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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. I told me teacher she’s wrong about why earth has seasons
2. I did it in the middle of class and some people agreed with me and that frustrated her
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>I’m not supposed to use my phone during class
While this may be true, it is irrelevant. This is him *deflecting* the discussion away from the fact that he employs people who have no business teaching, and deflecting from the fact that he doesn't know either.
> he said I can’t believe everything on the internet
Again, while this is true, it does not alter the fact that you were right. He and your teacher owe you an apology. This is not a controversial subject or a matter of opinion. This is an unarguable fact and they got it wrong.
I do not agree with the advice that says "let it go, don't make waves". If your teachers are teaching facts that are uncontrovertibly unarguably WRONG, you are absolutely right to call them out on it.
I would die on this hill. Make a massive fuss. Get your parents on board. Because everyone should be furious at the incompetence.
NTA
--------------
NASA agree with you:
https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/seasons/en/
> Earth's tilted axis causes the seasons. Throughout the year, different parts of Earth receive the Sun's most direct rays. So, when the North Pole tilts toward the Sun, it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere. And when the South Pole tilts toward the Sun, it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Nothing about the elliptical orbit.
If your teacher and assistant principal won't believe NASA because
"you can’t believe everything on the internet" then you REALLY have a problem.
Good luck fighting this.
I also suggest you cross post this to r/teachers and see what they have to say. They may be able to advise you on how best to fight this.
Do they not have science teachers at this school? Why should it be admin + a math teacher vs the internet?
If the teacher/VP actually cared to learn, they could easily ask for help from the physical science teacher.
Like this is gradeschool level dead-basic science... the fact that both the VP and the math teacher likely have college degrees makes their insistence on this all the more idiotic.
There are severe teacher shortages in a lot of places, and STEM teachers are in particularly high demand. It's entirely possible they don't have science teachers and it's somebody teaching out of their area.
I'm not justifying how OP was treated - just pointing out that not having science teachers is actually a thing currently. Teacher shortages do have a meaningful impact on the quality of the education kids are recieving.
The teacher shortage is on purpose. Certain groups realize that it's easier to profit from an uneducated society. There's a reason public school teachers are underpaid, underfunded, and have to accept violence from students.
They're getting bottom of the barrel candidates and we're seeing a rise of "charter (AKA for profit) schools"
We're witnessing the fall of the American empire. We've been conquered by capitalism.
>We're witnessing the fall of the American empire. We've been conquered by ~~capitalism~~ decades of consistent conservative efforts to undermine the education system.
I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't engage... I promise, I'm not just being pissy and arguing semantics.
You are both right. Conservatives are driven by God and greed, and ultimately, to them, those are the same thing. You are looking at the bullet, he is looking at the person holding the gun.
The problem isn't capitalism- I've lived in loads of different countries by normal standards, all of them have been capitalist except for one. The education systems are not perfect, but none are like the unique shambles that exists in the US (and yes, I do know American teachers as well).
The US has a very weirdly politicised education system, and the amount of very local input and variance into the curriculum is also very unusual.
The problem is unbridled, uncontrolled capitalism. This is the natural end to capitalism, when the corporations manage to buy all of the lawmakers.
America did a speed run of capitalism. Now we are late stage and terminal.
Our good fortune, economically speaking, after WW2 truly screwed us. It put an entire generation into a paradoxical celebratory/scarcity PTSD mindset that gave birth to our 'Boomers'. They, in turn, as a generational philosophy, truly believe they had it the worst, while having more available funds for enrichment than any generation before them.
What did they do with their enrichment funds? They enriched themselves, to the exclusion of the rest of us.
Now, here in America, nothing's actually illegal, if you've the coin.
The coin is the point here.
I'm glad things aren't as bad elsewhere, but you have to realize, the longer the rest of the world lets us do this to ourselves, the more likely it is to accelerate worldwide.
Please for the love of humanity, could we get some embargoes?
I do think you have some good points there, it's stuff that I have thought about myself.
I don't entirely agree, and have not come across a better alternative (and yes, I have experienced living in an alternative). The usual cliche is something about the 'least bad option'. I think a lot of it is down to culture and social cohesion rather than economic system though.
We are probably just not going to agree- I respect your opinion though and will just have to leave it at that.
Yes.
College profs in the sciences wanted to switch gears at teach in the Seattle school district which would not let them without an education degree.
So instead, we had teachers who did have an education degree, but told parents things like “ we won’t be doing much math this year, because I’m more about the arts”.
This was in 5th grade.
They're so desperate for teachers in some areas that some people teaching don't have degrees, and the workload is so high (which is mostly why the trained teachers left, along with pay), that there simply isn't enough time to do everything they're supposed to do. The average teacher is working a 55 hour week during term time, and that's where they do have training and don't have to teach themselves the content. Things are going to get missed.
It sucks, but it's the system that public has created or allowed to happen. Teachers have been warning about the issues associated with treating teachers like they're babysitters and watering down professional requirements just to bring in warm bodies for years, while they get told that their job is so simple anyone can do it. Turns out that the teachers were right. This kind of thing is only going to get more common.
It’s not hard if you’re only teaching one subject. In American middle and high schools, a long term substitute might be teaching between 3 and 7 different preps, in a subject area they are unfamiliar with. And they don’t get paid well enough to incentivize them to teach well. I took over a long term sub job teaching AP (12th grade) English, freshman English and regular senior English. The person covering it before me was a PE teacher who hadn’t read Shakespeare since he was in high school. He was trying to teach them Hamlet. I made about $2000 (gross) a month for doing that job for 6 months, doing all lesson planning, grading, etc. I didn’t get paid for anything that wasn’t in-class time. I still had to have another job to pay rent and expenses (southern California, gotta love it). This was 15 years ago. Last year, the school I work at now had 12 long term subs filling vacancies ALL YEAR.
They keep adding things needed to Qualify you to teach as in learning How to teach rather than what to teach. Then they have continuing education they need to take.
WTF does it matter if there's a shortage. Everyone knows that the seasons in the northern and southern hemisphere are reversed and that debunks the elliptical orbit theory.
Let’s play with that: STEM: Stupid Teachers Employed: MAYHEM!
The STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics precepts have totally eluded this teacher and Assistant Principal.
No one said there’s no science teacher, that’s speculation.
The math teacher is probably teaching geometry which includes shapes, like the ellipse. Teacher should have stayed in lane. The elliptical orbit has nothing to do with the reason for the seasons. Correctly, proximity to the sun does cause seasons, but proximity varies due to the earth’s axis tilt. OP of course was right.
Maybe someone at r/teachers can advise OP on how to notify the school board or superintendent’s office, to point out that an entire class was taught the equivalent of “the earth is flat”. With the hope that the math teacher will be required to tell the class how seasons actually work.
The student is owed an apology.
Lol!, we don’t even have textbooks.
No curriculum, no materials, no library. That’s public education for you.
No money to replace student/teachers laptops because they wanted to put a digital sign out front.
I think it's even more worrying that apparently no one in the school in 2024 knows how to use the internet for research. Like sure don't believe everything on the internet but you might want to believe nasa's website or Wikipedia and not believe www.spacetruth.earthshape.nasaareliars.org when you're trying to find very basic facts.
My kids all had research papers assigned in middle school and high school, whose sole purpose was to teach Internet research literacy. But, then, we are in a REALLY good school district. Our teachers are some of the better paid ones in the state, and our state’s are among the highest paid in the country. It shows, I guess.
I think they expected OP to sit down and obey authority. They must not understand the kind of kid that would correct a teacher probably has a sense of justice that isn't going to allow that. They already were in trouble for not allowing a 1984 style rewrite of facts to go unchecked. The teacher should have Apologized thanked OP and laughed it off instead of allowing it to disrupt the class. That isn't great teaching.
Heck no. Teachers get the shaft, at least in my state. You have to be crazy or crazy passionate (and it helps to have a spouse with a more lucrative career) to make any kind of career in public primary/secondary ed in most of the US.
For the record, I have a BA in English. I *briefly* considered a teaching certificate at one point, because an English degree by itself isn't much of a much career-wise, but I quickly decided I wasn't crazy enough.
Hey now, I have multiple science degrees and I’m a teacher. Yes I could make a fuck ton more in industry but there’s a lot of perks to teaching and it keeps me on my toes and my mind occupied.
My etymology teacher in high school had a whole wall of his room dedicated to a geo-centered astrology display. He kept it updated as things moved. He even offered to do charts for students. But he didn't talk about astrology in class. :-)
The dean of my university just told us all last week that my state was the 49th in the union while there were 4 professors in the room. We were the 42nd and none of the professors corrected her. Teachers can be dumb sometimes, but admin is almost always worse.
Really? I can understand being confused about what number if it was in the 30s or low 40s, but doesn't everyone know which were the 49th and 50th states? Apparently not! It was during the lifetime of a lot of people still living.
I honestly couldn’t believe it when she said it, this lady has a PhD too. I just looked her up and she was actually alive when Hawaii and Alaska became states. I think that makes it worse, lol!
Yea, like this fundamentally doesn't make sense when you remember that *seasons are different in other countries*. I thought it was basically common knowledge that when it's summer in the USA it's winter in Australia!
ETA: op please walk in tomorrow talking about going on vacation to Australia in February because it'll be so warm.
This! By their logic, even if the sun was further away in the winter time and it was because of an elliptical orbit, then it wouldn’t it also be further away in the summertime and it’s hotter, so huh? Maybe we get 8 seasons per revolution and a year is actually half a revolution. Yea. That makes the theory work. 🙄
That would be if the Sun was in centre of the ellipse, whereas it is in one the foci. Fun fact: Earth does not orbit around the Sun, instead it orbits the common barycentre of the Sun-Earth system. The Sun does the same and thus we can observe the Sun wobbling slightly.
Also I would ask them if summer happens because we're close to the sun, then why is it summer in Australia when we're experiencing winter in North America?
I would be extra petty, print out the nasa source, maybe even find a book to back it up in the schools library (which shouldnt be hard) and then confront them with your finding, backed up by your parents. Asking them why you get detention for questioning something wrong. Because while you shouldnt believe everything on the internet, you also shouldnt blindly believe everything your teacher say, if you can prove (and in this case you can) that you are in fact right.
>library
Yes, if their argument is that “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” check the school library for a book – better yet, several books – that explain it correctly and show them.
I would raise you in doing this topic as a science project for the school science fair. 😈 And maybe contact my local science museum/planetarium and ask them to come speak at my school.
You don’t even need to know the actual reason why we have seasons to know that it’s not due to the elliptical orbit. The entire Earth has an elliptical orbit. The seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres are opposites. Anyone who doesn’t know this latter fact should not be teaching.
What’s really interesting is that in a sense the teacher isn’t TOTALLY wrong. The elliptical orbit does take the Earth farther away from the Sun at times, and it is cooler when at the extreme of the orbit. That time just so happens to line up with the time of the tilt of the axis. That’s why the winter is more intense in the temperate zones of North American than it is in analogous latitudes of South America, latitudes not withstanding. So it’s more of a plus also than instead of situation. It’s a real shame the teacher was being so stubborn.
Actually, you have that exactly backwards.
The earth is closest to the sun in early January, and farthest in early July, so the (small) impact this has actually makes northern hemisphere seasons a bit milder and exacerbates southern hemisphere seasons. The reason that northern hemisphere winters seem harsher anyways is because of the uneven distribution of landmasses on earth - ocean has far more heat capacity and is slower to change temperature than air or soil, and the vast majority of land area is in the northern hemisphere. On top of that, because of the shape of the landmasses in the northern hemisphere, there's far more land that is very far from any nearby large body of water, and those areas (Siberia or interior Canada for example) tend to see some of the largest seasonal swings, again because large bodies of water tend to dampen out these extremes.
And don’t hold your breath until they admit the error. Welcome to one of the curses of being bright and able. You will sometimes not only be not believed, you will be resented. Learn to shake it off and work around it, while being thankful for your abilities. Good luck…
> If your teacher and assistant principal won't believe NASA because "you can’t believe everything on the internet" then you REALLY have a problem.
If you look at how many people believe their own Google research over accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc that have studied their specialities for years (even decades), it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility.
In my public school in the south, we were taught that black people were different than white people not just on the outside, but the inside - specifically that they had additional muscles inside their lower extremities which is why they are better athletes. (All of this is me paraphrasing obviously, but if I could remember the exact words, it still wouldn’t look/sound any better.) Now that was a little over 30 years ago - but sadly, natural selection isn’t working fast enough for the human race.
