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A teacher who made mistakes on purpose
- mitchbob 2y agoReminds me of https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
- asciimike 2y agoCunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer"
- jprete 2y agoThis is very 1990s chain-email glurge story.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago[flagged]
- doormatt 2y agoYou are an AI bot.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago[flagged]
- dredmorbius 2y ago<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647203>
- eddyzh 2y agoI would consider it like a parable. (Without animals) Discussing it is stil interesting though. That said, the age of the students seems extremely relevant.
- kristianp 2y ago> glurge That's a new word (for me). Always glad to see some new vocabulary, thanks.
- userbinator 2y agoDo this too often and you risk losing the trust of your students, however.
- Mistletoe 2y agoI’d be worried administration thought I had dementia and would be removed.
- anon946 2y agoOnly if you let the mistake go unmentioned. I do a version of this where I glibly include a mistake, like: // Examples of dereference operator. int i, *ip = ..., **ipp = ...; i = *ip; // Assuming ip has been correctly initialized. i = **ipp; // Likewise. // The address-of operator is the opposite. ip = &i; ipp = &&i; I actually talk through the last line. Almost no one ever questions it. I then ask students to look at that last line again, and ask them if an address has an address, and if so, what does that mean, could it ever be useful?
- mewpmewp2 2y agoI see what the mistake is! You are using some sort of gibberish instead of using JavaScript and naming your variables with clear and verbose intent.
- coupdejarnac 2y agoIf this is the lesson where you're introducing pointers to students, you're probably doing them a disservice. Reminds me of my engineering professors who were bored with the material, so they dove straight into difficult problems.
- derangedHorse 2y ago> It’s about finding someone who’s not ashamed to fail in front of you—and then figuring out the answers together. Students aren't going to lose trust in their teacher over mistakes. Establishing core concepts while tripping over details breeds humility for correction when real mistakes are made by the teacher and helps show students that it's okay to make mistakes. This brings more attention to the value of double-checking one's work and the opportunities for correction give purpose to their learning.
- divbzero 2y agoGilbert Strang would do a version of this too: appearing to work through problems on the fly and asking the audience for help, when of course he had come up with the problems himself and made them readily solvable to illustrate the concept he was teaching. You can see instances of this in his last lecture in 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUUte2o2Sn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUUte2o2Sn8
- derangedHorse 2y agoLinear Algebra was the math subject I was strongest in during college and I give all credit to Gilbert Strang. He was the best to ever do it.
- alexdowad 2y agoGreat article. It reminds me of another anecdote, regarding a university professor who told his students that he would deliberately include one falsehood in each lecture, and the students were charged with listening carefully and identifying the 'mistake' in each class. For the very last class in the course, the professor trolled his students by not including any mistake.
- ahazred8ta 2y agoKai Chang's "Dr. K" in economics (2008) https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/my-favorite-liahtml https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/my-favorite-liahtml - https://zenmoments.org/my-favorite-liar/ https://zenmoments.org/my-favorite-liar/ "let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie."
- alexdowad 2y agoAh, that must have been it. Thanks for the link!
- donohoe 2y agoTo be clear, this appears to be a work of fiction? Are people taking this to be a real life account, and if so whats the basis for that. I'm not seeing anything on this blog to indicate otherwise.
- sevensor 2y agoThat’s my read on it. Far too tidy, pitched to make you feel just so. If it’s real, so many details are missing that it may as well not be.
- 725686 2y agoA bit tangential but, when a teacher asks if anyone knows x, he/she doesn't want the nerd wiseguy who actually knows to answer, he wants someone who is unsure to answer so that everyone can participate in the learning experience.
- pxc 2y agoWhen a teacher does that every class, multiple times a class, it becomes agonizingly boring for the students who actually understand what is going on. The long silences while no one is willing to raise their hand are painful and irritating. That kind of thing is exactly what pushes the 'nerd' to act the part of the 'wiseguy', sighing as he raises his hand, blurting an answer out out-of-turn, etc. It's also a good way to encourage your smartest students to completely disengage and sleep through class. The more the class consists of exercises like this, the more it feels like a waste of the more advanced students' time and the greater the sense of distance it creates between the more advanced students and the ones who are slower or more behind. You'd be better off just putting the more middling, slower or less consistent students in the hotseat than asking if 'anyone' knows the answer, and then whenever their answer has a problem asking if anyone can rephrase or reframe the thing just taught in a way that makes more sense to the unsure student, then ask the student who answered earlier if they're satisfied with that answer or if it's not quite rock solid for them. That way, the more advanced students can at least still participate in moving the discussion forward in a non-antagonistic way (if you are ruthless about prohibiting mockery of incorrect or partial answers). Same thing if you ask questions that have multiple somewhat obvious answers but only accept one oral answer per student (maybe take additional written answers for credit as homework or a bonus or just some kind of feedback, to make it easier to adhere to that rule). Then your more eager students are more opening up the floor for more reluctant students than just preempting them.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoThere is a written version of this called "cloze sentences". One of my teachers would distribute cloze notes before each lecture. Then it was up to follow along, and fill in the blanks. Or, jump ahead if we felt confident, without the classroom atmosphere of "let's see who knows this first!" She also used humorous props and catch-phrases. Introduce the prop, explain its meaning, return to the prop and repeat the catch phrase, and pretty soon, the whole class is chanting along with it. It was an adult class, an introduction to a complex and philosophical topic, and we ran through it in a few weeks. She did not omit Powerpoints with animations.
