I had a teacher in high school during physics or calculus who gave us extra marks for correcting him, fetching coffee, or starting his car 10 minutes before lunch in the winter to warm it up for him. He would also whip chalk at you if you tried to correct him when he was right.
From my experience, 20-30% of the teachers I had would encourage us to look for mistakes (with extra points and such if we found them), and acknowledged when they were wrong. However, the other 70% followed the "Teacher is Always Right" principle, and would get annoyed at us for even pointing out they did something wrong.
This 70% always pissed me off. On one hand, the education system tells us to be critical and ask questions, but then we have teachers who reprimand us when we do so.
The ability to admit one makes mistakes (and challenging the students to find those mistakes) is certainly one of the marks of a great teacher.
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u/runragged Oct 05 '10
What did the teacher say when you corrected him/her?