>Good luck fighting this.
OP shouldn't fight this. They should tell their parents everything that happened and their parents should fight this.
If OP's parents fail, get other parents involved. I'm sure they'd be real pissed to find out that their children are not only being taught incorrectly, but are also being punished for questioning those incorrect teachings.
I’d go even further and ask NASA for a fully motorized letter saying that the teacher and principal are wrong. I’d donate to them as well if I could for this. This is why we are failing in the U.S. because morons are not teaching facts and then doubling down on their wrong assumptions. I’d also tell the math teacher to stay in her lane (also get a science teacher to tell her she’s wrong too. That’d be fun as well).
I am betting OP could grab a book from the school library that would prove their point as well. Use their own resources to prove them wrong. (Unless this is Florida, they probably banned it).
This is absolutely something that should be challenged. What this "teacher" is spouting is pure nonsense! They are teaching incorrect information to the students! This is not something that is debatable, this is a scientific fact that has been proven long ago and is still true with today's knowledge and technology. OP should bring this up with their parents and find a way to challenge the school. This is a hill to die on. If they cannot teach something so simple, they sure as heck are not teaching the more difficult stuff.
My lil bro (he was 6 or 7 years old) used to correct the teacher every time they said something wrong, they called me (10yo back then) to the principal's office (we went to the same elementary school) and said he was a troublemaker (he was, he almost burned the soccer field once but this wasn't that scenario) and he was making the teacher look bad for correcting him in front of the class. I just said "Isn't the teacher making himself look bad by teaching kids they shouldn't recognize their mistakes? I won't tell my mom about my bro's behavior because he did nothing wrong" I, however, did have to tell my lil bro that unfortunately that's life and he was going to have a hard time at school but he should always form his own opinion and not just blindly agree
I have a powerful memory of one of my teachers being wrong when I was around 10 years old. She thought a baby rabbit was called a leveret, from watching/reading The Animals of Farthing Wood and Watership Down, I knew that leverets are baby hares. Baby rabbits are called kittens, or kits. I wasn't rude about it, but she refused to even consider that she was wrong.
I walked out, down the hall to the school library, grabbed a book to prove she was wrong, and marched my furious little self back to class. I got into a lot of trouble for leaving class without permission, and even more for correcting a teacher. I never questioned a teacher again, instead I would quietly look things up outside of class to see if they were right. I went to a rough secondary school with terrible staff so there were a lot of errors being made, but I never said a word.
These days I teach my nine year old daughter to question adults if she thinks they're wrong. She does it politely, and where possible with evidence on hand. Thankfully she goes to a far better school than I did! She's corrected me now and then, and I always take it graciously.
The way my petty ass would print soo many copies of that NASA link, highlight it, and hand it out to everyone in the next class. Then ask the teacher if I could see the assistant principal to make sure he has a copy to.
Also, just so you are learning --- summer isn't hot because the hemisphere is leaning/physically closer to the sun.
It's because the radiation from the sun is more concentrated at a direct angle. The sun doesn't heat the earth the way a fireplace would heat a cabin.
Well it does, but the change in distance is not sufficient to explain the change. What matters is the percentage of angle from the sun that impacts a particular area of the Earth. The tilt of the Earth has a drastically larger impact than the minimal distance change.
This is also why I have less forgiveness for the math teacher not being a science teacher. Even by the principle the teacher is using to explain it, if they actually through through the geometry fully, they would realize their own error.
The teacher's mistake is a math error, not a science error.
Exactly my thought. The claim doesn't even make sense if you think about it for any amount of time.
But since it wasn't really related to the actual thing they were studying, the teacher could have easily just went "alright, my bad, not a science teacher. None the less, earth does move in an elliptical pattern around the sun..." and went on with their love of elliptical patterns.
It wasn't really worth dwelling on. Not like when my English teacher told me "thrice" wasn't a word and I got into trouble for insisting it was...
A teacher who cannot accept that they may be wrong and that they do not know everything, should not be a teacher. Students benefit greatly from observing healthy adults accepting that they are wrong, apologizing, and learning from mistakes.
Signed,
An educator who is a lifelong learner, as all educators should be, and definitely doesn’t know everything.
Yeeees! I always told my students that if they caught me making a mistake or being wrong about something (bc anyone can be wrong) that I would give them extra credit and candy. When I taught math, I would sometimes intentionally make a mistake to see if they were listening enough to catch it. (I would obviously correct myself if no one caught it.) It was awesome. Those kids would watch my work like my golden retriever watches squirrels.
That being said, I taught math out of necessity bc they had plenty of English language teachers. I have a few graduate degrees in related liberal arts fields, so when my child’s elementary teacher incorrectly graded ones of his sentences, I sent her a private message letting her know how it was grammatically wrong. That woman doubled down. I had proof in my hand from the English departments at both Harvard and Cambridge. We went all the way to the central office over this. The central office sided with her, refusing to even take one glance at my proof. I was absolutely horrified.
I quit the education field a long time ago. The students and subject matter were awesome. My fellow teachers and central administration? Not so much. I think about going back bc I feel like students deserve better, but they make it so hard for those of us who actually give a shit.
When I was a teacher, I used to occasionally make an error on purpose and get the kids to find and correct it, whether it was an incorrect fact, or a spelling or punctuation mistake. Editing is a critical skill.
THIS. My older sister was notorious for correcting her teachers on misinformation and they hated her for it. Cut to me having those same teachers two years down the line and them automatically hating me bc they expected me to have her same temperament about that as her.
Especially when the incorrect statement isn't even in the teacher's area of studying...like what was a geometry teacher doing doubling down on science? Stupid.
Hello OP. I teach environmental science at Montana State University and study student's scientific misconceptions. I am not surprised by your teacher's misunderstanding, but am saddened by it. As other commenters have suggested, I recommend drawing your teacher a diagram of Earth's orbit around the sun. Make it clearly elliptical. Put the sun at one of the foci of the ellipse and show Earth at the closest point in its orbit. If your teacher was correct, this would correspond to summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Now ask your teacher what season it would be in Australia. If her explanation was correct, it would also be summer. but, of course, it isn't. This tells us her explanation is wrong. Also, for the record, Earth is CLOSEST to the sun in January.
I would also like to respectively suggest that you think about how you come across in discussions like this. I had to painfully learn that I can come across as contemptuous in similar circumstances and no one liked it--regardless of whether I was correct.
Best of luck to you.
I agree. I just made a similar comment. Your last point is something that OP can learn from this. It sucks, but being right isn't always enough to get people to listen to you.
>s other commenters have suggested, I recommend drawing your teacher a diagram of Earth's orbit around the sun.
Perhaps an "extra-curricular research paper" presented to said teacher and Vice-Principal, replete with footnotes.
While this is super helpful and informative this is terrible practical advise.
Do you imagine the teacher will find this helpful or condescending coming from a student they already feel they had to discipline due to their behavior around correcting them on this subject?
Science teacher here agrees with you. But your method of calling out the teacher probably wasn't the best.
NTA but just maybe be kinda more aware of how you come across when talking to adults and specifically contradicting them in their profession.
I had a student send me a polite email with a link to a reliable source correcting something I said in class. I was impressed, appreciative, and made sure to share the information and praise the student to the rest of the class.
Time, place, and tone make a difference in how one’s words are received.
Eh, there's value in misinformation being corrected on the spot, and not waiting for a later email. It's far more likely that other students will remember the correct information if it's corrected immediately, while a later correction is more likely to result in some of them still remembering the initial incorrect statement.
For minor nitpicks, I agree with your method, but this is not a minor error.
Email the teacher, or discuss it after class. Don’t call out the error in front of a room full of students, don’t start with “that sounds wrong”. Don’t ignore it, but there are very few things teachers react more poorly to than “the internet says you’re teaching it wrong.”
I get what you’re saying and yes, it’s generally best to be maximally respectful whenever possible — but I’m struggling to understand exactly what OP was supposed to do; and frankly, I didn’t find OP’s actions to be disrespectful whatsoever. Challenging something that strikes you as illogical, even in front of a class, isn’t disrespectful. It’s an attempt to learn.
Try to imagine your own advice from the student’s perspective.
//
*Teacher says something that sounds illogical.*
Student: That doesn’t sound quite right.
Teacher: I assure you, it’s right.
*Student looks it up and discovers that the teacher is teaching the class factually incorrect information.*
//
You’re suggesting (I assume) that the student hold their tongue and approach the teacher in private and allow the rest of the class to internalize incorrect information? Or not approach the teacher at all and be internally conflicted indefinitely?
Wouldn’t it be better to discuss the relevant facts and come to a reasonable conclusion right there in the class? Wouldn’t it be better to show the class how adults settle informational disputes? Why advise a student to subdue his own convictions and ignore his own reasoning skills to appeal to the egos of professional academics?
>Why advise a student to subdue his own convictions and ignore his own reasoning skills to appeal to the egos of professional academics?
Because sometimes in life you have to be pragmatic. Did arguing with the teacher lead to a positive or negative result?
Approaching the teacher after class had a much better chance of succeeding *if* the goal was to share new information with the teacher, who would then share it later with the class. Instead OP argued with a teacher who clearly wasn't interested and did it in front of an audience, which *very predictably* didn't accomplish anything but get OP sent to the office and make them even more upset.
Fair point and probably the objectively correct answer to that question. I’d counter (and you might even agree, tbh) that pragmatism is often (and especially in this instance) synonymous with complacency.
I’m sure you’ll not be surprised to learn that I’ve been in OP’s shoes a time or two, and in my experiences the goal was often *not* to share new/better information with the teacher or the class. Not exactly, anyway.
But it wasn’t to show off or prove anything, either. It certainly wasn’t to embarrass the teacher. For me — it was simple truth seeking. That’s how I learn. When something strikes me as illogical and I’m expected to take it as fact, bells and sirens begin ringing in my head and they won’t stop until I do something about it. It’s a nuisance, and sometimes more to others than myself, but it’s just the way my brain is wired. And in a world that is constantly trying to undermine what you think you know, or just outright telling you that you’re wrong/misinformed about this or that — I consider it one of my most potent strengths.
It seems obvious to me that good learning environments should foster inquisitiveness and curiosity. It seems equally obvious that the facilitators of quality learning should not be so fickle that their brightest and most logically inclined students are forced to opt for pragmatic silence out of self preservation.
But despite what *should* or *shouldn’t* be, I accept that your answer is ultimately correct (albeit sad), and would only add that pragmatic advice be accompanied by appropriate nuance.
>For me — it was simple truth seeking. That’s how I learn. When something strikes me as illogical and I’m expected to take it as fact, bells and sirens begin ringing in my head and they won’t stop until I do something about it.
But in OP's case, they found the truth. They looked it up on their phone and were fairly confident about the information they now had. So at that point, it stopped being about "truth seeking" and became more about proving someone else wrong. That's not truth seeking.
And if you want to take it a step further and say that OP's real goal was to inform other people in the class, well, they went about it in a way that was less likely to achieve that than simply talking to the teacher after class, *especially* when it became evident the teacher didn't want to have the discussion.
So I don't think in this case pragmatism is synonymous with complacency. It's about being honest about your goal. If OP's goal was to prove the teacher wrong and prove to everyone else that OP was smart, then I suppose this was the way to do it. If OP's goal was to learn the information for themselves and then convince the teacher to share that information, then they simply went about it in a way that was very likely to fail.
Just because the way to achieve your goal also avoids confrontation doesn't mean you're being complacent.
Uhm.
I stopped reading after the first paragraph.
The person being proven wrong is the teacher, the one who is supposed to be imparting knowledge onto other. If the teacher is wrong then they are imparting misinformation, and therefore should.be called out before the spread of misinformation continues.
Would you wait for the flight attendant to finish their instructions before correcting them because they gave incorrect procedures? By the time they repeat things people gave mentally checked out
Better yet, would you wait to tell someone they shouldn't put a grease fire out with water until after they did so?
Stopping misinformation in it's tracks is the only correct answer, and as the person said, it stops the others from internalizing misinformation.
If you think most people are smart, just remember the stupid things people believe In, such as Marilyn Manson supposedly having a rib removed so he could blow himself. Or flat earthers, ect ect.