- whartung 2y agoI had a teacher that routinely did this. I hated it. The issue is that, at least for me, I'm madly trying to capture in my notes whatever it is the teacher was presenting. Then, on "step 15" we get the "Oh, did anyone notice this on Step 3?" and then they'd erase the board and we'd start again. I never felt it was an interesting technique, especially early on, when, again, at least for me, I'm just trying to absorb everything. I don't know enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, and still barely understand what I'm doing. Many times one can succeed by blindly following a process without understanding, and over time that understanding arrives, aided by repetition and application of the examples. Folks learn differently with different ways. This was not an effective teaching technique for me.
- katbyte 2y agoI think it works well for the early grades with simple problems like 5x5=24 to get young kids interested or your vs you’re But anything beyond that anything multi step is just not useful - you talk about taking notes young kids are not taking notes
- botanical76 2y agoThis is only slightly related, but if you don't understand, what value do your notes actually have? Or is this an environment with no lecture recordings, digital presentations or notes shared with the class..? I ask out of a genuine curiosity, since I know many people benefit from live note taking. I can only imagine notes being useful if they constituted a synthesis of the teacher's guidance.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI had the same curiosity. Every time I've tried meticulous note taking it turned in to this thing where now I've given myself permission to do something mechanical now and put off the hard thinking until later. And then when I tried to do it later, the moment for asking for clarification had passed.
- fragmede 2y ago
- Stem0037 2y agoWhile this approach can engage some students, it risks confusing others and potentially eroding trust. A balanced method might involve planned "mistakes" alongside clear, accurate instruction.
- amha 2y agoI teach math to smart nerdy high schoolers. I do this. It's great! Fun for everyone :)
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- loceng 2y agoI immediately thought of this substitute teacher who was mispronouncing all of the students names during row call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoNLC1UALSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoNLC1UALSI
- thih9 2y agoThis is an engagement boosting technique that is popular on social media too, a.k.a. comment baiting. It was commonly used in 2003 on TikTok.
- ClaraForm 2y agoThe only winning move … is not to play. Strange game.
- helf 2y ago[dead]
- coffeeindex 2y agoI started to question you on the year there… you got me
- Sparkenstein 2y agoI have worked as a teacher. I have tried this. This doesn't work. Period.
- rincebrain 2y agoA professor I had in college had an anecdote about how his first publication was an open problem he accidentally solved in the process of doing his homework and he only found out long after when the professor cited it as [him] (unpublished). He also seemed to, precisely once every semester, assign a problem among the homework problems that was, as written, an open problem in the field, only to, a couple days before the deadline, send out a clarification apologizing. Having been around there a couple years, I always suspected that these two things were not unrelated.
- xtiansimon 2y agoIf I recall correctly, Sal Khan from Khan Academy fame has suggested homework and school work should be flipped—video lessons at home and student and teacher interaction on the math problems at school. This has some of that flavor.
- Justsignedup 2y agoPractical problem... Kids won't do that. And there's a lot of classes there. Though indo agree with his sentiment. Most college lectures are useless and easily replaced with a video. I found my best math professor had us do homework and then the beginning of every class I'd going over it and working out all our mistakes. I felt that he could teach calculus to a monkey he was so effective.
- qazxcvbnmlp 2y agoI had a teacher that did this circa 2013 before it was en vogue. There’s some nuance in getting the right balance of interaction but it definitely works.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoThis is how my calculus class worked out a few years ago. It was a purely online course, and the instructor was at a campus I never visited. (We were surprised to learn that we'd need to commute there for the final exam, but I worked out an alternate plan.) The course materials were all Pearson-provided and hosted on Canvas, so there were video lectures, and the quizzes and tests were automated. Our instructor was just there to keep the backend together, and provide a credentialed face. I, however, struggled mightily, and so I found the tutoring center, and it was fantastic. It was bustling in the daytime; it had computers we could log into or desks without them. Then the tutors circulated, and we could plug through coursework and raise a flag when we had questions. It was one instance of a vast support network that is too often left untapped by students, who just aren't aware of what's available, or don't care and resort to cheating, or have a study group where they all sort of muddle through.
- amai 2y agoIt seem like Cunningham's Law https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law also works in real life.
- amai 2y agoA professor once taught me: If you want your presentation to be remembered, don't make it too perfect. Add some (obvious) errors, mispellings etc. to keep the audience awake.
- jrootabega 2y agoEarly on in high school we had one of the sports coaches substitute for a science teacher for a few months. The sub gave us a bad formula, and I spent a while on getting her to correct it. She pushed back, so I even wrote a very small paper showing how the formula she gave us didn't make sense because the value would have to have certain upper bounds, the formula would have to have a certain "shape" to it, etc. It was somewhat rewarding to care about the concept enough to do this, but it made the sub cry, and several of my classmates were angry and annoyed at me. I think this article, even if it was true, downplays the social penalty that the kids who speak up might pay.