How to Drive a Teacher Crazy - Essay Example

The single most effective way to drive an algebra teacher crazy is to simply ask one question. This question can be asked, and probably should be asked, regardless of the problem. And that question is this: How can I use this in real life unless I am working for NASA, or as a writer on Futurama This question is guaranteed to drive any teacher of higher mathematics insane because, of course, nobody except rocket scientists or writers of Futurama ever need to know any kind of math beyond addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

By revealing the great secret of math in American education, that roughly .2% ever use this stuff in real life, you can guarantee that you will drive the teacher crazy because you are suggesting that they have wasted their life. A variation on this method of driving a math teacher crazy can be utilized to enforce the insanity of pretty much any other kind of teacher. A dividing line has always existed between what is useful in school and what is useful in life. The simplest way to drive a teacher crazy is to suggest that what you are being taught has no pertinence in the real world.

For instance, the next time you are asked to read a poem by one of the Romantics, midway through raise your hand and inquire "I understand that beauty is truth and truth beauty, but how will knowing what Mr. Keats saw on the side of this urn get me a good job with Google" Likewise, you can drive a science teacher crazy by asking how knowing the difference between particle physics and quantum physics will ensure that you are capable of appropriating your investment strategy wisely in a portfolio of stocks, bonds and mutual fund in case another Bush gets elected President in the future and creates another economic collapse.

Asking questions like these typically results in a portrait of slack-jawed for even teachers who graduated Magna Cum Laude.Falling asleep in class is not the route toward driving a teacher crazy; it's been done to death. Acting the fool, playing dumb, applying lipstick during an examination of these are guaranteed to drive a teacher crazy. (Although that lipstick thing may work if you also happen to be captain of the football team.) There is only one foolproof path to getting a teacher to claw at their hair and run screaming from the room.

That path relies on cutting to the raw exposed nerve that an open wound creates when sharp wit is applied to the flesh of a teacher unprepared for intelligent engagement in the classroom. If you can make a teacher actually reach the point of questioning why they are putting up with making less in a year than Paris Hilton spends on bikini waxes in a month, then you can drive any teacher in America crazy. The result may vary in countries that recognize the value of educators.