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When it comes to learning, students have to trust that their teachers are giving them correct knowledge as doing that is the whole point of their profession. Of course, teachers can’t know everything even in their own subject and there are always new things to learn for them too, but you would expect that they know more than you.

That’s not the case everywhere as people on Reddit shared many stories of how their teachers didn’t know elementary things like that a dolphin is a mammal or that jellyfish are living creatures. It’s not clear how these gaps in education formed, but it’s scary as teachers are passing them over to the students. The thread started when A_Purple_Penguins asked “What is the moment when you realized, ‘My teacher is an idiot?’” and more people answered than you would expect.

More info: Reddit

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#1

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered 2nd grade teacher had our class naming the hottest things we could think of. A few kids already said the most obvious, like "sun" and "fire" so the third thing I could think of off the top of my head was "lava". Turns out lava isn't real, then the teacher had the whole class laugh at me for it. Made me feel stupid as hell for years until I learned that lava is real, and my teacher was a d**k.

Morpheus11011 , Scot Nelson Report

Final score:
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maylin_martinsen avatar
May
May
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

How is this happening? The worst I ever had in school was an English (as a second language) teacher who pronounced 'cute' as 'chute' and a science teacher who argued that both the bible and evolution was right, and that Adam and Eve's kids married people who evolved from monkeys, but he was just religious. Not stupid. How do these people make it through the education system far enough to become teachers?

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#2

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My biology teacher in high school asked me a question regarding something she was talking about, the answer of which was projected onto the whiteboard with an overhead projector. I looked at the whiteboard, and she placed her left hand over the part that had the answer so as to conceal it. I told her that the text was still projected onto her hand and that I could see it. She was visibly upset, and then she proceeded to place her right hand on top of her left hand. I bursted out with laughter, she kicked me out and called my parents.

ok-ox , Fabrice Florin Report

Final score:
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#3

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My Algebra teacher had us take 10% off a number to find 90%, then to undo it she said take 10% of the 90% and add it back in. That is not how math works. I called her on it and she told me I was mistaken in front of the whole class. After class she admitted I was right but didn't want to confuse everyone else. Lady, doing simple math wrong is what confused everyone else.

HonoraryCanadian , blairwang Report

Final score:
202points
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#4

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered Teacher asked what is the language spoken most in the world. I replied Mandarin, he said that's an orange and the correct answer is Spanish.

jdb888 , Michael Coghlan Report

Final score:
194points
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#5

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered I was around 5 or 6 years old and drawing pink trees. They were supposed to magnolias: obviously I was too young to remember the name but I did know them from the annual blossom viewing my family did each year, and my neighbours had one in their front garden as well. My teacher looked past and said, "there's no such thing as pink trees." I tried to explain that there are, "even my neighbours have one", etc. but she cut me off and told me to stop lying. I'm still kind of mad about that lol

korenbloemen , marloesvandervalk Report

Final score:
189points
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#6

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered I had a teacher who told us alligators never attack people because they are vegetarians.

mariam67 , Tambako The Jaguar Report

Final score:
186points
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#7

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered Not my teacher, but my daughter's teacher.

In Science class, they were discussing the scenario of a Skittle dropped into water. Pointing out the red cloud coming from the candy, he asked the class what was happening to the coating in that context.

Student said, "It's dissolving."

He argued, "No, it's going away."

asstyrant , oddharmonic Report

Final score:
177points
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#8

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My wife and I were in a birthing prep class...we're both in the medical field, but didn't advertise it to the teacher. She was actively advising parents not to have their babies vaccinated against Hep B as newborns because she thought you get Hep B exclusively from eating contaminated foods, and couldn't see why newborns would need such a thing.

It's one thing to be wrong, and it's another to be wrong and advising a room full of first-time parents with your ignorance.

ABunchofGhosts , Matt Burton Report

Final score:
176points
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Snorkeldorf
Snorkeldorf
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At our birthing prep class one of the fathers had a reasonable question. He wanted to know if his wife was given an epidural during labor could it be a problem for the baby because he himself had a severe allergy to one of the medications within an epidural. Her smart *ss reply was "Well you won't be the one getting it, will you?". Very educational.

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#9

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered When I was being bullied almost every day and cried to her for help. She shrugged it off and ignored me.

So i settled it myself with violence by punching the bully square in the eye. He left me alone ever since.

"Violence is never the answer" they said :go to a teacher" they said.

HA

roan33 , Ryan Scott Report

Final score:
170points
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#10

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered She thought dolphins were fish.

No amount of arguing by third grade me was enough to convince her otherwise.

"They live in the ocean, they're fish."

