Correcting your teacher?

[Hadoblado]

I just begun my logic assignment and on the very first question I identified the intention of the problem and that the answer my teacher was looking for is in fact incorrect. I pointed this out to him, and he agreed to give me full marks regardless of the answer I gave.

I've heard horror stories of students being punished for being more correct than their teachers, but for the most part I have always had my criticisms received positively. Does anyone here have some good stories? Does anyone else get the same rush of self-affirmation from providing insights to people who are experts in their field? My apologies for coming off as smug, I very much am

 

[Etheri]

I remember arguing with my teacher over a writing exam (serveral years ago). I do not remember sentence itself, but basically, both what I wrote and what she expected were correct and perfectly possible, depending on how you analysed the sentence. Only mild connotation changed, and since she dictated us sentences without context, there was no way I could have known. (Hell, even with context nothing really changed, if i recall it right.)

It took me quite a while to convince her that I did get what she she meant but that didn't change anything. My sentence was still correct and thus not any less good. Altho she eventually admitted her mistake, she did say she wasn't going to bother giving me the extra mark. In all honesty, it was never really the mark I cared for either.

While i've had teachers dislike me for questioning and arguing with them in class, there were also those who'd enjoy it. At some point classmates would ask me to spend the last half hour of our friday (religion) arguing with the teacher, (whom enjoyed it and once even considered some of our arguments as something the others should take notes of), because they longed for the weekend. Their dislike wasn't truly personal tho. I think that while some disliked the way I'd brought my points across (often publically questioning them rather than bringing it on more subtly after class), they were also happy that atleast I was, unlike many others, both interested and paying attention.

On tests my main problem was ambiguous questions rather than outright wrong answers to proper questions. I can't help it if my answer is an answer to the question, but not the answer they expected or wanted to hear. That doesn't make it any less correct, either.

I also think i might not be the only one who's had this, tho it has nothing to do with correcting your teachers : in the basic maths classes, I had sincere problems with proofs. They typically ask alot of proofs on tests in these classes, and the proofs were typically so short and easy that they're barely worth mentioning. My main problem was that i'd summarise a proof in 3 steps where they'd expect 8. How could I know they expected me to write the same equation in 5 just very slightly diffrent forms.

 

[Hadoblado]

Mmmmm these are one's I've encountered before. Jumping obvious or redundant steps in formula was a big one when I was younger, though I've started getting satisfaction out of getting answers perfectly correct.
I have also had some pretty big ordeals with ambiguous sentences.
'He was everything but dead'
...including [not dead], [healthy], and [positively vibrant]. English is stupid. It took me longer than it should have to realise that the other interpretation of the above statement is not necessarily wrong just because my interpretation was not wrong.

 

[H1N1]

It's refreshing to witness someone admitting to their inflated sense of pride when proving others wrong. Congrats man.

I usually follow like a sheep myself.

 

[Hadoblado]

Pride yes, but also closure. I spend a lot of the time thinking people are incorrect, but the majority would perceive me as incorrect for disagreeing. It is very nice to have people you respect to agree with you on issues that most people would not, as it allows you to have supporting evidence for the hypothesis that the majority of people are wrong (and you are right). I am extremely paranoid about going crazy, and believing yourself to be correct in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a good place to start on that path. Pride comes into it, but it's not the only drive.

Welcome to the forum!

 

[envirodude]

I just begun my logic assignment ...

fail. choose either began or had just begun. Actually, I think started sounds more appropriate in this context
Anyway, I had a memorable experience correcting my grade 13 physics teacher (yes, we had grade 13 back in the dark ages). He noticed something was wrong in a solution he was writing on the board, and he asked the class if they could see what his mistake was. I answered, "think about it" because it was quite an easy mistake and I thought he'd feel better if he found his own mistake (I knew I would...) He gave me a death stare and told me to watch it, and I realised that I'd crossed one of those lines...

 

[Hadoblado]

eww grammer nazi...

Strict adherence to writing convention is not a virtue I have set out to perpetuate, you cannot fail if you do not try. At least you had the good grace to soften the blow with a smiley

 

[Trebuchet]

I didn't have any problem with teachers objecting to corrections, but I was pretty careful how I did it. I was always polite. I was usually willing to consider that I might be the one in error (which I was, a couple of times, because of a missing fact). I never humiliated them. And I only did it if it seemed worth interrupting the class for it.

Teaching is hard work - I know from personal experience - and you can't get everything right. You have to be "on" even if you are tired or stressed. An alert, polite student who is actually interested is something to treasure.

Of course, there was that one English teacher that I corrected at every opportunity because he was pure evil, and that stupid smug Math teacher who didn't deserve any respect from anyone, but mostly I was nice about it.

Envirodude, haven't you heard of Harman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation? If you criticize someone's editing, you will make an editing mistake yourself in doing it. Like failing to begin sentences with capital letters.

 

[Hadoblado]

I used to be a right dickhead about it throughout high school, but now I'm polite, and present my correction as a question rather than a proclamation of incompetence.

 

[envirodude]

Envirodude, haven't you heard of Harman's Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation? If you criticize someone's editing, you will make an editing mistake yourself in doing it. Like failing to begin sentences with capital letters.

i figured i might get some slack in a thread dedicated to dickish corrections. mil disculpas. errors of punctuation indicate laziness; errors of grammar indicate ... something else.
I used to teach as well, and agree that an interested and alert student is a treasure.
How many of you have found errors in textbooks? I remember it being profoundly disturbing, now it just pisses me off. My wife accuses me of arrogance. Isn't being right always a defense against charges of arrogance? (probably not, sigh)

 

[hablahdoo]

In some cases I've been a help to the class in others not so much. My high school Enviro Science teacher thought I was awesome because I brought some sort of dialogue into the classroom. That same inquisitive nature made my Ethics professor pretty frustrated. He kept insisting utilitarianism was somehow flawed because it was unfair, but I argued that if it were a theoretically perfect utilitarianism then the very idea of fairness is irrelevant as any of his emotional concerns toward fairness would be taken into account. He even marked me off on the final on a question related to this...

I never intend to correct my teacher. If I already knew my teacher was wrong I would continue happily knowing that I understood. It's not about that. When I challenge the teacher it's because I truly do not understand. I need help to understand how to conceive the idea independently otherwise I will never remember it. Sometimes they take it as an insult or it derails the rest of the class that is trying to learn through rote. Over time I've learned to keep quiet because people don't put up with it, but it sucks for me.

 

[Trebuchet]

i figured i might get some slack in a thread dedicated to dickish corrections. mil disculpas. errors of punctuation indicate laziness; errors of grammar indicate ... something else.

Oh, it was definitely funny. You just didn't get any slack.

...but now I'm polite, and present my correction as a question rather than a proclamation of incompetence.

I figured that had to be the case, that you were polite about it, since you said the teachers didn't object.

 

[7even]

Heh - if I ever spot any mistakes in judgement (or whatever else) from teachers I always keep to myself. I'm satisfied just knowing that I know they're wrong - very rarely will I actually interrupt a teacher to prove them incorrect; this way people don't perceive me as arrogant or annoying; neither do I enjoy receiving any attention, so I shut up, lean against the wall, look outside the window, get distracted and just relax.