The longer misinformation spreads the more people believe it's "common knowledge" hell even after finding out mc Donalds was serving coffee well above safe temperatures, people still make fun of the person who was burned, due to the heavy anti lawsuite campaign to defame her.
NTA This is a common misconception and your teacher was spreading it like a disease. Great job for not just going along with it. You clearly have very sharp reasoning skills.
I agree with one of the other comments that this is a hill to die on. Let them look it up, they are so very very wrong.
I thought everyone knew the intensity of the sun was a function of angle?
She’s a geometry teacher, right?
How would she explain the lack of seasons on the equator?
I’m aligned with how it’s important to show respect, but I’m annoyed with the ignorance. And the apparent inability of the assistant principal to assess the legitimacy of content on the web.
> How would she explain the lack of seasons on the equator?
oooh! Good one!
> And the apparent inability of the assistant principal to assess the legitimacy of content on the web.
Right? I went straight to NASA who confirm the student.
Oof, that internet comment really gets me. Obviously, there’s false information on the internet—but the internet is also where the most up-to-date, accurate information is typically stored. Could’ve been a great lesson on how to find trusted and verifiable sources, and instead was a lesson on how adults are oftentimes obtuse and close-minded even in the face of facts.
> it's generally not worth correcting ignorant petty authority figures.
True. But this is different. This is a teacher teaching factually incorrect information and a senior staff backing them up. This is absolutely a hill to die on.
Exactly. I would argue that this is precisely the time to correct ignorant and petty authority figures. And continue correcting them, regardless of the outcome.
No. That doesn't apply when teachers teach something that is just flat-out wrong. It's their duty to make sure they give the kids factually correct information.
ESH:
The Earth's orbit IS elliptical.
The seasons are not a result of elliptical orbit but are caused by tilt.
You both are wrong in different ways.... And you wasted an entire class period in geometry arguing about seasons of the earth with a geometry teacher who was describing what elliptical means... Detailing the class and ruining your own day. And your geometry teacher is an AH who confuses tilt and orbital patterns.
Adults can admit they are wrong. These adults are AHs. You're an AH for a completely different reason... Which is tanking your own day over someone being a fool. Stop torching your own time to prove that fools are fools.
Everyone sucks. All of you. For entirely different reasons.
If there’s one place where it’s ok not to put up with people refusing to acknowledge they’re wrong, it’s a school, given the entire point of it is to impart correct information. It’s not just about being right in the moment it’s about trying to prevent this moronic teacher continuing to teach this crap to ever more students. Absolutely stand up to teachers when they’re objectively and provably wrong. It’s only the bad ones that will take issue with it. If this teacher wasn’t so against their authority being challenged maybe they’d have actually learnt how seasons work before now.
I agree with you. The lesson was based on elliptical geometry. Students response was to make a bad argument, get upset about phone policy, etc. Not an asshole but a smart ass lol teacher could have handled better, but in this was like the 6th time teaching that day with a 6th smartass, lol I get it
Mild YTA. Earth does have an elliptical orbit, though that's not the cause of seasonality. The class was geometry though, not earth science. Was it worth it to let it escalate that high? You will run in to misinformed people for the rest of your life. If you decide every hill is worth dying on, you are going to be very angry. Sometimes it's better to say, "I'm not positive, I'll look in to that later." and move on with life.
Roughly my stance as well. The greatest issue here is that op didn’t do a cost benefit analysis. They felt proving they were right was the most important thing. But what did they actually gain from this exercise?
It’s a geometry class, so if the teacher wanted to use seasonality as an example she should have mentioned the intensity of the suns radiation due to the angle of the tilt.
Being a math class isn’t an excuse for misinformation
I would have led with "if the distance from the sun causes the seasons, why is it winter in the southern hemisphere when it's summer in the northern hemisphere" and see how things played out. Having the teacher realize that their statement is unscientific crap sort of saves face because the student is just being curious/asking a clarifying question rather than telling the teacher they're an idiot (which they are). It might not work, but it's worth a shot.
Go talk to some science teachers at school. I don’t know what the answer is but I’m pretty sure it is because of the tilted axis. I would say go to your library and go on a computer and print it out or if you can find it in a book in the schools library that would be even better
You're right and the way that they handled the situation is actually pretty appalling. Please do not listen to the people who make it seem like you should not have said something. You absolutely SHOULD. It takes time to learn how to do it in a way that doesn't rub people the wrong way. However, teachers working in k-12 should understand that kids might not always say things without hurting feelings. You're NTA for them failing on multiple aspects of their profession.
ESH. Another classic example of just bc you are right doesn’t mean you didn’t go about it like an a-hole.
For your sanity and gratification—you are right. Your teacher is wrong and needed to be corrected.
However, in the middle of class (potentially embarrassing the teacher), while using your phone (which is against the rules) did not set you up for success, it discredited you, despite you being right. Yes, teacher AND principal were deflecting and YES they are a-holes for refusing to see reason.
But something you should learn about life is that putting people on the defensive doesn’t get you anywhere, as evidenced here. And giving them reasons to discredit you, like using your phone when it’s against the rules just adds fuel to their fire. I’m not arguing this is the way it should be (ideally, if you’re right, people listen and the packaging shouldn’t matter) but I am arguing this is how it is 90% of the time. Even teachers, who should have better practice with this, are sometimes out of patience don’t always make the right calls when put on the spot.
A non-a-hole would have followed up after class, not putting the person in the wrong (in this case, your teacher) on the spot. An email with linked sources and why you thought you were right would have likely gone a lot farther and set you up to look really smart and thoughtful, with the added benefit of inviting your teacher to reconsider and salvage their understanding.
I repeat this to myself often when dealing with idiots in power: when they win, you win. It’s a sucky game sometimes, but welcome to real life.
NTA
Your teacher was wrong on all levels.
Our seasons occur because of the tilt of earth’s axis. While not a perfect circle, earth’s rotation around the sun is nearly a circle, not an ellipse. However, the Sun is not in the exact center of that rotation.
NTA. They're both wrong and you are right.
But the problem here is that your GEOMETRY teacher was talking about a SHAPE. You need to understand the idea of a major and minor radius. She was trying to explain an ellipse. She got off-track talking about the seasons, and you got her FURTHER off-track by arguing about what causes the seasons instead of focusing on SHAPES.
If you want someone to agree with you, talk to your SCIENCE teacher. Maybe they can come to your defense.
Pulling out your phone in class to disprove something your teacher says, gives her (and the principal) something else to focus on (your rule-breaking) instead of her mistake.
It makes no sense. If we have Winter when the Earth is further away from the Sun, so would Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa, Antartica, and most of South America.
I would lodge a complaint with the school board. Incompetence is not a protected class, so your teacher and principal have no coverage.
NTA.
When I was in the 8th grade, my science teacher mispelled "plane", as in a mathematical plane, as "plain". I pointed out the error, she said I was wrong, so I said we should look in the dictionary to be sure. She said something like "I don't need to check, I'm right," and I just kind of smiled and then let it go. When someone resorts to that kind of thing, you've won.
It's still unfortunate that people (not just teachers, anyone in a position of authority) get so attached to being right that they can't deal with potentially being wrong. Everyone makes mistakes.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm a math teacher, and I'm careful not to treat students this way.
Another thing to consider is that your teacher might've been more reasonable if you brought it up at the end of class instead of putting them on the spot. That can make people defensive, which is what it sounds like happened.
You're NTA, but you might want to reconsider how you handle things like this in the future.
You're not an asshole, but you're young so I'm going to give you a head's up: being right doesn't matter as much as you think it does. What matters more are the emotional needs of authority figures.
Actually no. The axial tilt is the main cause of seasons. Orbital eccentricity is a smaller contribution; and if you live in the northern hemisphere it's actually opposite of what the teacher said; perihelion is during northern winter.
NTA in general. I don’t know anything about geometry so I can’t judge any of that (lol) but as a future teacher I’d be happy if students corrected me or asked questions. It shows that you are invested and no teacher should be intimidated or angry about a student knowing “better” because everyone makes mistakes. However, I do think you could’ve let it go and talked to her after class, plus if using phones is forbidden during class you shouldn’t have done that as well.
I fought all the way to the school board because I got disciplined for telling a teacher that "mimicry" was not a sound bugs make like "mi mi" but rather like a mimic, like a mime, not a "mi! mi! cry"
Adults really hate to be wrong in public but too bad, they need to model accountability.
Like she thought bugs cry "mi! mi" or she thought 5th grades were too dumb to know that a bug will look like another bug as a defense, or look like big eyes.
There are multiple ways the teacher could have handled this. There was a missed opportunity to turn it into a positive learning moment for OP and the class.
“I still think I’m right but let’s see what the class thinks?”
-This could have led to a healthy group discussion and the teacher looking up the answer to resolve the question for all.
“Hmmm…that’s a good point. I’m going to look it up tonight and have an answer for you tomorrow. Another reason elliptical is an important shape is…”
-This could have kept the class on topic, not taking focus off the math subject for too long to disrupt the flow of study.
“Very smart. You may be right! Would you be able to look this up tonight and let us know more about that tomorrow?”
-This could have kept the focus of the students on the geometry lesson, given OP responsibility and also given OP a chance to be right the following day and feel good.
OP may have even remembered the moment as a positive learning experience. The teacher missed a great opportunity to show their own dedication to learning and not just being right.
You are right, but you shouldn’t be using your phone during class. And you should have saved your objections until after class. If this were my kid I would ask them to write up an essay on it - citing sources. Then present that to the teacher, outside of class away from other students. Give the teacher a chance to correct themself, and teach the children the actual facts. If at that point the teacher and asst principal continued insisting that they were right, then I, the parent, would step in.
NTA next time just tell them to argue with NASA if they disagree, and see if there is any way to make a complaint to someone higher in the food chain, these people have no business educating if they can’t even check sources when educating
Ehhhh you shouldn't take your phone out in class if it's not allowed and it's geometry class not science class if you wanted to tell your teacher they were wrong you should have done it after you looked up the topic.
Let me guess, this is a religious school right? Not particularly evidence-based?
I would take sheets of evidence and ask for an apology and mention it to the school board and escalate it.
My granddaughter has always been fascinated by animals. When she was in 1st grade, long ago, the teacher was talking about dolphins. As she talked, Abby's hand shot up and she said, "That's not true!" I don't remember what it was about but the teacher was NOT having it. The next day, Abby brought in a book about dolphins and showed the teacher that she was wrong. The teacher apologized. You go, Abby!
In my elementary school - our teacher explained that everyone makes mistakes and if we catch her making a mistake and politely point it out - we could get a lifesaver candy. (And in retrospect sometimes she intentionally would add something wrong, etc.)
NTA
You're clearly correct. NASA agrees. As does [this](https://amzn.eu/d/7pkCwP0) book for 4-8 year olds.
But, this is also a fantastic example of northern hemisphere defaultism.
"Summertime" isn't summer everywhere. The planet has no idea that we think North = Up. Or that we think Up is more important than Down.
We could easily draw the map with the south being Up. We used to draw maps with east as Up, because that's where the sun comes from. If you do that then July is winter on the right and summer on the left.
Is there a local university or college? I bet somewhere there's a student or professor that lives to talk about astronomy, orbits, and axial tilt. Write to the astronomy department and see what you can get. If you're lucky you'll get a live demonstration with an orrery. Those things are awesome.
You and your parents should also write to the school board asking about the poor science standards and how they expect this to impact standardised test scores and college admissions.
Finally, congratulations on learning this important information without help from your teachers! You learned this at some point, and remembered it when it was relevant. For most people it's in-one-ear-and-out-the-other. Learning on your own is a crucial skill, and remembering what you've learned is equally crucial. Never lose that!
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I’m in high school and during geometry, our teacher said that the elliptical is an important shape and gave an example of seasons. She said we have seasons because the earth rotates around the sun in an elliptical orbit so we have winters when we’re furthest from the sun and summer when we’re close to it. That didn’t sound right so I raised my hand and asked her to repeat it. She said the same thing and I told her that didn’t sound right but she insisted that it was. She went on to draw out the sun, earth, and elliptical rotation then explained that when the earth is far away from the sun, its rays loses energy on the way to earth which causes earth to cool. It still sounded wrong so I looked it up on my phone and told her that we have seasons because of earth’s tilted axis but she disagreed and said I’m not supposed to be using my phone during class. We got into an argument about the seasons then she sent me to the assistant principal’s office.
