I know a lot of teachers don’t like to be shown up in their own classrooms, but when a student actually has something to offer, should they just swallow their pride and deal with it?
I think so, but the teacher in this story took a different approach…and it didn’t work out very well for them.
Check out what happened in this story from Reddit.
Presence in German class is mandatory?
I’m from Luxembourg, a tiny country between Germany, France and Belgium. In order to get the point of the story, I need to lay some groundwork: our educational system is a bit unique, since a strong emphasis is put on learning foreign languages.
Thus, kids are alphabetized in German at the age of 6, even though for natives, the mother-tongue is Luxembourgish. At age 7, French is added and English at the age of 13. (except if they opt in for Latin, then they start English courses a year later). Most people are taught all three languages until they graduate from high-school.
Luxembourg does things differently.
Another special thing about Luxembourg is, that it only has one single university – and only for a couple of decades now. Thus, there is a certain tradition of Luxembourgian youth studying abroad.
A couple of friends of mine enrolled in Strasbourg University – one studying biology, the other law. The university has a policy that during the first year, you have to pick at least one course that is not your main subject – and most students from Luxembourg pick German.
They know their stuff…
Having had 13 years of classes in German, most are about as fluent as a native speaker; so it makes for an easy pass.
For years, they were allowed to enroll and only show up for the exam which they always aced.
So they complied with the policy – but didn’t lose any time, but could use it to get used to their new home town and concentrate on their main subjects.
But not my friends.
The new professor for German class announced that whoever was absent more than twice during a semester would fail.
The friends were quite annoyed – but did comply.
But this teacher wasn’t up to snuff.
But as it turned out, that the professor wasn’t very fit in German – so she made frequent mistakes; especially concerning the right choice of prepositions and before all grammatical cases which are quite tricky in German for non-native speakers (and some native speakers too!)
So the two friends had their fun raising their hand whenever they noticed a mistake and corrected the professor, who after a couple of sessions grew very disgruntled.
After a month of being corrected over and over again by two of her students, the mandatory presence was dropped again for students from Luxembourg.
Let’s see what Reddit users said about this.
One reader said this was a shame…
Another individual said teachers should be setting good examples.
This Reddit user shared their own story.
Another person shared their own education story.
Some people, I tell ya…
They never learn!
Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.