Oh boy, I have a doozy.

I sadly went to a catholic school all the way up until highschool. In seventh grade, your hormones are waking up, you’re noticing your peers in different ways. It’s confusing, it’s exciting, it’s fucking chaos. What you need is a mentor. What you need is someone who understands what you’re feeling and explains it to you.

Here’s what I had.

I had the same teacher for a couple of classes…english, religion, and one more I think…it’s been a long time. But the important one here is Religion.

She was one of the few teachers who wasn’t a sister of the convent of the church my school was affiliated with. Yet, somehow, she was least progressive woman in the entire school.

I’m rambling. Here’s two stories:

#1: She told a story about her roommate in college. Teacher was studious, polite blablabla. Her roommate was not. She went out and had unprotected sex nightly. Instead of contraception she just went and had abortions. (I’m not gonna bother unpacking how hard something like an abortion is to process as a 7th grader when you barely understand sex, but needless to say my perceptions of abortions and even conception was completely wacked from her)

They all graduate, move on with their lives but remain friends. Eventually her roommate gets married, and stops having abortions to have a child. She does, and when teacher goes to visit her in the hospital, she burts out in complete hysteric tears because she realized just how many babies she murdered.

Obviously that story is fucking bullshit, but a woman teaching a class of confused students that story is real as can be.

#2: A woman wanted to remain pure until she was married. One night she was in I think Las Vegas or some other sinful hellhole where she meets a lovely polite gentleman. He was very well dressed, well manicured, and somewhat flamboyant. They have some drinks and she is so enamored with this man, she realized he was the one. Since she knew this was the man she was goign to marry, why not fuck his brains out. (She probably didn’t word it that way)

So she fucks his brains out, goes to sleep. In the morning the man is gone, but there is a bouquet of flowers in her room. On it is a note “Thank you for last night. I have many nights like that, usually with men. Welcome to the wonderful world of aids”

Now that I’m a father, I look at back at this as a teachable moment. I know that I will never hide the truth from my son, no matter how painful it might be. We’re a sex positive family, and I never want my child to be confused about something and be afraid to ask me. Fuck that shit. Fuck Catholicism. Fuck indoctrinating children.

My college professor teaching FLUID POWER tried to teach our whole class that air does not compress and liquids do.

When he started the lecture and I attempted to correct him in a very soft and kind way (thinking he obviously is mixing up words) he denied it and told me I was wrong.

I tried several times to correct him nicely (because there were people in the class that would have taken his word) and was met by more and more aggressive denial. I finally stood up in the middle of the class, threw my hands up and said “Well Fuck! I just wasted all this money on a new air compressor” and walked out.

Was rather showing than telling and not just to me but everyone. But my geography teacher was doing a picture show of his hikes (don’t even remember where). And then he comes to one image where he is showering in the mountains, completely naked.

Before this pic, he only stayed on each slide for a couple seconds, but on this one, he stayed what felt like eternity before saying something like “hehe, the girls should probably look away now”.

Felt like the dude was a pervert who just wanted us to show his nudes…

That we would not have a calculator everywhere we go.

I was homeschooled. Never went to public school. And my parents were christians, so naturally they bought christian apologetic textbooks.

One science (biology I think, high school level) textbook had most of a chapter discussing why the “theory of evolution” was “wrong”. Another book from the same publisher discussed at length why global warming (and the ozone-thinning effect of certain chemicals) was untrue.

My chemistry professor in college, wonderful man that he was, was the first person to explain divergent and convergent evolution to me.

The Civil War was about states’ rights.

in high school in 1984 my Honors (!) Biology teacher did a cursory overview of evolution, then said: “I had to tell you that. Of course, none of it is true and you were created by God.” <-- he was not joking.

This was a public school. In Texas, you may not be surprised to hear.

“You’ll never achieve anything in life.”

Geography teacher told us that the sun is green because if you put a welding mask on and look at it it’ll be green.

I don’t know if this counts, but I do remember one teacher in the second grade told me, the way I write the number 4 would be wrong. I wrote it with the triangle, a closed tip, just as you see in most fonts. My teacher was unhappy about it and told me the tip of the 4 should be open. She forced me to write a whole sheet of paper at home with 4’s just the way she writes it. I cried, it was unfair, and asked for support from my mother, but she shrugged and said: “If you teacher wants this, do it.”

I am still mad about this nonsense. Today I use to write my 4 just with the tip closed, stupid teacher.

“You have a very promising future”

That veins contain blue blood. I learned it from the textbook and believed it for a year, until I heard my parents insist it was red. I thought there is no way that could be true, the textbook clearly said otherwise! So I went back to check the book thoroughly and wouldn’t you know it - on page 32 there was a tiny footnote on the bottom saying that all blood is red but the pictures will show it as blue for clarity - followed by a hundred pages of glorious full-color illustrations of red-and-blue circulatory systems. Thanks a lot, textbook!

“Some people need an authoritarian ruler”

Not to make this political, I just thought it was a weird thing to say to 9th graders lol.

Same teacher was hard-core pro Israel, served in their military etc. Lots of propaganda spreading to young minds from her, which I think she crossed a line w that one for sure.

Also, In school I was always meh at math. Everytime I’d ask to be shown real world context, which I now know was a pretty big ask due to real specific use cases and nuance, but the math teacher would always say “there isn’t one” so then when I would get called to the board I’d just erase the problem and say “not a problem anymore”. I failed math every year in h.s. outside geometry. Lol.

Fun story! A while ago a sort of mexican version of The Onion came around called Deforma (a parody of popular newspaper “Reforma”). Their breakout article said that Mexico’s national anthem was acquired by the chinese government, and as such would no longer be public domain. It’s a bonkers story, yet a lot (And I mean a lot) of people bought it, including a significant portion of my teachers. I think hearing my maths teacher complain about it is one of my core memories now

I’m still bitter over needing to learn the “different parts of the tongue are responsible for different tastes” thing.