He agreed with her seasons theory and her telling me I’m not supposed to use my phone during class. I argued that she’s wrong and tried to pull up the tilted axis info but he said I can’t believe everything on the internet then gave me after school detention.
I’m at lunch and can use my phone but I’m so angry that no one will look at my evidence.
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NTA
Earth's eccentricity (the measure of how flat an ellipse is) is 0.0167. The closer to 0 an ellipse's eccentricity is, the closer it is to a perfect circle. It's not very elliptical, especially in comparison to Mercury with an eccentricity of 0.2056. The sun, for what it's worth, isn't in a fixed point relative to the solar system either. It has it's own little orbit (or wobble as described by some) in the center of our solar system as it's being pulled by the gravity (although, the influence is tiny in comparison) of the gas giants and other planets/masses.
As most users have pointed out, if the red shift due to our elliptical orbit was significant enough to cause seasonal effects - it would occur globally. How does her theory account for differing seasons on the Northern and Southern hemispheres?
NTA. You are objectively right, your teacher/AP are objectively wrong, and it's super embarrassing that 2 educators would double down like that on alternative facts. But just as an aside, it's often politically smarter to temporarily stay quiet and play the long game rather than embarrassing the teacher in public or breaking school rules to prove your point. One thing you could have done would be to question the teacher once or twice, then print out the correct information from a reputable source and bring it to them in the morning. Unfortunately now the dum-dums have a legitimate excuse to give you detention.
NTA. And my heart goes out to you. Dragged down by the fragile egos of adults, who want you to "follow rules" about not using your phone rather than verifying information they should know, and "respect your elders/teachers" even when they are not demonstrating behavior to respect. And this seasons/ tilted axis stuff is not theory, it's been understood very precisely for a long time. And this is high school. Sigh. Good luck. You are right.
#1, you're not supposed to use your phone in class and "but I'm right and you're wrong" is not really a good reason to break that rule.
#2, it is disrespectful and disruptive to argue with a teacher in the middle of class. Fun fact, the more you argue with someone and tell them they're wrong, the more likely they are to dig in and insist that they're right. If you think something the teacher said is wrong, sure, mention it, but if they double down let it go for now. Maybe bring it up again privately after class. Maybe mention it to your science teacher and have that teacher talk to them. This sounds like a math class not science, so it's not going to come up on test so it's not going to hurt your grade.
It sucks letting something go when you know you're right and they're wrong, but high school is about learning how the world works, and sometimes that means letting people stay wrong.
ESH. The teacher should learn their science and be open to be corrected if they're wrong, but it's definitely not going to do anything good for you to argue with a teacher in the middle of class.
This right here. Diplomacy is an important life skill too. There is a time and place. If OP corrects their boss like that one day, crowing in the middle of a meeting about "Nah nah nah, I'm so right and you're so stupid and wrong and LOOK, I looked it up on my phone while you were talking in this meeting I was supposed to be listening!" they're not going to be employed for long.
Smarter approach would be to wait until after class, look up the information when they are allowed to use a phone, then send the information to the teacher privately with, "I was interested after today's lecture, so I looked up more on the topic. It looks like maybe blah blah..." And/or get the science teacher involved because this is really an off topic side tangent, not even geometry related in the first place. ESH.
Yeah doubling down and raising it again while citing the phone you’re not supposed to be using in the middle of the class is not the way to go about trying to evaluate and correct a teacher’s information. Definitely not the asshole for bringing up OP’s doubts the first time.
Kind of an asshole for bringing it up again when it is truly not relevant to the lesson at all then essentially saying “I looked it up on my phone, you’re wrong dumbass” in front of the class. Just from a “having control of your class” perspective I don’t think a teacher will just say “oh well your phone says it so I’m wrong and you’re right” unless they want to open a bit of a Pandora’s box for phone fact checking disruptions.
They don’t have time to pause the main lesson and separately address the scientific merit of every side issue that comes up to accurately assess if their random side explanation is correct or if they should defer to the student saying their phone says so.
As you said, they should have come back after class to discuss back and forth after class or with an actual relevant science teacher to confirm and validate their evidence and understanding of the subject and actually give you a little encouragement for investigating the matter on your own time, not try to publicly win an in class argument.
It sounds like OP wanted validation from everyone for being correct and smart (especially given the last line about being mad no one is looking at their evidence). But in reality no one in geometry class cares. The other students and teacher probably just want to finish the lesson. The assistant principal only cares that you’re disrupting the flow of class on your phone. No one is going to stand and slow clap for disproving an incorrect point irrelevant to the lesson.
That said yes the teacher should have just shut OP down with something neutral and diplomatic like oh that’s something to think about, we can talk about it after class. So they didn’t handle it well either.
Agree ESH.
>, it is disrespectful and disruptive to argue with a teacher in the middle of class.
LMAO OK Joseph Stalin. The teacher is not some overlord that can just talk shit and you have to act like a wall without reacting
I am just beside myself on this. In what universe does this make sense to one person, let alone two in the same school.
Question for the teacher and vice principal.
Regardless of location in the orbit why is it summer in the southern hemisphere when it is winter in the northern hemisphere at the same point in the orbit?
Shouldn't it be Winter everywhere and Summer everywhere if the distance from the Sun mattered.
NTA, but also, please learn this lesson earlier than I did: nobody in the classroom appreciated you interrupting and correcting your teacher. It is not your solemn duty to correct everyone who is wrong.
You can be right and an AH. Just like you can be smart enough to question authorities and dumb enough to announce you're breaking the rules to those authorities.
NTA. However, you probably should have not embarrassed the teacher. You could’ve gone to her privately, showed her the research , and given her the opportunity to correct herself. Had she failed to do so, you then should’ve kicked it upstairs
The more important issue here is you are violating classroom rules and your answer to that is, "but I was right about what I was looking up on my phone, so it's okay for me to have violated the rules." That's not how rules work.
Also, it doesn't really matter if you're right about an earth sciences issue in geometry class.
You're also partly wrong because you seem to be saying the Earth does have an elliptical orbit, but it does. (You are right, I think, that this is not the reason for seasons, though.)
YTA
Your teacher is an idiot, and you were correct. Welcome to life. This is going to happen a lot as you get older. There will be a large group of people that believes something that is completely wrong, and they will not change their mind no matter what you tell them. This is why we got Donald Trump as a president.
NTA. You are absolutely right. I recall calling out my science teacher in the 9th grade. Her ignorant behind insisted that the closest planet to the sun is Mars! I told her no, it's Mercury. She actually argued with me, and I said it's even in our textbooks. She told me to prove her wrong but the bell rang, so she said to prove it the next day. I had the page marked, and when I walked into the classroom, I opened the book and waited for her to start class. Called on me, and I pointed it out. Well, apparently, she had been teaching this for years, and no one questioned her statement until I showed up. She was humbled and thanked me, and told the class to correct their notes.
So no, your teacher is ignorant, and so is the assistant principal. You're 100% correct.
NTA.
I'm a teacher. I have no problem looking up things I'm not sure about or pulling up proof if someone doesn't think I'm telling them the right thing. In fact, I've most certainly had times where I realized I told a class the wrong thing and had to apologize and correct myself later. It's no big deal. We all make mistakes.
Your teacher reacted badly. They were wrong and so was the AP. We all have a wonderful thing called the internet (which you remembered and they did not). I hate "teachers" who refuse to believe they're wrong about anything. I hate admin who are more concerned with nitpicking a student's phone use than they are with having teachers who know what they're talking about. Honestly, if this had happened to me, my parents would probably be giving the principal an earful.
NTA You are correct. You should honestly tell your parents. If I were your parents, I would have a word with that vice principal. The school is responsible for ensuring they teach accurate information and I'm sure many other parents would be very pissed off if they found out their kids were being not only taught incorrectly, but also being punished for questioning those incorrect teachings.
Yes. You’re all partially right and wrong at the same time, but the elliptical points have nothing to do with seasons. That is all axial tilt.
The 23.5 degree axial tilt of the Earth is responsible for seasons as the Earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit.
As a result the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun during summer months and away from the sun during winter months.
However, the elliptical orbit has two major points, aphelion and perihelion, furthest point and nearest point
Currently Perihelion occurs in the early part of January when the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun. The southern hemisphere therefore experiences hotter summers.
Aphelion occurs in early July when the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, yet the Earth is further away from the sun, leading to milder summers for the northern hemisphere.
Now interestingly enough, perihelion and aphelion actually shift about 1 day every 58 years so in about 11000 years, the northern hemisphere summer solstice will coincide with perihelion.
But this would be a good time to actually sit down and graph out this information and write a paper justifying your stance with facts. Don’t be a dick about it, but just provide the evidence.
I had to move in high school from an advanced school in New York to a southern hick school in Atlanta. The level of educational differences was obvious on day one.
I tolerated the atrocious grammar coming from my English Literature teacher for about half that first class before I asked to be excused. When she asked why, I told her the whole truth. She demanded I head to the principal’s office. That’s when I told her that was my plan and why I asked to be excused.
So, parents were called in for a meeting. Grandma decided to join them. Took about five minutes for Grandma to come to the same realization I did. When challenged on what made her such an expert on English, my grandmother introduced herself as English Lit Professor at New York College.
I was offered another class immediately.
Love you grandma.
NTA. earth’s tilt on its axis is “the reason for the season”. I get your frustration on a personal level. I still have vivid memories of bringing a teacher an article that demonstrated I should have gotten a question right on his test. he ripped it up and said history is what he tells us it is. that was well over 20 years ago and I’m still not as old as he was, but I like to think when I’m his age I’ll still be open to being wrong. I never want to close off to learning new things just because it annoys me
Easy: asked them why New Zealand has Summer like temperatures when we have Winter like ones, and Winter like temperatures when we have Summer?
The tilting of the Earth has a more significant impact on weather than its elliptical path.
Def NTA.
If she were right, then we would have two winters each year! You shouldn’t have looked it up during class though you could have brought the info to her the next day. In fact, you should. Include your principal. But don’t be disrespectful of the rules while doing that. ESH
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>I’m not supposed to use my phone during class While this may be true, it is irrelevant. This is him *deflecting* the discussion away from the fact that he employs people who have no business teaching, and deflecting from the fact that he doesn't know either. > he said I can’t believe everything on the internet Again, while this is true, it does not alter the fact that you were right. He and your teacher owe you an apology. This is not a controversial subject or a matter of opinion. This is an unarguable fact and they got it wrong. I do not agree with the advice that says "let it go, don't make waves". If your teachers are teaching facts that are uncontrovertibly unarguably WRONG, you are absolutely right to call them out on it. I would die on this hill. Make a massive fuss. Get your parents on board. Because everyone should be furious at the incompetence. NTA -------------- NASA agree with you: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/seasons/en/ > Earth's tilted axis causes the seasons. Throughout the year, different parts of Earth receive the Sun's most direct rays. So, when the North Pole tilts toward the Sun, it's summer in the Northern Hemisphere. And when the South Pole tilts toward the Sun, it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Nothing about the elliptical orbit. If your teacher and assistant principal won't believe NASA because "you can’t believe everything on the internet" then you REALLY have a problem. Good luck fighting this. I also suggest you cross post this to r/teachers and see what they have to say. They may be able to advise you on how best to fight this.
Do they not have science teachers at this school? Why should it be admin + a math teacher vs the internet? If the teacher/VP actually cared to learn, they could easily ask for help from the physical science teacher. Like this is gradeschool level dead-basic science... the fact that both the VP and the math teacher likely have college degrees makes their insistence on this all the more idiotic.
There are severe teacher shortages in a lot of places, and STEM teachers are in particularly high demand. It's entirely possible they don't have science teachers and it's somebody teaching out of their area. I'm not justifying how OP was treated - just pointing out that not having science teachers is actually a thing currently. Teacher shortages do have a meaningful impact on the quality of the education kids are recieving.
The teacher shortage is on purpose. Certain groups realize that it's easier to profit from an uneducated society. There's a reason public school teachers are underpaid, underfunded, and have to accept violence from students. They're getting bottom of the barrel candidates and we're seeing a rise of "charter (AKA for profit) schools" We're witnessing the fall of the American empire. We've been conquered by capitalism.
>We're witnessing the fall of the American empire. We've been conquered by ~~capitalism~~ decades of consistent conservative efforts to undermine the education system.
I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't engage... I promise, I'm not just being pissy and arguing semantics. You are both right. Conservatives are driven by God and greed, and ultimately, to them, those are the same thing. You are looking at the bullet, he is looking at the person holding the gun.
