In my seventh grade math class, I questioned the teacher when he told us that the negative integers (they were not called that in this class) where all smaller than 0. By a random coincidence, I'd been playing around outside of class with various orderings of the integers, and I'd come up with this ordering in which 0 was smaller than every negative integer (the symbol < means "less than" here): 0<1<-1<2<-2<3<-3<4<-4<…

I showed the teacher my ordering (a well-ordering of the integers I learned much later) after class, and he became very irritated. He shouted that I was wrong and he didn't want to see it ever again. I kept my mathematical musings to myself after that, but I never believed the teacher's claim that I was wrong.

I didn't learn until years later that my teacher was a mathematical imbecile. All he had to do was to explain to me that my ordering was fine, but we had to use the standard ordering (…<-3<-2<-1<0<1<2<3<…) in class to make the math we were doing work out. But the stupid fuck knew nothing about the various types of orders that exist in mathematics.

I have no tolerance for K-12 math teachers who don't know enough mathematics. Banishment from the profession and long-term unemployment should be their fate. It was only my stubborn refusal to accept the dictates of authority that saved me from becoming a victim of my teacher.

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