Back in Swedish high school a few years ago, I had a friend (we’ll call him “NetFriend”) who got most of his facts from the American Internet, and he would constantly talk about pressing issues from the US as if they were current issues right now in Sweden or quote memes as if they were facts.

NetFriend, a bunch of other friends, and I were talking after a math class where we got our test results back.

Me: “So, how did everyone do on the math quiz?”

NetFriend: “Ah, man. I got, like, zero points.”

Friend #1: “What, you didn’t study?”

NetFriend: “Ah, it’s stupid anyway. We don’t learn real stuff here.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

NetFriend: “Like, we only study what numbers are called and how to find areas of triangles, not how to balance a budget or something important!”

Me: “Are you serious?”

NetFriend: “They should be teaching us stuff about reality, like how to pay our taxes and how to vote! How to, like, buy a house and stuff!”

We stare at him, disbelieving, as he continues on that line for a minute or two. I interrupt.

Me: “[NetFriend], can you read?”

NetFriend: “What?”

Me: “The math quiz was about percentages! The questions asked us to calculate interest, figure out how much you save if something is on sale for a certain percentage off, and figure out which job is more lucrative to pick if job A and B have different starting wages but one has a higher guaranteed raise, given three years. Isn’t that ‘real world’ enough?”

NetFriend: “I… didn’t… Well, you know…”

Friend #2: “No, we don’t know.”

NetFriend: “I didn’t… read all the questions.”

Me: “That might explain your low score, you dunce.”

Friend #1: “And have you also missed that the Civics test next week is about voting and taxes?”

NetFriend: “Is it?”

Later that day, I helped him summon the courage to talk to his math teacher about letting him retake the test. [Friend #1] helped him study the math, and [Friend #2] helped him with civics. He was OUR dunce, after all. He also promised to study more in the future, and he did finish high school with passing grades, so lesson learned, I guess.

Something similar to this story happened to me in fifth grade. Two smart students and I got to take a pre-test for every math unit, and if we got above 95%, we could skip the lesson and instead play on the teacher’s fairly fancy (at the time) computer, mostly on typing games. (I was probably not as smart as they were, but my older siblings had taught me their math to help themselves retain it.)

This was great fun because the following year, my middle school put us all in a typing class with the stated goal of getting us up to 30 WPM.

I was already at 60 WPM. So, again, I got to play.

Related:
Slow Down, Whiz-Kid; The Computer Can’t Handle It!

This story reminded me of a story my granddad tells of his brief time as a college lecturer. 

Granddad worked for the same bank for his entire career, working his way up in seniority. When my grandma got sick, he decided that he wanted to spend more time looking after her, so he changed jobs and took up a part-time lecturing role at a college, teaching about banking and accounting.

Part of Granddad’s duties as a lecturer involved setting and marking the final exam based on the content he’d taught during the year. As an inherently fair person, he made sure that everything he asked on the test had been covered at some point in his classes, although that also included tangential subjects that weren’t strictly part of the curriculum but had been discussed anyway. 

Once he’d completed the marking, he was called into the boss’s office during moderation.

Boss: “Now then, [Granddad]. I see that you’ve awarded [Student] full marks on his final exam?”

Granddad: “Yes, that’s right. [Student] has worked very hard this year, and it’s paid off. He answered every question correctly and provided a high level of justification, showing that he also understands why he got the right answers.”

Boss: “Well, okay. But we never give 100% to anyone. That suggests that their answers were perfect and there’s nothing they could do better.”

Granddad: “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. [Student] has done everything flawlessly. If he were my employee in the bank, I’d give him a bonus for exceeding expectations.”

Boss: “No, no, no, you don’t understand. We never give anyone 100%. The highest score we ever award is 97%. You need to change your mark to give [Student] 97%. It’s still an excellent score, and it won’t affect his overall grade.”

Granddad: “But it’s not true! [Student] achieved a perfect score! He couldn’t have done anything more unless he’d taught the course himself! I will not punish that. If your marking system only goes up to 97%, then you’re telling me that 97% is actually 100% which, as a bank manager, I can tell you doesn’t make any mathematical sense! [Student] will receive full marks for his assessment because that’s what he deserves.” 

The student kept his perfect score. Granddad went back to the bank shortly after this exchange. He decided that academia wasn’t for him.

Related:
That’s One Ten-se Review

A similar thing to this story happened to me in high school. It was highly annoying, and, to be honest, it still infuriates me thirty years later that anyone can be this ill-equipped for their job.

For whatever reason, my science teacher didn’t like me. Mostly, she seemed annoyed to meet me outside of school, and I get that she didn’t want to mix her work life and personal life, but it wasn’t my fault that her children’s daycare provider was my next-door neighbour. ([Teacher] lived one street over from us.) Thus, I met her or her children almost daily after school.