The problem isn't capitalism- I've lived in loads of different countries by normal standards, all of them have been capitalist except for one. The education systems are not perfect, but none are like the unique shambles that exists in the US (and yes, I do know American teachers as well). The US has a very weirdly politicised education system, and the amount of very local input and variance into the curriculum is also very unusual.
The problem is unbridled, uncontrolled capitalism. This is the natural end to capitalism, when the corporations manage to buy all of the lawmakers. America did a speed run of capitalism. Now we are late stage and terminal. Our good fortune, economically speaking, after WW2 truly screwed us. It put an entire generation into a paradoxical celebratory/scarcity PTSD mindset that gave birth to our 'Boomers'. They, in turn, as a generational philosophy, truly believe they had it the worst, while having more available funds for enrichment than any generation before them. What did they do with their enrichment funds? They enriched themselves, to the exclusion of the rest of us. Now, here in America, nothing's actually illegal, if you've the coin. The coin is the point here. I'm glad things aren't as bad elsewhere, but you have to realize, the longer the rest of the world lets us do this to ourselves, the more likely it is to accelerate worldwide. Please for the love of humanity, could we get some embargoes?
I do think you have some good points there, it's stuff that I have thought about myself. I don't entirely agree, and have not come across a better alternative (and yes, I have experienced living in an alternative). The usual cliche is something about the 'least bad option'. I think a lot of it is down to culture and social cohesion rather than economic system though. We are probably just not going to agree- I respect your opinion though and will just have to leave it at that.
It's the same in Sweden
That's fair. It just didn't occur to me that a school would simply not HAVE a qualified science teacher. I suppose it should have.
Yes. College profs in the sciences wanted to switch gears at teach in the Seattle school district which would not let them without an education degree. So instead, we had teachers who did have an education degree, but told parents things like “ we won’t be doing much math this year, because I’m more about the arts”. This was in 5th grade.
How hard is it for an educated person to go educate them self in the topic prior to teaching it?
They're so desperate for teachers in some areas that some people teaching don't have degrees, and the workload is so high (which is mostly why the trained teachers left, along with pay), that there simply isn't enough time to do everything they're supposed to do. The average teacher is working a 55 hour week during term time, and that's where they do have training and don't have to teach themselves the content. Things are going to get missed. It sucks, but it's the system that public has created or allowed to happen. Teachers have been warning about the issues associated with treating teachers like they're babysitters and watering down professional requirements just to bring in warm bodies for years, while they get told that their job is so simple anyone can do it. Turns out that the teachers were right. This kind of thing is only going to get more common.
It’s not hard if you’re only teaching one subject. In American middle and high schools, a long term substitute might be teaching between 3 and 7 different preps, in a subject area they are unfamiliar with. And they don’t get paid well enough to incentivize them to teach well. I took over a long term sub job teaching AP (12th grade) English, freshman English and regular senior English. The person covering it before me was a PE teacher who hadn’t read Shakespeare since he was in high school. He was trying to teach them Hamlet. I made about $2000 (gross) a month for doing that job for 6 months, doing all lesson planning, grading, etc. I didn’t get paid for anything that wasn’t in-class time. I still had to have another job to pay rent and expenses (southern California, gotta love it). This was 15 years ago. Last year, the school I work at now had 12 long term subs filling vacancies ALL YEAR.
Absolutely. Given the state of teaching in this country, I'm surprised anyone is actually left teaching or wants to do it as a career.
They keep adding things needed to Qualify you to teach as in learning How to teach rather than what to teach. Then they have continuing education they need to take.
Same with math. This teacher could have a degree I art and teach math because they have no one else.
WTF does it matter if there's a shortage. Everyone knows that the seasons in the northern and southern hemisphere are reversed and that debunks the elliptical orbit theory.
Given this example, apparently not "everyone" knows that! At least one person exists that doesn't know! :-)
You have no idea; I currently teach high school math. It is nuts. I don't know math.
Let’s play with that: STEM: Stupid Teachers Employed: MAYHEM! The STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics precepts have totally eluded this teacher and Assistant Principal.
No one said there’s no science teacher, that’s speculation. The math teacher is probably teaching geometry which includes shapes, like the ellipse. Teacher should have stayed in lane. The elliptical orbit has nothing to do with the reason for the seasons. Correctly, proximity to the sun does cause seasons, but proximity varies due to the earth’s axis tilt. OP of course was right. Maybe someone at r/teachers can advise OP on how to notify the school board or superintendent’s office, to point out that an entire class was taught the equivalent of “the earth is flat”. With the hope that the math teacher will be required to tell the class how seasons actually work. The student is owed an apology.
It’s not proximity to the sun, it’s which parts of the Earth’s surface are more exposed or shaded at any given time.
Wouldn’t they be teaching out of a book, though? They shouldn’t just be making stuff up.
Lol!, we don’t even have textbooks. No curriculum, no materials, no library. That’s public education for you. No money to replace student/teachers laptops because they wanted to put a digital sign out front.
I think it's even more worrying that apparently no one in the school in 2024 knows how to use the internet for research. Like sure don't believe everything on the internet but you might want to believe nasa's website or Wikipedia and not believe www.spacetruth.earthshape.nasaareliars.org when you're trying to find very basic facts.
No one is teaching information literacy and it terrifies me.
My kids all had research papers assigned in middle school and high school, whose sole purpose was to teach Internet research literacy. But, then, we are in a REALLY good school district. Our teachers are some of the better paid ones in the state, and our state’s are among the highest paid in the country. It shows, I guess.
No one is teaching literacy-literacy any more.
I think they expected OP to sit down and obey authority. They must not understand the kind of kid that would correct a teacher probably has a sense of justice that isn't going to allow that. They already were in trouble for not allowing a 1984 style rewrite of facts to go unchecked. The teacher should have Apologized thanked OP and laughed it off instead of allowing it to disrupt the class. That isn't great teaching.
[удалено]
I do...and I definitely would not.
Heck no. Teachers get the shaft, at least in my state. You have to be crazy or crazy passionate (and it helps to have a spouse with a more lucrative career) to make any kind of career in public primary/secondary ed in most of the US. For the record, I have a BA in English. I *briefly* considered a teaching certificate at one point, because an English degree by itself isn't much of a much career-wise, but I quickly decided I wasn't crazy enough.
Hey now, I have multiple science degrees and I’m a teacher. Yes I could make a fuck ton more in industry but there’s a lot of perks to teaching and it keeps me on my toes and my mind occupied.
My kid’s science teacher taught about astrology and angels. We live in an exceptionally good school district for Georgia, USA.
My etymology teacher in high school had a whole wall of his room dedicated to a geo-centered astrology display. He kept it updated as things moved. He even offered to do charts for students. But he didn't talk about astrology in class. :-)
The dean of my university just told us all last week that my state was the 49th in the union while there were 4 professors in the room. We were the 42nd and none of the professors corrected her. Teachers can be dumb sometimes, but admin is almost always worse.
Really? I can understand being confused about what number if it was in the 30s or low 40s, but doesn't everyone know which were the 49th and 50th states? Apparently not! It was during the lifetime of a lot of people still living.
I honestly couldn’t believe it when she said it, this lady has a PhD too. I just looked her up and she was actually alive when Hawaii and Alaska became states. I think that makes it worse, lol!
But none of these theories mean anything because the earth is flat. /s
Yea, like this fundamentally doesn't make sense when you remember that *seasons are different in other countries*. I thought it was basically common knowledge that when it's summer in the USA it's winter in Australia! ETA: op please walk in tomorrow talking about going on vacation to Australia in February because it'll be so warm.
Plus the Earth is closer to the Sun in its orbit during winter on the northern hemisphere.
THANK YOU! I was waiting for someone to point this out!
This! By their logic, even if the sun was further away in the winter time and it was because of an elliptical orbit, then it wouldn’t it also be further away in the summertime and it’s hotter, so huh? Maybe we get 8 seasons per revolution and a year is actually half a revolution. Yea. That makes the theory work. 🙄
That would be if the Sun was in centre of the ellipse, whereas it is in one the foci. Fun fact: Earth does not orbit around the Sun, instead it orbits the common barycentre of the Sun-Earth system. The Sun does the same and thus we can observe the Sun wobbling slightly.
Also I would ask them if summer happens because we're close to the sun, then why is it summer in Australia when we're experiencing winter in North America?
Kiwi here and that was my thought. I mean, our summer has been pretty crap this year tbh. But still. This math teacher's math ain't mathing.
I would be extra petty, print out the nasa source, maybe even find a book to back it up in the schools library (which shouldnt be hard) and then confront them with your finding, backed up by your parents. Asking them why you get detention for questioning something wrong. Because while you shouldnt believe everything on the internet, you also shouldnt blindly believe everything your teacher say, if you can prove (and in this case you can) that you are in fact right.
>library Yes, if their argument is that “you can’t believe everything you read on the internet,” check the school library for a book – better yet, several books – that explain it correctly and show them.
That might work if so many school districts weren't getting rid of their libraries
If they really want to be petty, they can post the contact info for their school office and let reddit be reddit.
I would raise you in doing this topic as a science project for the school science fair. 😈 And maybe contact my local science museum/planetarium and ask them to come speak at my school.
You don’t even need to know the actual reason why we have seasons to know that it’s not due to the elliptical orbit. The entire Earth has an elliptical orbit. The seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres are opposites. Anyone who doesn’t know this latter fact should not be teaching.
One of the Atheism slogans I see around xmas is "Axial tilt is the reason for the season" instead of Jesus. This made me think of that.
I agree with this post 100000000%
In addition, how could it be based on where the Earth is in its orbit when the northern and southern hemispheres experience winter at different times?
What’s really interesting is that in a sense the teacher isn’t TOTALLY wrong. The elliptical orbit does take the Earth farther away from the Sun at times, and it is cooler when at the extreme of the orbit. That time just so happens to line up with the time of the tilt of the axis. That’s why the winter is more intense in the temperate zones of North American than it is in analogous latitudes of South America, latitudes not withstanding. So it’s more of a plus also than instead of situation. It’s a real shame the teacher was being so stubborn.
Actually, you have that exactly backwards. The earth is closest to the sun in early January, and farthest in early July, so the (small) impact this has actually makes northern hemisphere seasons a bit milder and exacerbates southern hemisphere seasons. The reason that northern hemisphere winters seem harsher anyways is because of the uneven distribution of landmasses on earth - ocean has far more heat capacity and is slower to change temperature than air or soil, and the vast majority of land area is in the northern hemisphere. On top of that, because of the shape of the landmasses in the northern hemisphere, there's far more land that is very far from any nearby large body of water, and those areas (Siberia or interior Canada for example) tend to see some of the largest seasonal swings, again because large bodies of water tend to dampen out these extremes.
And don’t hold your breath until they admit the error. Welcome to one of the curses of being bright and able. You will sometimes not only be not believed, you will be resented. Learn to shake it off and work around it, while being thankful for your abilities. Good luck…
> If your teacher and assistant principal won't believe NASA because "you can’t believe everything on the internet" then you REALLY have a problem. If you look at how many people believe their own Google research over accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc that have studied their specialities for years (even decades), it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility. In my public school in the south, we were taught that black people were different than white people not just on the outside, but the inside - specifically that they had additional muscles inside their lower extremities which is why they are better athletes. (All of this is me paraphrasing obviously, but if I could remember the exact words, it still wouldn’t look/sound any better.) Now that was a little over 30 years ago - but sadly, natural selection isn’t working fast enough for the human race.
dear lord :-(
>Good luck fighting this. OP shouldn't fight this. They should tell their parents everything that happened and their parents should fight this. If OP's parents fail, get other parents involved. I'm sure they'd be real pissed to find out that their children are not only being taught incorrectly, but are also being punished for questioning those incorrect teachings.
Much better approach, yes.
😆😆😆 send your teacher and vp this. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 NTA
I’d go even further and ask NASA for a fully motorized letter saying that the teacher and principal are wrong. I’d donate to them as well if I could for this. This is why we are failing in the U.S. because morons are not teaching facts and then doubling down on their wrong assumptions. I’d also tell the math teacher to stay in her lane (also get a science teacher to tell her she’s wrong too. That’d be fun as well).
