We’ve all had one of those teachers who really never warmed up to us — in fact, some teachers may have been downright mean for reasons we don’t fully understand. One student who experienced this got the rare opportunity for comeuppance through a planetarium field trip:
“The year I was in third grade, [my teacher] was beloved by most of her students … but had a habit of being passive-aggressive and saccharine toward more difficult pupils. She’d find (or invent) reasons to ignore difficult questions, offer vague threats about impending punishments or make small efforts to turn classmates against one another. She was not an especially likable educator … and she became a truly reprehensible one when she insisted that Jupiter was bigger than the sun.
“At first, it seemed like a misunderstanding — our class had just entered into an astronomy unit, and one of our activities was to construct a scale model of the solar system. The reference image that we used came from a picture book, and in it, the sun had been reduced in size. The teacher had not noticed this fact and was therefore operating under the mistaken assumption that Jupiter was our largest celestial neighbor.
“Well, I knew better, and I tried to correct her. She replied to me with a tone of aloof dismissal, stating quite clearly that I was wrong. ‘That’s OK, though,’ she said. ‘After all, you’re in school to learn new things.’ Then, she smiled sweetly. I returned to my seat feeling thoroughly confused and frustrated.
“In the weeks that followed, I engaged in an all-out war against my teacher’s pseudo-science. My father, having heard everything from me, sent me to school with one of his college textbooks, hoping to turn the tide of the battle. My teacher refused to even look at it. ‘Class'” she said, rolling her eyes, ‘Who can tell Max what the biggest object in the solar system is?’ My face was burning with anger and shame as every other student shouted ‘JUPITER!’
“Things only escalated from there. I refused to back down, despite having been labeled as the class dunce. Each time the topic came up, I tried to offer my evidence … and each time, I was steadfastly opposed by everyone within earshot. Finally, after over a month of torment, our astronomy unit culminated in a field trip to the local planetarium. The show was a breathtaking adventure through our galaxy and the universe beyond, and it left me feeling infinitesimally small yet strangely empowered. As the lights came up, our guide to the cosmos asked if there were any questions.
“‘Which is bigger,’ I shouted, jumping to my feet, ‘Jupiter or the sun?!’ My entire class sighed in frustration, my teacher barked at me to sit down, and the astronomer looked thoroughly confused. ‘The sun, of course,’ he scoffed.
“A hush fell over the room. After a moment of utter silence, a girl named Melissa spoke up in a condescending tone. ‘Well, sir, we have a chart that says Jupiter is bigger.’ The astronomer looked at her. He looked at my teacher. Then, he looked at me with an expression of sympathy.
“‘Little girl,’ he said, returning his attention to Melissa, ‘if you look at the picture again, you’ll see that the sun is being shown at a fraction of its actual size. Otherwise, it wouldn’t fit on the page.’ His gaze moved to his next victim, who had slumped down in her chair so as to be almost as small as her students. ‘Your teacher should have told you that.’
“Upon returning to our classroom, all the students crowded around our reference book. Sure enough, a tiny block of text explained that the sun had been scaled down in the illustration. I declared my triumph, having finally been vindicated. Nobody apologized, my teacher found new reasons to punish me, and I was treated with no small amount of scorn, but I didn’t care. From that day forward, I knew to never be afraid of asking questions, nor of standing up for facts in favor of fiction.”