[Teacher] sucked at math. If we had a weekly test and I had 12 points on one page and 14 points on the other, she would add it together and conclude that my total point was 10 out of 26. It never made any sense. I would point out her error, and she’d tell me that she’d correct it in her notes and it wouldn’t affect my grade. Hah. Suuuuuuuuuure.

She never made these errors on other students’ tests, just mine. It was weird. Oh, well.

Then, we had the major exam for the semester. The day before, a Thursday, I was in massive pain and went to the school nurse, who sent me to the hospital, where I was booked for urgent surgery during said exam.

So, I went back to school to talk to [Teacher] as I had missed her class for the hospital visit.

Teacher: “Come straight after surgery to take your exam.”

I showed up on Friday, almost unconscious from the massive pain as the anesthesia from the surgery was fading off. [Teacher] just looked at me and told me:

Teacher: “Just take the exam during class on Monday.”

Me: “You could take my books to make sure I can’t study during the weekend.”

Teacher: “Go home.”

And she closed the door in my face.

[Teacher] was sick that Monday, but I still got to take the exam. And then, I fell ill and missed a couple of weeks, so when I finally was back in school, the grades were final. [Teacher] threw my exam at me. The score was mediocre, and I knew I had done better than that, so as she began berating me for my poor results, I quickly checked the test. Then, I heard her yammer about my poor results on our weekly exams. 

Darling, I have the weekly exams right here. Let’s take a look at them. Oh, yes, she hadn’t corrected her stupid errors and still had those abhorrent “results” she had somehow conjured up by failing first-grade math. And THIS exam? She had outdone herself.

As usual, she was unable to add two sums together (13 + 26 = 12), AND she had missed grading the major task, worth a whopping 25 points. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I think her original result was that I had 21 out of 50, whilst the actual result was 49 out of 50. As I said, infuriating. She had given me a grade THREE STEPS below what I had actually achieved, and she told me that she couldn’t possibly change it nor raise it more than one step the next (and final) semester.

[Teacher]’s solution was that I was relieved from attending class. I could skip the entire semester and she would still raise my grade. She had effed up that badly. But I like school. I like to learn stuff. So, I attended class, did all the assignments, got top scores (she still never calculated the results correctly because she was a moron), and graduated with a grade two steps below what I had achieved.

Yup, I’m still pissed about that.

[Teacher] also had to start the semester by telling my extremely ambitious classmates that no one would be able to get top grades because I was the top student and I couldn’t get it, and thus, no one else could, either. They really hated me because of it — like it was my fault [Teacher] was such a moron. Oh, and she actually could raise grades more than one step as she did it for one of my classmates, so she was a LYING moron.

One of my priorities as a teacher was to make sure I NEVER missed grading anything. And that my calculations were correct. It is my duty as a teacher to ensure that the students get the grades they deserve.

There was no way for me to dispute my grade. As a teacher, I always make sure that the students know how to dispute grades, and if they want to dispute another teacher’s exam, I listen to their complaints and support them however possible. That only happened once, but it was not a pleasant battle. However, the students who asked for my assistance were students I was mentoring, so I was the obvious go-to person for help. In the case of [Teacher], this would have been an issue, because, well, [Teacher] WAS my mentor.

Related:
Even Gifted Teachers Can Make Mistakes

My brother is a professor at the University of Barcelona, and he teaches European Union Law, replacing a retiring professor who, according to the faculty, had slipped into a predictable pattern.

My brother didn’t really put much weight to this, until, when grading the written exam papers, he noticed that six different people had given the same exact wrong answer, all of them about a different section of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. He was baffled, so of course, when one such student asked for a meeting with him, he decided to get the bottom of this mystery.

Brother: “Ah, Mr. [Student], are you here to talk about your exam?”

Student: *Looking indignant.* “Yes, I am perplexed by my failing grade, and I would like an explanation.”

Browsing through the papers, he finds the student’s paper, and immediately points at the section that confused him:

Brother: “Well, let us start with this question, which was about how the articles in question were about the protection of free enterprise, but you claimed said articles were about EU employee harassment compensation instead.”

Student: *Looking stumped.* “Wait, what? Really? That’s not what the notes said!”

Brother: “May I see the notes, if you have them here with you?”

He did, and he discovered the previous retiring professor was very predictable in his exam questions. He literally proposed the same exact six questions year after year, and the students were now relying on a list of pre-packaged answers to pass.

With this mystery solved, he explained the shell-shocked, and a little bit daft, student the truth, and from that point onward he made sure to mention his exams weren’t going to have eternally-repeating questions, no matter what the notes sold on campus claimed.