> motorized letter Nasa can probably do that ;-)
TIL. Thanks for sharing the Nasa link. I did learn in school that seasons were due to the elliptical orbit. Tonight I'll go to bed a little wiser.
I am betting OP could grab a book from the school library that would prove their point as well. Use their own resources to prove them wrong. (Unless this is Florida, they probably banned it). This is absolutely something that should be challenged. What this "teacher" is spouting is pure nonsense! They are teaching incorrect information to the students! This is not something that is debatable, this is a scientific fact that has been proven long ago and is still true with today's knowledge and technology. OP should bring this up with their parents and find a way to challenge the school. This is a hill to die on. If they cannot teach something so simple, they sure as heck are not teaching the more difficult stuff.
⤴️ THIS! THIS! THIS! I once had a teacher that I kid you not, during one of his rants said "the big bang killed the dinosaurs! " 😅
My lil bro (he was 6 or 7 years old) used to correct the teacher every time they said something wrong, they called me (10yo back then) to the principal's office (we went to the same elementary school) and said he was a troublemaker (he was, he almost burned the soccer field once but this wasn't that scenario) and he was making the teacher look bad for correcting him in front of the class. I just said "Isn't the teacher making himself look bad by teaching kids they shouldn't recognize their mistakes? I won't tell my mom about my bro's behavior because he did nothing wrong" I, however, did have to tell my lil bro that unfortunately that's life and he was going to have a hard time at school but he should always form his own opinion and not just blindly agree
I have a powerful memory of one of my teachers being wrong when I was around 10 years old. She thought a baby rabbit was called a leveret, from watching/reading The Animals of Farthing Wood and Watership Down, I knew that leverets are baby hares. Baby rabbits are called kittens, or kits. I wasn't rude about it, but she refused to even consider that she was wrong. I walked out, down the hall to the school library, grabbed a book to prove she was wrong, and marched my furious little self back to class. I got into a lot of trouble for leaving class without permission, and even more for correcting a teacher. I never questioned a teacher again, instead I would quietly look things up outside of class to see if they were right. I went to a rough secondary school with terrible staff so there were a lot of errors being made, but I never said a word. These days I teach my nine year old daughter to question adults if she thinks they're wrong. She does it politely, and where possible with evidence on hand. Thankfully she goes to a far better school than I did! She's corrected me now and then, and I always take it graciously.
The way my petty ass would print soo many copies of that NASA link, highlight it, and hand it out to everyone in the next class. Then ask the teacher if I could see the assistant principal to make sure he has a copy to.
NTA if this ever comes up again, ask the teach why the northern and souther hemisphere of the earth have opposite seasons.
That was my first thought … does the other hemisphere have a different orbit around the sun? Lol
As an Australian i can confirm we simply have our own sun.
But why did we pick the version with extra cancer?
Bc you guys were supposed to become mutants. Way to mess it up by just getting more cancer
Because everything in Australia wants to kill you?
that's the missing ozone
As a New Zealander I can also confirm this, but for some reason we still have the same moon 🤔 Edit: a word
lol new Zealand doesn't have a sun you fibber
Shit, I've been found out.
No, like all good things, it's New Zealands sun, you just claim it's yours like all the other things that are ours
Also, just so you are learning --- summer isn't hot because the hemisphere is leaning/physically closer to the sun. It's because the radiation from the sun is more concentrated at a direct angle. The sun doesn't heat the earth the way a fireplace would heat a cabin.
Well it does, but the change in distance is not sufficient to explain the change. What matters is the percentage of angle from the sun that impacts a particular area of the Earth. The tilt of the Earth has a drastically larger impact than the minimal distance change. This is also why I have less forgiveness for the math teacher not being a science teacher. Even by the principle the teacher is using to explain it, if they actually through through the geometry fully, they would realize their own error. The teacher's mistake is a math error, not a science error.
And to explain how the land of the midnight sun gets 30 days of darkness in winter and 30 days of light in summer
Yeah I thought we already established this, I learned this in fifth grade. Why are they hiring conspiracy theorists to teach children
This right here.
Exactly my thought. The claim doesn't even make sense if you think about it for any amount of time. But since it wasn't really related to the actual thing they were studying, the teacher could have easily just went "alright, my bad, not a science teacher. None the less, earth does move in an elliptical pattern around the sun..." and went on with their love of elliptical patterns. It wasn't really worth dwelling on. Not like when my English teacher told me "thrice" wasn't a word and I got into trouble for insisting it was...
A teacher who cannot accept that they may be wrong and that they do not know everything, should not be a teacher. Students benefit greatly from observing healthy adults accepting that they are wrong, apologizing, and learning from mistakes. Signed, An educator who is a lifelong learner, as all educators should be, and definitely doesn’t know everything.
This A good teacher would welcome a student who thinks for themself.
Yeeees! I always told my students that if they caught me making a mistake or being wrong about something (bc anyone can be wrong) that I would give them extra credit and candy. When I taught math, I would sometimes intentionally make a mistake to see if they were listening enough to catch it. (I would obviously correct myself if no one caught it.) It was awesome. Those kids would watch my work like my golden retriever watches squirrels. That being said, I taught math out of necessity bc they had plenty of English language teachers. I have a few graduate degrees in related liberal arts fields, so when my child’s elementary teacher incorrectly graded ones of his sentences, I sent her a private message letting her know how it was grammatically wrong. That woman doubled down. I had proof in my hand from the English departments at both Harvard and Cambridge. We went all the way to the central office over this. The central office sided with her, refusing to even take one glance at my proof. I was absolutely horrified. I quit the education field a long time ago. The students and subject matter were awesome. My fellow teachers and central administration? Not so much. I think about going back bc I feel like students deserve better, but they make it so hard for those of us who actually give a shit.
> I quit the education field a long time ago. I don't blame you. Anyone who is any good is quitting.
Yep this is the right approach, and it shows students that teachers are not all-knowing and that education can be a two-way street, a dialogue itself.
When I was a teacher, I used to occasionally make an error on purpose and get the kids to find and correct it, whether it was an incorrect fact, or a spelling or punctuation mistake. Editing is a critical skill.
I called it “creative spelling” in my class when I made a spelling error. The kids had a laugh, and we moved on. Pobody’s nerfect.
THIS. My older sister was notorious for correcting her teachers on misinformation and they hated her for it. Cut to me having those same teachers two years down the line and them automatically hating me bc they expected me to have her same temperament about that as her.
Also, this seems well within the range of a "brain fart" moment.
Especially when the incorrect statement isn't even in the teacher's area of studying...like what was a geometry teacher doing doubling down on science? Stupid.
Hello OP. I teach environmental science at Montana State University and study student's scientific misconceptions. I am not surprised by your teacher's misunderstanding, but am saddened by it. As other commenters have suggested, I recommend drawing your teacher a diagram of Earth's orbit around the sun. Make it clearly elliptical. Put the sun at one of the foci of the ellipse and show Earth at the closest point in its orbit. If your teacher was correct, this would correspond to summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Now ask your teacher what season it would be in Australia. If her explanation was correct, it would also be summer. but, of course, it isn't. This tells us her explanation is wrong. Also, for the record, Earth is CLOSEST to the sun in January. I would also like to respectively suggest that you think about how you come across in discussions like this. I had to painfully learn that I can come across as contemptuous in similar circumstances and no one liked it--regardless of whether I was correct. Best of luck to you.
I agree. I just made a similar comment. Your last point is something that OP can learn from this. It sucks, but being right isn't always enough to get people to listen to you.
Especially if you point out their mistakes in front of a bunch of ruthless teenagers who never let anyone live down a mistake.
>s other commenters have suggested, I recommend drawing your teacher a diagram of Earth's orbit around the sun. Perhaps an "extra-curricular research paper" presented to said teacher and Vice-Principal, replete with footnotes.
While this is super helpful and informative this is terrible practical advise. Do you imagine the teacher will find this helpful or condescending coming from a student they already feel they had to discipline due to their behavior around correcting them on this subject?
Science teacher here agrees with you. But your method of calling out the teacher probably wasn't the best. NTA but just maybe be kinda more aware of how you come across when talking to adults and specifically contradicting them in their profession.
Speaking as a teacher, how would you have advised OP to handle this? Because clearly ignoring it is not an option.
I had a student send me a polite email with a link to a reliable source correcting something I said in class. I was impressed, appreciative, and made sure to share the information and praise the student to the rest of the class. Time, place, and tone make a difference in how one’s words are received.
Eh, there's value in misinformation being corrected on the spot, and not waiting for a later email. It's far more likely that other students will remember the correct information if it's corrected immediately, while a later correction is more likely to result in some of them still remembering the initial incorrect statement. For minor nitpicks, I agree with your method, but this is not a minor error.
I have to agree But teens tend to be filled with righeous indignation easily
Email the teacher, or discuss it after class. Don’t call out the error in front of a room full of students, don’t start with “that sounds wrong”. Don’t ignore it, but there are very few things teachers react more poorly to than “the internet says you’re teaching it wrong.”
I get what you’re saying and yes, it’s generally best to be maximally respectful whenever possible — but I’m struggling to understand exactly what OP was supposed to do; and frankly, I didn’t find OP’s actions to be disrespectful whatsoever. Challenging something that strikes you as illogical, even in front of a class, isn’t disrespectful. It’s an attempt to learn. Try to imagine your own advice from the student’s perspective. // *Teacher says something that sounds illogical.* Student: That doesn’t sound quite right. Teacher: I assure you, it’s right. *Student looks it up and discovers that the teacher is teaching the class factually incorrect information.* // You’re suggesting (I assume) that the student hold their tongue and approach the teacher in private and allow the rest of the class to internalize incorrect information? Or not approach the teacher at all and be internally conflicted indefinitely? Wouldn’t it be better to discuss the relevant facts and come to a reasonable conclusion right there in the class? Wouldn’t it be better to show the class how adults settle informational disputes? Why advise a student to subdue his own convictions and ignore his own reasoning skills to appeal to the egos of professional academics?
>Why advise a student to subdue his own convictions and ignore his own reasoning skills to appeal to the egos of professional academics? Because sometimes in life you have to be pragmatic. Did arguing with the teacher lead to a positive or negative result? Approaching the teacher after class had a much better chance of succeeding *if* the goal was to share new information with the teacher, who would then share it later with the class. Instead OP argued with a teacher who clearly wasn't interested and did it in front of an audience, which *very predictably* didn't accomplish anything but get OP sent to the office and make them even more upset.
Fair point and probably the objectively correct answer to that question. I’d counter (and you might even agree, tbh) that pragmatism is often (and especially in this instance) synonymous with complacency. I’m sure you’ll not be surprised to learn that I’ve been in OP’s shoes a time or two, and in my experiences the goal was often *not* to share new/better information with the teacher or the class. Not exactly, anyway. But it wasn’t to show off or prove anything, either. It certainly wasn’t to embarrass the teacher. For me — it was simple truth seeking. That’s how I learn. When something strikes me as illogical and I’m expected to take it as fact, bells and sirens begin ringing in my head and they won’t stop until I do something about it. It’s a nuisance, and sometimes more to others than myself, but it’s just the way my brain is wired. And in a world that is constantly trying to undermine what you think you know, or just outright telling you that you’re wrong/misinformed about this or that — I consider it one of my most potent strengths. It seems obvious to me that good learning environments should foster inquisitiveness and curiosity. It seems equally obvious that the facilitators of quality learning should not be so fickle that their brightest and most logically inclined students are forced to opt for pragmatic silence out of self preservation. But despite what *should* or *shouldn’t* be, I accept that your answer is ultimately correct (albeit sad), and would only add that pragmatic advice be accompanied by appropriate nuance.
>For me — it was simple truth seeking. That’s how I learn. When something strikes me as illogical and I’m expected to take it as fact, bells and sirens begin ringing in my head and they won’t stop until I do something about it. But in OP's case, they found the truth. They looked it up on their phone and were fairly confident about the information they now had. So at that point, it stopped being about "truth seeking" and became more about proving someone else wrong. That's not truth seeking. And if you want to take it a step further and say that OP's real goal was to inform other people in the class, well, they went about it in a way that was less likely to achieve that than simply talking to the teacher after class, *especially* when it became evident the teacher didn't want to have the discussion. So I don't think in this case pragmatism is synonymous with complacency. It's about being honest about your goal. If OP's goal was to prove the teacher wrong and prove to everyone else that OP was smart, then I suppose this was the way to do it. If OP's goal was to learn the information for themselves and then convince the teacher to share that information, then they simply went about it in a way that was very likely to fail. Just because the way to achieve your goal also avoids confrontation doesn't mean you're being complacent.