AssociationJumpy , Ross Hawkes Report

Final score:
161points
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RandomX123
RandomX123
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Take her to show her some "fish" called saltwater crocodile, and take that "crocodiles don't attack" teacher along.

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#11

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered In 2nd grade when she spelled February wrong (as "Febuary") on the board and I went up to her desk to inform her and she explained to me how she was right and I was wrong. This was the beginning of my realization that most people are stupid.

january_stars , DaPuglet Report

Final score:
160points
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#12

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered I had a teacher argue with me that "sate" isn't a word. I had to pull out a dictionary to prove them wrong.

Later on I had to do the same thing with die being the singular of dice.

shaidyn , Kevin Hodgson Report

Final score:
157points
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#13

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered When she wrote “amateur code” on my first project in C++ class. No s**t it’s amateur it was my first program lol.

Heronmarkedflail , Aleksandar Cocek Report

Final score:
154points
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ShriSha Kamboj
ShriSha Kamboj
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

okkk....so how can ANY programming language be amateur??? like I cant program n I find it kinda difficult...scratch that very difficult to make sense of.

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#14

Teacher doing basic 10 year old anatomy: “can anyone tell me what this is?”

Me, whose family’s fav show was House: “the trachea?”

Teacher: “no, this is called the wind pipe”

LordCosmagog Report

Final score:
151points
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Ryan Deschanel
Ryan Deschanel
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"And what is it? -The r****m. Wrong. It is the poop bag."

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#15

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered I remember the time my 4th grade teacher tried educating us on what makes an animal. One of the criterion she came up with was all animals have brains.

I asked, “What about jellyfish? They don’t have brains.”

To which she replied, “Well then they aren’t alive, are they?”

cakeman936 , tonko43 Report

Final score:
147points
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ShriSha Kamboj
ShriSha Kamboj
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

she a jellyfish in disguise??.......anyways she must just have known it that time

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#16

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered I had a teacher who gave a lecture he had already given, word for word. He asked a question which I answered correctly. He asked how I got the answer and I said "I wrote it down the last time you gave this lecture"

funky_grandma , Braden Kowitz Report

Final score:
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#17

I had a substitute ask me to stop reading and "pay attention" while the rest of the class ran roughshod over them--jumping on chairs, throwing things, talking over them. But no, I was the problem for pulling out a book from my bag and reading quietly, waiting for the teacher to regain control of the class.

nickelcap Report

Final score:
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Spikey boi
Spikey boi
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

She most likely called on you because you were quietly reading a book instead of being all crazy, making you look like an easier target, she wanted to make an easy example out of you.

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#18

"WWII was started when Hawaii bombed California" -My 9th grade english teacher

super_smash_apple Report

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Tigre_86
Tigre_86
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The US became involved when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The US was an Ally but did not come in to play until then. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

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#19

Gave me an F for plagiarism, I didn’t steal anything and she refused to show me her proof because this was high school and I wrote at a “University level” her words… she stated she didn’t need to show me the proof when I requested it.

Limited_U Report

Final score:
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Lawrence Clark
Lawrence Clark
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

similar thing happened to me! i spent ages writing this short play about something or other - parents got called in , teacher was trying to get me kicked out of the school as I 'must have copied it word for word off a real play' - at which point my mum produces all of my notes - rewrites, drafts etc etc from her handbag. She is a LEGEND. i kinda took it as the highest form of praise but the teacher was still a t***t , either way

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#20

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered After a substitute chemistry teacher heated a test tube over a Bunsen burner:

While securing it in a test tube holder, he absent-mindedly handed the red hot test tube to a student standing nearest to his demonstration.

The boy, trusting that "it must be okay," got his hand badly burned and, of course, the glass test tube shattered on the floor.

Back2Bach , Jason Woodhead Report

Final score:
121points
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#21

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered When my ENGLISH teacher (I’m from Italy so we have English as a second language) said “lettoochay” instead of lettuce. She was also one of the worst teachers and ended up getting replaced.

Kriumpus , Audrey Report

Final score:
116points
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Malek Basata
Malek Basata
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Whoa and I thought my English teacher is the worst? (I'm an Arab)

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#22

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My eighth grade social studies teacher thought Panama was a part of Canada. Why? Because in the geography textbook we were using, Panama and Canada were colored in with the same shade of pink.

TheBoomExpress , Christian Córdova Report

Final score:
115points
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ShriSha Kamboj
ShriSha Kamboj
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

arent like lakes inside a country and the oceans outside the same color too?

