<p>WashDad: I did mean to write “that mathematically inept” since I was responding to Vyse’s post in which s/he expressed skepticism that a teacher could be that mathematically inept. But your point is valid, nonetheless.</p>
<p>And MotherofTwo’s point about rounding numbers ending in .5 up or down is quite valid. I was taught to round .5 up after odd digits and down after even digits, but the other method would work just as well. However, since most teachers that I’ve talked to really believe that you can average grades with one or two digits to one with three or more digits, the point stands. (I’ve known a lot of teachers who grade assignments on a one-to-ten scale and then average them to something like 94.55… </p>
<p>We also see erroneous averaging when students and GCs report GPAs as 4.013 or whatever absurd number. The input is not that accurate, so the output can’t be either.</p>
<p>“1. I’m not your dearheart. Thank you.”
That’s nice. ;)</p>
<p>“2. Haven’t we agreed that the teacher is stupid? Perhaps not the stupidest or meanest (no one has done an extensive survey, right?) but, if the letter is plausible, that teacher is stupid. And stupidity is seldom confined to a single arena.”</p>
<p>The problem is you are trying to justify a hoax. taint real. </p>
<p>“The teacher was stupid enough to think that he could shift the discussion from ignorance to authority so he could punish the kid for defying his experiment in totalitarianism–brainwashing plus total compliance”</p>
<p>DH (dearheart) it isn’t that the teacher would do what you’ve just described, it’s that he’d “write” it down. Are you getting me yet? </p>
<p>That’s why the white house is deleting emails, shreding documents and Mr. Dick C has a mansize vault in his office… By the time they leave office, there will be so many holes in mr. Cheney’s daily activities, he’ll make nixon’s 18 minutes seem like a nano second. </p>
<p>Leaving something in writting, creates proof, do you understand my point?</p>
<p>I understand your point perfectly, but whatever one may think of the occupants of the White House, they are not “that” stupid. I won’t pursue this tempting digression further as I do not want to turn this into yet another political thread.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, some teachers (not all, so please do not accuse me of teacher-bashing) can be so stupid as to think that they can punish a student for showing them up and expect parents to side with them on matters of authority. And the "leaving a paper trail "won’t wash. The class presumably had more than one student in it. How could the teacher ensure that episode would not be shared with other parents? In trials, witnesses are called to provide evidence, most of which is not in writing. A typical class would have had around 20 such witnesses.
If you read the internet discussions about this letter, there are many who chime in with similar stories of being given suspension for showing up the teacher in class.<br>
As I said, the story may or may not be apocryphal. But your reasons for suggesting it is are not convincing. Shall we leave it at that?</p>
<p>simply, I think you’ve gone a bit overboard… that’s all. You’ve turned a fake note home for detention into a court case… You don’t see that as a bit much?</p>
<p>Isn’t arguing it out to the extreme? are you adding things to make it bigger than it is? Hence the metors, you don’t get much bigger than that. Except, of course for the dinosuars.</p>
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