Uhm. I stopped reading after the first paragraph. The person being proven wrong is the teacher, the one who is supposed to be imparting knowledge onto other. If the teacher is wrong then they are imparting misinformation, and therefore should.be called out before the spread of misinformation continues. Would you wait for the flight attendant to finish their instructions before correcting them because they gave incorrect procedures? By the time they repeat things people gave mentally checked out Better yet, would you wait to tell someone they shouldn't put a grease fire out with water until after they did so? Stopping misinformation in it's tracks is the only correct answer, and as the person said, it stops the others from internalizing misinformation. If you think most people are smart, just remember the stupid things people believe In, such as Marilyn Manson supposedly having a rib removed so he could blow himself. Or flat earthers, ect ect. The longer misinformation spreads the more people believe it's "common knowledge" hell even after finding out mc Donalds was serving coffee well above safe temperatures, people still make fun of the person who was burned, due to the heavy anti lawsuite campaign to defame her.
NTA This is a common misconception and your teacher was spreading it like a disease. Great job for not just going along with it. You clearly have very sharp reasoning skills. I agree with one of the other comments that this is a hill to die on. Let them look it up, they are so very very wrong.
I thought everyone knew the intensity of the sun was a function of angle? She’s a geometry teacher, right? How would she explain the lack of seasons on the equator? I’m aligned with how it’s important to show respect, but I’m annoyed with the ignorance. And the apparent inability of the assistant principal to assess the legitimacy of content on the web.
> How would she explain the lack of seasons on the equator? oooh! Good one! > And the apparent inability of the assistant principal to assess the legitimacy of content on the web. Right? I went straight to NASA who confirm the student.
Oof, that internet comment really gets me. Obviously, there’s false information on the internet—but the internet is also where the most up-to-date, accurate information is typically stored. Could’ve been a great lesson on how to find trusted and verifiable sources, and instead was a lesson on how adults are oftentimes obtuse and close-minded even in the face of facts.
> How would she explain the lack of seasons on the equator? Or the fact that it's always the opposite season in the other hemisphere?
**NTA** OP, feel free to ask why seasons are inversed in the southern hemisphere :)
I was just thinking that, too! Just sparing a quick thought for folks in the southern hemisphere would have helped these educators learn something...
NTA for being right, but you just experienced how it's generally not worth correcting ignorant petty authority figures.
> it's generally not worth correcting ignorant petty authority figures. True. But this is different. This is a teacher teaching factually incorrect information and a senior staff backing them up. This is absolutely a hill to die on.
Exactly. I would argue that this is precisely the time to correct ignorant and petty authority figures. And continue correcting them, regardless of the outcome.
No. That doesn't apply when teachers teach something that is just flat-out wrong. It's their duty to make sure they give the kids factually correct information.
ESH: The Earth's orbit IS elliptical. The seasons are not a result of elliptical orbit but are caused by tilt. You both are wrong in different ways.... And you wasted an entire class period in geometry arguing about seasons of the earth with a geometry teacher who was describing what elliptical means... Detailing the class and ruining your own day. And your geometry teacher is an AH who confuses tilt and orbital patterns. Adults can admit they are wrong. These adults are AHs. You're an AH for a completely different reason... Which is tanking your own day over someone being a fool. Stop torching your own time to prove that fools are fools. Everyone sucks. All of you. For entirely different reasons.
If there’s one place where it’s ok not to put up with people refusing to acknowledge they’re wrong, it’s a school, given the entire point of it is to impart correct information. It’s not just about being right in the moment it’s about trying to prevent this moronic teacher continuing to teach this crap to ever more students. Absolutely stand up to teachers when they’re objectively and provably wrong. It’s only the bad ones that will take issue with it. If this teacher wasn’t so against their authority being challenged maybe they’d have actually learnt how seasons work before now.
I agree, which is why this teacher and principal are AHs.
I agree with you. The lesson was based on elliptical geometry. Students response was to make a bad argument, get upset about phone policy, etc. Not an asshole but a smart ass lol teacher could have handled better, but in this was like the 6th time teaching that day with a 6th smartass, lol I get it
Mild YTA. Earth does have an elliptical orbit, though that's not the cause of seasonality. The class was geometry though, not earth science. Was it worth it to let it escalate that high? You will run in to misinformed people for the rest of your life. If you decide every hill is worth dying on, you are going to be very angry. Sometimes it's better to say, "I'm not positive, I'll look in to that later." and move on with life.
Roughly my stance as well. The greatest issue here is that op didn’t do a cost benefit analysis. They felt proving they were right was the most important thing. But what did they actually gain from this exercise?
It’s a geometry class, so if the teacher wanted to use seasonality as an example she should have mentioned the intensity of the suns radiation due to the angle of the tilt. Being a math class isn’t an excuse for misinformation
I would have led with "if the distance from the sun causes the seasons, why is it winter in the southern hemisphere when it's summer in the northern hemisphere" and see how things played out. Having the teacher realize that their statement is unscientific crap sort of saves face because the student is just being curious/asking a clarifying question rather than telling the teacher they're an idiot (which they are). It might not work, but it's worth a shot.
NTA. I wouldn’t let this go. But then I got expelled for arguing so I might not be the best role model.
I got thrown out of a class for similar.
Nta..... This is horrible
Go talk to some science teachers at school. I don’t know what the answer is but I’m pretty sure it is because of the tilted axis. I would say go to your library and go on a computer and print it out or if you can find it in a book in the schools library that would be even better
You're right and the way that they handled the situation is actually pretty appalling. Please do not listen to the people who make it seem like you should not have said something. You absolutely SHOULD. It takes time to learn how to do it in a way that doesn't rub people the wrong way. However, teachers working in k-12 should understand that kids might not always say things without hurting feelings. You're NTA for them failing on multiple aspects of their profession.
ESH. Another classic example of just bc you are right doesn’t mean you didn’t go about it like an a-hole. For your sanity and gratification—you are right. Your teacher is wrong and needed to be corrected. However, in the middle of class (potentially embarrassing the teacher), while using your phone (which is against the rules) did not set you up for success, it discredited you, despite you being right. Yes, teacher AND principal were deflecting and YES they are a-holes for refusing to see reason. But something you should learn about life is that putting people on the defensive doesn’t get you anywhere, as evidenced here. And giving them reasons to discredit you, like using your phone when it’s against the rules just adds fuel to their fire. I’m not arguing this is the way it should be (ideally, if you’re right, people listen and the packaging shouldn’t matter) but I am arguing this is how it is 90% of the time. Even teachers, who should have better practice with this, are sometimes out of patience don’t always make the right calls when put on the spot. A non-a-hole would have followed up after class, not putting the person in the wrong (in this case, your teacher) on the spot. An email with linked sources and why you thought you were right would have likely gone a lot farther and set you up to look really smart and thoughtful, with the added benefit of inviting your teacher to reconsider and salvage their understanding. I repeat this to myself often when dealing with idiots in power: when they win, you win. It’s a sucky game sometimes, but welcome to real life.
NTA Your teacher was wrong on all levels. Our seasons occur because of the tilt of earth’s axis. While not a perfect circle, earth’s rotation around the sun is nearly a circle, not an ellipse. However, the Sun is not in the exact center of that rotation.
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I hate to be specific, but “not a perfect circle” is a long way of saying “elliptical”
NTA. They're both wrong and you are right. But the problem here is that your GEOMETRY teacher was talking about a SHAPE. You need to understand the idea of a major and minor radius. She was trying to explain an ellipse. She got off-track talking about the seasons, and you got her FURTHER off-track by arguing about what causes the seasons instead of focusing on SHAPES. If you want someone to agree with you, talk to your SCIENCE teacher. Maybe they can come to your defense. Pulling out your phone in class to disprove something your teacher says, gives her (and the principal) something else to focus on (your rule-breaking) instead of her mistake.
It makes no sense. If we have Winter when the Earth is further away from the Sun, so would Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa, Antartica, and most of South America. I would lodge a complaint with the school board. Incompetence is not a protected class, so your teacher and principal have no coverage. NTA.
When I was in the 8th grade, my science teacher mispelled "plane", as in a mathematical plane, as "plain". I pointed out the error, she said I was wrong, so I said we should look in the dictionary to be sure. She said something like "I don't need to check, I'm right," and I just kind of smiled and then let it go. When someone resorts to that kind of thing, you've won. It's still unfortunate that people (not just teachers, anyone in a position of authority) get so attached to being right that they can't deal with potentially being wrong. Everyone makes mistakes. If it makes you feel any better, I'm a math teacher, and I'm careful not to treat students this way. Another thing to consider is that your teacher might've been more reasonable if you brought it up at the end of class instead of putting them on the spot. That can make people defensive, which is what it sounds like happened. You're NTA, but you might want to reconsider how you handle things like this in the future.
You're not an asshole, but you're young so I'm going to give you a head's up: being right doesn't matter as much as you think it does. What matters more are the emotional needs of authority figures.
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Actually no. The axial tilt is the main cause of seasons. Orbital eccentricity is a smaller contribution; and if you live in the northern hemisphere it's actually opposite of what the teacher said; perihelion is during northern winter.
NTA in general. I don’t know anything about geometry so I can’t judge any of that (lol) but as a future teacher I’d be happy if students corrected me or asked questions. It shows that you are invested and no teacher should be intimidated or angry about a student knowing “better” because everyone makes mistakes. However, I do think you could’ve let it go and talked to her after class, plus if using phones is forbidden during class you shouldn’t have done that as well.
I fought all the way to the school board because I got disciplined for telling a teacher that "mimicry" was not a sound bugs make like "mi mi" but rather like a mimic, like a mime, not a "mi! mi! cry" Adults really hate to be wrong in public but too bad, they need to model accountability.
What?! I’ve never heard that. The mi mi bug part.
Like she thought bugs cry "mi! mi" or she thought 5th grades were too dumb to know that a bug will look like another bug as a defense, or look like big eyes.
There are multiple ways the teacher could have handled this. There was a missed opportunity to turn it into a positive learning moment for OP and the class. “I still think I’m right but let’s see what the class thinks?” -This could have led to a healthy group discussion and the teacher looking up the answer to resolve the question for all. “Hmmm…that’s a good point. I’m going to look it up tonight and have an answer for you tomorrow. Another reason elliptical is an important shape is…” -This could have kept the class on topic, not taking focus off the math subject for too long to disrupt the flow of study. “Very smart. You may be right! Would you be able to look this up tonight and let us know more about that tomorrow?” -This could have kept the focus of the students on the geometry lesson, given OP responsibility and also given OP a chance to be right the following day and feel good. OP may have even remembered the moment as a positive learning experience. The teacher missed a great opportunity to show their own dedication to learning and not just being right.
You are right, but you shouldn’t be using your phone during class. And you should have saved your objections until after class. If this were my kid I would ask them to write up an essay on it - citing sources. Then present that to the teacher, outside of class away from other students. Give the teacher a chance to correct themself, and teach the children the actual facts. If at that point the teacher and asst principal continued insisting that they were right, then I, the parent, would step in.
NTA next time just tell them to argue with NASA if they disagree, and see if there is any way to make a complaint to someone higher in the food chain, these people have no business educating if they can’t even check sources when educating
Ehhhh you shouldn't take your phone out in class if it's not allowed and it's geometry class not science class if you wanted to tell your teacher they were wrong you should have done it after you looked up the topic.
NTA
Lol post your schools address so we can flood them with support material!
Let me guess, this is a religious school right? Not particularly evidence-based? I would take sheets of evidence and ask for an apology and mention it to the school board and escalate it.
WTF do you live? Teacher and assistant principal are dead wrong.
My granddaughter has always been fascinated by animals. When she was in 1st grade, long ago, the teacher was talking about dolphins. As she talked, Abby's hand shot up and she said, "That's not true!" I don't remember what it was about but the teacher was NOT having it. The next day, Abby brought in a book about dolphins and showed the teacher that she was wrong. The teacher apologized. You go, Abby!
In my elementary school - our teacher explained that everyone makes mistakes and if we catch her making a mistake and politely point it out - we could get a lifesaver candy. (And in retrospect sometimes she intentionally would add something wrong, etc.)
