasn't open to the "theory" of evolution.
Why did you put theory in quotes? It is a theory. Gravity is a theory. Newton's Laws of motion are theories. The existence of the planet Neptune is a theory. Anything accepted as a scientific law is a theory. Can you prove that five years from now, The Earth will keep spinning, friction will still exist, or the sky will still be blue? No, you can't. </rant>

Oh, and I </3 bible thumpers.

I put it in quotes because while it technically is a theory, it can never technically be law or fact, yet said Bible-thumpers use the term "theory" as some kind of emperical proof that creationism (or whatever scripture-based primordial beliefs they hold) is on the same level as evolution.

:: tugs at collar :: Uh-oh, the "locked topic" alarm is going off...

Edit: Also, science teachers aren't supposed to teach their opinions (no one said that the guy in question did, although I assume he refused to teach evolution unless he could teach creationism, or something like that), they're supposed to teach the majority opinion within the scientific community, with mentions of the minority opinion; creationism is not even a minority opinion within the scientific community.

benol · Post by **benol** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:27 pm

Ecksem Diem wrote: :: tugs at collar :: Uh-oh, the "locked topic" alarm is going off...

I have nothing against Christians. Just holier than thou bible thumpers.

Ecksem Diem · Post by **Ecksem Diem** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 11:42 pm

benol wrote:I have nothing against Christians. Just holier than thou bible thumpers.

Well, I have some purely philosophical opinions on the theistic, but other than that, I'm generally the "live and let live" type. That's what irritates me so much about homophobes and suicide bombers.

As for classroom ignorance, I have an example not so much of ignorance as it is of overdramatics: I was in an AP (advanced placement) class in middle school, and half the people in this class would literally weep if they didn't get a one hundred on a test. If a test had extra credit (so you could get over one hundred) and they didn't get at least a hundred... Forget about it. Ever the sympathizer I am, once I heard the sobs starting in, I would usually gloat aloud "Whoo! Ninety-three!" regardless of my score.

-endorn · Post by **-endorn** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:21 am

Valium wrote:There really isn't a lot here to begin with.

Like, take a look around this place. Its mostly failed portable projects and forum 42.

Definitly. It was better a few years ago.
..when I was lurking

Limewater · Post by **Limewater** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:29 am

Ecksem Diem wrote: I put it in quotes because while it technically is a theory, it can never technically be law or fact, yet said Bible-thumpers use the term "theory" as some kind of emperical proof that creationism (or whatever scripture-based primordial beliefs they hold) is on the same level as evolution.

It goes both ways, with uninformed goofballs talking about things being "proved" in science.

Edit: Also, science teachers aren't supposed to teach their opinions (no one said that the guy in question did, although I assume he refused to teach evolution unless he could teach creationism, or something like that), they're supposed to teach the majority opinion within the scientific community, with mentions of the minority opinion; creationism is not even a minority opinion within the scientific community.

If he's teaching chemistry then he shouldn't be teaching evolution any more than a history teacher should give his class homework in partial differential equations.

But sure, creationism is a minority opinion within the scientific community in that a large number of scientists believe in it. It just doesn't really fall under current definitions of science.

madc0w · Post by **madc0w** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:40 pm

illustriouschin wrote:my high school chemistry teacher did not believe in evolution, straight up literal bible was his bag. funny, my boss thinks the same way, except he says that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time because of those footprint pictures that have been thoroughly debunked 30 years ago (and any idiot with a brain can tell those pictures are stupid and not human related at all.

There was a physics teacher at my school who didn't beleive in gravity. Explain me that.

Kurt_ · Post by **Kurt_** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 6:03 pm

That is based on Einstein and his theories that prove that Gravity does not exist. Although it DOES, he proved that it's actually something else or something like that. I'll try to find it.

Not exactly what I was looking for, expect an edit soon:

To give you a general answer, in 1905, Einstein published the special theory of relativity, which explains how light can always move at the same speed for any inertial observer (see this thread (http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=82546)). An inertial observer is someone or something that keeps a constant velocity. However, Einstein's special theory of relativity only explained a universe in which gravity doesn't exist. Obviously there is gravity in our universe, so this troubled Einstein. Then, in 1907, Einstein realized that if you're falling toward the Earth, you won't feel your own weight. Also, the Earth doesn't "feel" its own weight as it goes around the sun, and the moon doesn't feel its weight as it moves around the Earth. This led Einstein to postulate that as you fall freely through a gravitational field, you can be thought of as an inertial observer moving through curved spacetime, and by 1915 he finally had a successful, self-consistent theory of gravity, which explains our world to great detail.

benol · Post by **benol** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 12:30 pm

2 new stories. First one comes from what I saw on the bus. An uber rednecky kid had this on his T-Shirt, handwritten in sharpie, "Rebel born rebel BREAD ill be a rebel til the day im DEAD" and on the back, written across a confederate flag, "Ive got rebel blood in my vains." (That is quoted verbatim. No punctuation on his shirt. Mistakes in bold for those who can't catch them.)

2nd story comes from the same girl that the post I started with was about. She didn't know where Africa was. At first, we thought she was joking. Then she said "Isn't it by Russia, or something?" I really wanted to shoot her. If someone is sixteen years old and has no idea where Africa is, they deserve to be sent back to kindergarten.

Post by **Skyone** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 6:55 pm

benol wrote:2 new stories. First one comes from what I saw on the bus. An uber rednecky kid had this on his T-Shirt, handwritten in sharpie, "Rebel born rebel BREAD ill be a rebel til the day im DEAD" and on the back, written across a confederate flag, "Ive got rebel blood in my vains." (That is quoted verbatim. No punctuation on his shirt. Mistakes in bold for those who can't catch them.)

How is that ignorance? He is a rebel, you see.

benol · Post by **benol** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 7:02 pm

Skyone wrote:
benol wrote:2 new stories. First one comes from what I saw on the bus. An uber rednecky kid had this on his T-Shirt, handwritten in sharpie, "Rebel born rebel BREAD ill be a rebel til the day im DEAD" and on the back, written across a confederate flag, "Ive got rebel blood in my vains." (That is quoted verbatim. No punctuation on his shirt. Mistakes in bold for those who can't catch them.)
How is that ignorance? He is a rebel, you see.

Are you claiming rebels are ignorant? Actually, come to think of it, rednecks defining themselves as rebels is ignorant. What are they rebelling about? Rednecks haven't rebelled since the civil war!

Also, speaking of rebels, in my Spanish III book, there is this nerdy kid with a tie-dye shirt, curly orange hair, and dorky round glasses described as "El rebelde". It claims "he wears a shirt from the sixties to make him look different", "he has round glasses to make him an individual", and "he has orange hair to separate himself from the rest of the world". Somebody who writes textbooks needs to be fired