30 Funny Times Teachers Wondered ‘How Are My Students So Dumb?’

‘Are mermaids real?’
30 Funny Times Teachers Wondered ‘How Are My Students So Dumb?’

While teachers are usually aware of the hurdles they’ll face with students, there are times that even they’re taken by surprise. Like, the one university instructor whose student wrote a paper on witches, but spelled it “whiches” the entire time. The cherry on top was when this student cited a phone number in the footnotes as a source. You gotta wonder what was going on there.

Other educators of Reddit have remembered the times they were mystified by a student’s stupidity, including one who thought Pearl Harbor was the name of a person.

LegitimateIntimate 5y ago Kids asked me, Are you from Detroit or (some other city I forget)? I said Neither, I moved here from Pennsylvania. One girl gasped and asked, Do they have slaves there? ... + 766 ...
FoutryFour 5y ago I had a little boy (first grade) who always got 14 as his answer to every problem no matter what. On the second day of school I sat down to do 3+2 with him using counters. We set out a pile of 3 and a pile of 2. I told him to count and watched in horror as he pushed the counters into a line and then counted back and forth and back and forth re-counting them until he got to 14. That was the biggest number he knew, he would have just kept going on. +
Spodson 5y ago On a number of occasions, around five or six, I have had to explain to students that you can still get pregnant even if you don't orgasm. Apparently, it's an old wives tale in a bunch of cultures. And when i corrected them, they fought back. + 1.4K ...
thepahadiguy 6y ago . Edited 6y ago During an oral exam (basic engineering electronics) a girl could not answer a single question. So I ask her simpler questions. I bring close the oscilloscope and point at the power switch - it was pretty clear it was a switch as it was written in bold letters ON/OFF - and ask her what was it? Answer - fuse + 525 ...
disastar 6y ago We were discussing the three most common phases of matter--solids, liquids, and gases. Using water as the example, I asked a student to tell me what we call the solid phase of water. Не replied, Oil! I was dumbstruck, but mine was only temporary... 1.9K ...
why-is-everything 6y ago I once had a girl in my class ask why meteors always fall in to craters, for context this was journalism degree and we where talking about libel laws. This girl did not pass. + 3.7K ...
 6y ago I had a student who tried to argue that plagiarism wasn't real after ganking the text of a one page paper on velociraptors straight from a top Google search result for them. But if you read something, then you're just taking the knowledge and thumping it back into a word processor, what's the difference? She was a criminal justice major. + 1.4K ...
BlakeMP 6y ago e Edited 6y ago High School Teacher. Many years ago, I was showing my students clips from Romeo and Juliet. Student stared at the screen in total bewilderment for a few minutes. Then she said, serious as a cancer diagnosis, How can he be in this movie? Не died in Titanic.
emtbr 6y ago . Edited 6y ago A few years ago, I had a student turn in a term paper titled Mental Disroders. They then went on to misspell 'disorder' two different ways in the first sentence. (Edited for spelling) + 1.1K ...
newyorkminute88 6y ago One student asking the difference between psychopath and psychologist, in criminology class. 483 ...
soulsista12 6y ago One of my students told me he was going to be 21 when he graduated high school. I asked him why. Не explained that he ages TWO YEARS every year. Не is 15 turning 16 so that is 2 years. Не is probably right that he will not graduate HS til age 21, but not for the reason he mentioned lol + 7.2K ...
glimmerfox 6y ago . Edited 6y ago I had a student who wrote an art history paper about Leonard Davin Chi. Didn't even run that sucker through a spellcheck or anything. Referred to him as that throughout the entire paper.
PubScrubRedemption 6y ago Happened in the first week of a college anthropology course: Prof: Let's list a few basic differences between modern humans and animals Student: We have a heart beat + 12K ...
bgoegan 6y ago Edited 6y ago A student in my economics class started his final essay with this: We are all familiar with the country, Africa. Yet at the same time we know little about them. All we know is that it is hot there, African Americans live there and they are really poor. This begs the question, why is Africa that poor? It was just so jam-packed with stupid I had to stop grading for 24 hours. Edit: For the record, this was indeed a college student. + 16K ...
Cuntycunt10 5y ago University course - paper on Witches - spelt Which throughout the whole paper. Favorite sentence - Whiches and broomsticks. footnoted a phone number as a source! Marking those papers broke me. 353 ...
popololo1222 5y ago For women's history month, I had my students give presentations on famous women in history. One student got up and, dead serious, gave a presentation on Anne Franklin and said that the holocaust was a guy called Hitler. She had researched all of this. I still don't understand. + 259 ...
jbp84 5y ago During a unit on Vietnam I was discussing the number of bombs dropped by the US and a student asked me if all those bombs are what killed the dinosaurs. Had another student ask if Pearl Harbor was still alive after doing a mini-lesson on it last December. She thought it was a woman's name. I have a lot more but those are my two most recent, egregiously dumb ones + 136 ...
RichardCranium_ 5y ago I was talking about CFL lightbulbs and the fact that they contain mercury. One high school freshman raised his hand and asked if they had to go to Mercury to get it. 201 ...
GreatJobTeam 6y ago . Edited 6y ago My sister is a French Teacher, not a professor, so I'm not sure if this counts but here goes: everone in the class had a fairly lengthy piece of French homework, and one student put the entire thing in Google translate, but translated it to Spanish. 813 ...
DarthSamurai 5y ago George Clooney was the first president right? 10th grader Coach (I was a bball coach as well for a high school), our bio teacher was talking about menstrual cycles. What is that? 9th grade female Coach, I walked into the weirdest (women's) restroom. There were toilets with no stalls. I couldn't figure out how to pee in them you walked into the men's bathroom. Those were urinals you saw oh... How to men pee in them? same 9th grade female what is Vladimir Lenin's first name? 8th grader (I replied Joseph) Does a male octopus have 8
YESSShomo 5y ago Spent 15 minutes with my 9th graders going over MLA headings in great detail. Even gave them a reference sheet to keep at home. Later received at least 3 essays from students named Your Name. Truly sad times. 496 ...
itsahardnarclife . 5y ago I asked my class of 5th graders what city they live in, and the first response was Texas. + 2.6K ...
TwistySkydiver 0 5y ago I wouldn't call him dumb but I did stop and stare at him thinking it was a joke. When I was student teaching last year one of my students made a comment about the 52 states- I corrected him and said there are 50 states and he asked me if I remembered to count both Washingtons. As in Washington and Washington, D.C. + 1.1K ...
TheRedMaiden 5y ago Three weeks into writing a research paper. Okay today we'll continue writing the body paragraphs of the essay. Student: What essay? + 2.4K ...
 5y ago I have a poster on my wall that says something about not believing everything you read on the internet, and it attributes the quote to Abraham Lincoln. Student said, Wait, did they have internet back then? + 5.8K ...
 . 5y ago I asked my students to write a sentence and give an example. One of the students (age 12/13) asked what's an example? Actually really hard to explain. + 3.8K ...
Mooshan 5y ago Are mermaids real? followed shortly by I don't believe in dinosaurs. She was 16. + 6.8K ...
Happy_Birthday_2_Me e 5y ago One of my 16 year old students asked, while starting a multiple choice test, if it mattered what letter he chose. I just stared at him. Sometimes there are no words. + 8.5K ...
SnapesDrapes . 5y ago Me: I'm thinking of a fruit that is yellow and very sour! Student: Chickenpox! + 1.6K ...
librarylady1980 o 5y ago One of my 10th graders said she saw a crime being committed (bike being stolen in neighbor's yard) and she wanted to call 911 but she didn't know the number. 984 ...

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