Today my DD's teacher (Year 6) lost her patience with DD.
The pupils were given a question like: "Work out 2+3x5 ". The teacher said that you have to put brackets like this: " 2+(3x5) " otherwise the question doesn't make sense. My DD said (correctly!!) that you don't need brackets, as you have to do multiplication before addition anyway. The teacher insisted, DD insisted, teacher snapped and said something like "I did A level Maths, so I know what I'm talking about".
DD stopped trying to explain...
DD was a bit sad at this (she very rarely/never gets teachers cross). We (DD and I) talked about this, and I used it as a lesson to learn:
- just because somebody is a teacher, doesn't mean they don't make mistakes
- it's just a mistake, everybody makes mistakes
- when you don't think something is right, go check in other ways, don't just trust one source of information
I also added that maybe the teacher was tired, and was having a bad day, so she lost her patience. DD asked "So this teacher is always tired?" (teacher doesn't have much patience in general).
I just wanted to share this story - I'm not too bothered by the mistake, but I keep telling my children that, if something the teacher says doesn't seem right, they should double check by asking other teachers or by looking in Maths books etc (I'm talking about myths like you cannot do "4 minus 6" of course you can! you get a negative number, but you can do it!; or that the answer to 6 divided by zero is zero AAAAAAAAHHH No it's not zero, it's infinity)
Sorry, not a very interesting post, but I just wanted to share ...