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Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Timotheus - 03-28-2008
We have all heard them highschool or college teachers of 100 or 200 level history classes who pass along what amount to urban legend / internet history / or random guessing as fact.
So lets hear some of them. What is the most outrageous "facts" you have heard from a teacher.
My favorite came from a commuity college history teacher who gave it to us as stone cold fact that the Persian Army that invaded Greece was 1,000,000 soldiers strong.
This fit with his general style though. He always gave as fact the largest most outrageous number one could find for anything.
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Jona Lendering - 03-28-2008
A university teacher saying that Archimedes used mirrors to set Roman ships afire.
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Libitina - 03-28-2008
Quote:A university teacher saying that Archimedes used mirrors to set Roman ships afire.
I also heard that.. but on an old BBC programme the other week. The experiment looked impressive anyway :?
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Tiberius Clodius Corvinus - 03-28-2008
Quote:A university teacher saying that Archimedes used mirrors to set Roman ships afire.This had been written in my GDR schoolbook even. Further some political motivated ideas I don't recall correctly, apart the statement on Spartacus to be the first socialist ;-) ) ...
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Marcus Mummius - 03-28-2008
At university (archaeology) an unnamed professor showed a picture of pallisad stake or sudes (sometimes called pilum muralis) and said that this was the furca to which the Roman soldier attached his kit on the march. :lol:
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - MARCVS PETRONIVS MAIVS - 03-28-2008
I can't recall any major historical gaffes by my teachers, but there was this one at my primary school that insisted a lake was a body of earth surrounded by water and that an island was a body of water surrounded by land.
She would not back down untill a meeting was held between parents and teachers.
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Salvianus - 03-28-2008
I'm pretty sure I was told as a young child Canute commanded the tide to stop rising as if he really thought it would happen, rather than as a pious lesson for his toadying cronies. That august tome the Ladybird Book of Kings and Queens put me straight
Not exactly on-topic, but only a few years ago colleagues of mine (teaching up to 11 years of age) admitted quite freely that they couldn't put Romans, Saxons and Normans in chronological sequence as invaders of Britain.
This is, I believe, down to the current National Curriculum method of teaching periods of history in isolation and random order with no requirement for overall 'Timeline' overviews.
To be fair, non specialists are also often working with indifferent text books which often simplify theories and enshrine them as fact e.g. in my latest topic we were presented with a number of sets of parents and ages at the succession and death of Tutankhamun.
One of my more scientific 10 year-olds based his inclusion of torsion ballista in his description the army of Ramses II on their presence in a computer game Egyptian army. Not bad at his age...
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Gaius Julius Caesar - 03-28-2008
The Romans never made it past Hadrians wall.... :lol:
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Libitina - 03-28-2008
Quote:I can't recall any major historical gaffes by my teachers, but there was this one at my primary school that insisted a lake was a body of earth surrounded by water and that an island was a body of water surrounded by land.
She would not back down untill a meeting was held between parents and teachers.
hock: How daft! :lol:
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - MARCVS PETRONIVS MAIVS - 03-28-2008
Inded. To be fair she got what she deserved lol. I intentionally asked her what an island was during the meeting in revenge for her berating me in class for not ''knowing'' what a lake was.
Fun times hehehe
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Carlton Bach - 03-28-2008
I'm not sure I ever had a history teacher tell me any awfully wrong thing, though I distinctly recall a literature professor in an introductory lecture quoting Beowulf
"beorn in burgum"
and explaining that meant a castle. My biggest issue with my history teachers was the things they thought it was important to know and theings they didn't. I (like most boys, I guess) thought that history came in descending order of importance: military, science/technology, everyday life, exploration, weird anecdotes, strange animals, naughty bits, politics, religion. I still don't think it's important to know the 'difference' between colonialism, imperialism, and expansionism. They did.
And then there was the trainee who walked into our eighth-grade upper-level physics, taught by a bearded whirlwind who could set up experiments that could hold a class in rapt attention and destroy floortiles, eat away tabletops and leae puddles of molten pig iron in the long jump sandbox. He started with a theoretical 'assume a rock that weighs ten kilos' (bad move - kilos are a unit of mass, not weight, as we pointed out to him) and ended with a gravity pull of one hundred Newton ("actually, more like 98 at the gravitational constant") and an inertial force of 100 Newton ("it flies!") before our regular teacher too pity on his misery. He was actually pretty goods, but dead nervous, and making him tech his first ever lesson to us resentful smartarses (we had to come to school at 07.10 every Thursday for the privilege of having more physics) was just cruel.
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Timotheus - 03-28-2008
Couple more that come to mind.
The Parthians used huge sheets of silk to reflect sunlight into the eyes of Roman soldiers to blind them as battle started.
Persepolis was burned during a drunken party by Alexander (like anyone would be able to know this for certain).
The Persian Empire had Roman like roads and a beaurocracy so well organized that each person who used it carried a seal that told way-stations along the road exactly how much and what quality of fare and service they were to received at the governments expense.
Oh and this road network allowed the Persian king to know everything that went on within his Empire within days of it happening.
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - A_Volpe - 03-28-2008
Quote:The Parthians used huge sheets of silk to reflect sunlight into the eyes of Roman soldiers to blind them as battle started
Well, wouldn't you go blind (with jealousy/rage) seeing the enemy army with massive sheets of expensive material, and so much more so than you could afford?
What bling-minded Roman Soldier would not want to get his hands on some silk! :twisted:
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Tiberius Clodius Corvinus - 03-28-2008
Arrrgghhhh , I' m blind..... silk, SILK!! Protect your eyes, comrads ... they use their secret weapon!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
(sorry, I couldn't resist :oops: )
Re: Most outrageous (bad) statement made by a teacher to you - Timotheus - 03-28-2008
Oh and he also told us that the Persians were more architecturally talented than the Romans and built more, bigger, and better.
I quickly got the feeling that he was a Mid East lover. Especially when he gushed while talking about the Ottoman Empire.