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#23

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My English teacher asked when Woodrow Wilson was president, we were reading scarlet ibis and it mentioned him, so I raise my hand. I replied both his election dates, 1912 and 1916 if I’m not mistaken. She tells me no. I assumed I got the dates wrong and it was actually 1914 and 1918 or something. Then some girl raises her hand and answers “Nine teen hundreds” and she says yes.

kermitscommune , Rick Wagner Report

Final score:
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#24

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered He would brag about how many people fail his class

Big-Calligrapher-532 , vickysandoval22 Report

Final score:
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#25

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered Had my high school geography teacher insist that Antarctica is a country.

I lost points on the test because of it…

49blower , Eli Duke Report

Final score:
106points
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Malek Basata
Malek Basata
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My teacher insisted that the study of places and people was history.

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#26

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My geography teacher when he explained that self checkouts had something to do with the mark of the beast and the end times. I don't remember all the details.

Fournote , pin add Report

Final score:
103points
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Spikey boi
Spikey boi
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Those self checkouts are very evil, those screens, and the ability to check your own groceries, almost, satanic.... (/s)

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#27

when she started showing medieval Europe’s trade routes on a South America map

No__Tap Report

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#28

I had an English teacher in high school who was obsessed with poetry, and one afternoon she got into an argument with half the class over a poem because she was reading the word written and printed "noone" (no one) as "noon" and refused to believe it could possibly be "no one" even though that was the only way the line in the poem made remotely any sense.

Implicit_Hwyteness Report

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#29

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My science lecturer said that water in a kettle boils at 60 degrees Celsius. BOILS!!

RedHotChilliFeta , 70023venus2009 Report

Final score:
93points
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Snorkeldorf
Snorkeldorf
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I did not know that but I never realized my lack of knowledge could have gotten me a teaching job. Heck.....with all the things I don't know, I could have been a biochemist!

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#30

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered She said since we were learning about the formation of democracy that she will let the class vote whether I passed or failed a presentation.

ODBasUcansee , Lars Plougmann Report

Final score:
79points
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#31

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered We were asked to name healthy foods. I said fish. He responded 'maybe if you don't eat all the batter'.

randomnumber46 Report

Final score:
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#32

German teacher marked my "My Family and Pets" essay a D because I had "mis-spelt" a word repeatedly... no miss, that's the German word for ferrets... bumped up to an A

She just assumed I had messed up instead of the possibility that I owned a pet other than "Hund" and "Katze"

L_Bilbo Report

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40points
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#33

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered In my German class the teacher never actually TAUGHT us anything. It was just morning exercises and for the entire rest of the hour he'd just tell a story about his time in Germany. As for the material? Gives us a book and expects us to learn it ourselves. You're a teacher, your job is to /teach us/. It's not that I don't like your stories, but people aren't passing because you aren't teaching.

xSantenoturtlex , James Emery Report

Final score:
39points
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shrishakamboj avatar
ShriSha Kamboj
ShriSha Kamboj
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

maybe teach the basics first and then story time?? in the german language?

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#34

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered English teacher in a non-English speaking country where I was studying abroad insisted that the correct term is in fact “escapegoat.”

delusivelight , Sil Silv Report

Final score:
37points
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#35

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered In 7th grade, a teacher gave our class an assignment that included our birthplace, but she wrote on the board “where were you borned?”

KSickles318 , Caleb Maclennan Report

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#36

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered My mom went to take a university class in Greek. She’s a native speaker, so she was hoping for an easy A and to maybe just read some new literature. The professor was Peggy Hill-ing it hard and my mom tried to correct and she said told my mom that she was wrong; then another native speaker confirmed it. She never called on either of them in class again lol

Is_Bob_Costas_Real , Pedro Szekely Report

Final score:
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#37

She kept saying that 12x 3 was 48 and corrected a student when they said it was 4 and not 3

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#38

When she was asked a question by one of the three students in the class and she asked me for the answer because she wasn't sure and I had read the book.

It was an AP Bio class that she was unqualified (and didn't care enough about) to teach

TheEvilGoats Report

Final score:
28points
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ShriSha Kamboj
ShriSha Kamboj
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

this is somehow better.....she at least accepted her defeat....not saying she was right

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#39

Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Is The Moment When You Realized, ‘My Teacher Is An Idiot?’” And 30 Folks Delivered Student next to me loudly farted but I got blamed and she yelled at me and sent me out of the room

Jedi_Outcast , Scott Wilcoxson Report

Final score:
26points
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#40

I was in grade school. Maybe 3rd or 4th grade. The teacher asked what was the capitol of the state of California. I said Sacramento. Teacher said I was wrong. It’s Los Angeles. To add that the teacher said it was Los Angeles.

Melbourne2Paris Report

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