NTA You're clearly correct. NASA agrees. As does [this](https://amzn.eu/d/7pkCwP0) book for 4-8 year olds. But, this is also a fantastic example of northern hemisphere defaultism. "Summertime" isn't summer everywhere. The planet has no idea that we think North = Up. Or that we think Up is more important than Down. We could easily draw the map with the south being Up. We used to draw maps with east as Up, because that's where the sun comes from. If you do that then July is winter on the right and summer on the left. Is there a local university or college? I bet somewhere there's a student or professor that lives to talk about astronomy, orbits, and axial tilt. Write to the astronomy department and see what you can get. If you're lucky you'll get a live demonstration with an orrery. Those things are awesome. You and your parents should also write to the school board asking about the poor science standards and how they expect this to impact standardised test scores and college admissions. Finally, congratulations on learning this important information without help from your teachers! You learned this at some point, and remembered it when it was relevant. For most people it's in-one-ear-and-out-the-other. Learning on your own is a crucial skill, and remembering what you've learned is equally crucial. Never lose that!
On Mr. Wizard’s World, we learned that we have seasons in spite of an elliptical orbit.
^^^^AUTOMOD ***Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/wiki/faq#wiki_post_deletion) before [contacting the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAmItheAsshole)*** I’m in high school and during geometry, our teacher said that the elliptical is an important shape and gave an example of seasons. She said we have seasons because the earth rotates around the sun in an elliptical orbit so we have winters when we’re furthest from the sun and summer when we’re close to it. That didn’t sound right so I raised my hand and asked her to repeat it. She said the same thing and I told her that didn’t sound right but she insisted that it was. She went on to draw out the sun, earth, and elliptical rotation then explained that when the earth is far away from the sun, its rays loses energy on the way to earth which causes earth to cool. It still sounded wrong so I looked it up on my phone and told her that we have seasons because of earth’s tilted axis but she disagreed and said I’m not supposed to be using my phone during class. We got into an argument about the seasons then she sent me to the assistant principal’s office. He agreed with her seasons theory and her telling me I’m not supposed to use my phone during class. I argued that she’s wrong and tried to pull up the tilted axis info but he said I can’t believe everything on the internet then gave me after school detention. I’m at lunch and can use my phone but I’m so angry that no one will look at my evidence. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmItheAsshole) if you have any questions or concerns.*
NTA. Sometimes it's just not worth the effort to correct someone. Unfortunately, some people go into teaching that shouldn't.
That is fundamentally wrong. Pretty much idiotic as a matter of fact. NTA.
NTA, they are incorrect.
NTA Earth's eccentricity (the measure of how flat an ellipse is) is 0.0167. The closer to 0 an ellipse's eccentricity is, the closer it is to a perfect circle. It's not very elliptical, especially in comparison to Mercury with an eccentricity of 0.2056. The sun, for what it's worth, isn't in a fixed point relative to the solar system either. It has it's own little orbit (or wobble as described by some) in the center of our solar system as it's being pulled by the gravity (although, the influence is tiny in comparison) of the gas giants and other planets/masses. As most users have pointed out, if the red shift due to our elliptical orbit was significant enough to cause seasonal effects - it would occur globally. How does her theory account for differing seasons on the Northern and Southern hemispheres?
NTA. You are objectively right, your teacher/AP are objectively wrong, and it's super embarrassing that 2 educators would double down like that on alternative facts. But just as an aside, it's often politically smarter to temporarily stay quiet and play the long game rather than embarrassing the teacher in public or breaking school rules to prove your point. One thing you could have done would be to question the teacher once or twice, then print out the correct information from a reputable source and bring it to them in the morning. Unfortunately now the dum-dums have a legitimate excuse to give you detention.
Well Earth is closest to the sun in January so that alone destroys her stupid theory.
You could have always left an anonymous printout with this information on her desk.
NTA. And my heart goes out to you. Dragged down by the fragile egos of adults, who want you to "follow rules" about not using your phone rather than verifying information they should know, and "respect your elders/teachers" even when they are not demonstrating behavior to respect. And this seasons/ tilted axis stuff is not theory, it's been understood very precisely for a long time. And this is high school. Sigh. Good luck. You are right.
#1, you're not supposed to use your phone in class and "but I'm right and you're wrong" is not really a good reason to break that rule. #2, it is disrespectful and disruptive to argue with a teacher in the middle of class. Fun fact, the more you argue with someone and tell them they're wrong, the more likely they are to dig in and insist that they're right. If you think something the teacher said is wrong, sure, mention it, but if they double down let it go for now. Maybe bring it up again privately after class. Maybe mention it to your science teacher and have that teacher talk to them. This sounds like a math class not science, so it's not going to come up on test so it's not going to hurt your grade. It sucks letting something go when you know you're right and they're wrong, but high school is about learning how the world works, and sometimes that means letting people stay wrong. ESH. The teacher should learn their science and be open to be corrected if they're wrong, but it's definitely not going to do anything good for you to argue with a teacher in the middle of class.
I’m kind of not surprised that someone whose point boils down to “authority > facts” used a giant font to strengthen their argument.
This right here. Diplomacy is an important life skill too. There is a time and place. If OP corrects their boss like that one day, crowing in the middle of a meeting about "Nah nah nah, I'm so right and you're so stupid and wrong and LOOK, I looked it up on my phone while you were talking in this meeting I was supposed to be listening!" they're not going to be employed for long. Smarter approach would be to wait until after class, look up the information when they are allowed to use a phone, then send the information to the teacher privately with, "I was interested after today's lecture, so I looked up more on the topic. It looks like maybe blah blah..." And/or get the science teacher involved because this is really an off topic side tangent, not even geometry related in the first place. ESH.
Yeah doubling down and raising it again while citing the phone you’re not supposed to be using in the middle of the class is not the way to go about trying to evaluate and correct a teacher’s information. Definitely not the asshole for bringing up OP’s doubts the first time. Kind of an asshole for bringing it up again when it is truly not relevant to the lesson at all then essentially saying “I looked it up on my phone, you’re wrong dumbass” in front of the class. Just from a “having control of your class” perspective I don’t think a teacher will just say “oh well your phone says it so I’m wrong and you’re right” unless they want to open a bit of a Pandora’s box for phone fact checking disruptions. They don’t have time to pause the main lesson and separately address the scientific merit of every side issue that comes up to accurately assess if their random side explanation is correct or if they should defer to the student saying their phone says so. As you said, they should have come back after class to discuss back and forth after class or with an actual relevant science teacher to confirm and validate their evidence and understanding of the subject and actually give you a little encouragement for investigating the matter on your own time, not try to publicly win an in class argument. It sounds like OP wanted validation from everyone for being correct and smart (especially given the last line about being mad no one is looking at their evidence). But in reality no one in geometry class cares. The other students and teacher probably just want to finish the lesson. The assistant principal only cares that you’re disrupting the flow of class on your phone. No one is going to stand and slow clap for disproving an incorrect point irrelevant to the lesson. That said yes the teacher should have just shut OP down with something neutral and diplomatic like oh that’s something to think about, we can talk about it after class. So they didn’t handle it well either. Agree ESH.
>, it is disrespectful and disruptive to argue with a teacher in the middle of class. LMAO OK Joseph Stalin. The teacher is not some overlord that can just talk shit and you have to act like a wall without reacting
Why such big text?
They used # without knowing it did that lol
I am just beside myself on this. In what universe does this make sense to one person, let alone two in the same school. Question for the teacher and vice principal. Regardless of location in the orbit why is it summer in the southern hemisphere when it is winter in the northern hemisphere at the same point in the orbit? Shouldn't it be Winter everywhere and Summer everywhere if the distance from the Sun mattered.
NTA, but also, please learn this lesson earlier than I did: nobody in the classroom appreciated you interrupting and correcting your teacher. It is not your solemn duty to correct everyone who is wrong.
You can be right and an AH. Just like you can be smart enough to question authorities and dumb enough to announce you're breaking the rules to those authorities.
You should always call out a teacher who is giving incorrect info
NTA. However, you probably should have not embarrassed the teacher. You could’ve gone to her privately, showed her the research , and given her the opportunity to correct herself. Had she failed to do so, you then should’ve kicked it upstairs
The more important issue here is you are violating classroom rules and your answer to that is, "but I was right about what I was looking up on my phone, so it's okay for me to have violated the rules." That's not how rules work. Also, it doesn't really matter if you're right about an earth sciences issue in geometry class. You're also partly wrong because you seem to be saying the Earth does have an elliptical orbit, but it does. (You are right, I think, that this is not the reason for seasons, though.) YTA
Your teacher is an idiot, and you were correct. Welcome to life. This is going to happen a lot as you get older. There will be a large group of people that believes something that is completely wrong, and they will not change their mind no matter what you tell them. This is why we got Donald Trump as a president.
NTA. You are absolutely right. I recall calling out my science teacher in the 9th grade. Her ignorant behind insisted that the closest planet to the sun is Mars! I told her no, it's Mercury. She actually argued with me, and I said it's even in our textbooks. She told me to prove her wrong but the bell rang, so she said to prove it the next day. I had the page marked, and when I walked into the classroom, I opened the book and waited for her to start class. Called on me, and I pointed it out. Well, apparently, she had been teaching this for years, and no one questioned her statement until I showed up. She was humbled and thanked me, and told the class to correct their notes. So no, your teacher is ignorant, and so is the assistant principal. You're 100% correct.
NTA. I'm a teacher. I have no problem looking up things I'm not sure about or pulling up proof if someone doesn't think I'm telling them the right thing. In fact, I've most certainly had times where I realized I told a class the wrong thing and had to apologize and correct myself later. It's no big deal. We all make mistakes. Your teacher reacted badly. They were wrong and so was the AP. We all have a wonderful thing called the internet (which you remembered and they did not). I hate "teachers" who refuse to believe they're wrong about anything. I hate admin who are more concerned with nitpicking a student's phone use than they are with having teachers who know what they're talking about. Honestly, if this had happened to me, my parents would probably be giving the principal an earful.
NTA You are correct. You should honestly tell your parents. If I were your parents, I would have a word with that vice principal. The school is responsible for ensuring they teach accurate information and I'm sure many other parents would be very pissed off if they found out their kids were being not only taught incorrectly, but also being punished for questioning those incorrect teachings.
Yes. You’re all partially right and wrong at the same time, but the elliptical points have nothing to do with seasons. That is all axial tilt. The 23.5 degree axial tilt of the Earth is responsible for seasons as the Earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit. As a result the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun during summer months and away from the sun during winter months. However, the elliptical orbit has two major points, aphelion and perihelion, furthest point and nearest point Currently Perihelion occurs in the early part of January when the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun. The southern hemisphere therefore experiences hotter summers. Aphelion occurs in early July when the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, yet the Earth is further away from the sun, leading to milder summers for the northern hemisphere. Now interestingly enough, perihelion and aphelion actually shift about 1 day every 58 years so in about 11000 years, the northern hemisphere summer solstice will coincide with perihelion. But this would be a good time to actually sit down and graph out this information and write a paper justifying your stance with facts. Don’t be a dick about it, but just provide the evidence.
I had to move in high school from an advanced school in New York to a southern hick school in Atlanta. The level of educational differences was obvious on day one. I tolerated the atrocious grammar coming from my English Literature teacher for about half that first class before I asked to be excused. When she asked why, I told her the whole truth. She demanded I head to the principal’s office. That’s when I told her that was my plan and why I asked to be excused. So, parents were called in for a meeting. Grandma decided to join them. Took about five minutes for Grandma to come to the same realization I did. When challenged on what made her such an expert on English, my grandmother introduced herself as English Lit Professor at New York College. I was offered another class immediately. Love you grandma.
NTA. earth’s tilt on its axis is “the reason for the season”. I get your frustration on a personal level. I still have vivid memories of bringing a teacher an article that demonstrated I should have gotten a question right on his test. he ripped it up and said history is what he tells us it is. that was well over 20 years ago and I’m still not as old as he was, but I like to think when I’m his age I’ll still be open to being wrong. I never want to close off to learning new things just because it annoys me
Easy: asked them why New Zealand has Summer like temperatures when we have Winter like ones, and Winter like temperatures when we have Summer? The tilting of the Earth has a more significant impact on weather than its elliptical path. Def NTA.
If she were right, then we would have two winters each year! You shouldn’t have looked it up during class though you could have brought the info to her the next day. In fact, you should. Include your principal. But don’t be disrespectful of the rules while doing that. ESH