This Troper had some apathetic counselors.

This troper's Latin techer openly stated in a class she didn't cared anymore about teaching us, that her subject was useless and that was just counting the days for her retirement.

This Trooper's 8th grade science teacher only bothered to have a class demonstration once. The rest of the time she gave them sheets of homework to do.

This Troper's high school chemistry teacher was horrible about this. We did MAYBE 2 or 3 actual chemistry experiments the whole semester. The rest of the time? We worked using a computer program that he ''programed himself just to get out of actually teaching us anything''.

This Troper herself (who is diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome and mood disorders) has been this, or perhaps she thinks she is this more than she actually is. This stems from her depressing view that her knowledge is as usually useless and worthless as she is herself alongside her view that her students will be more successful at the real world than she ever was. She once told two of her former students that she viewed her knowledge as garbage and that marrying rich without any book smarts would be better than being like her. She cried herself to sleep that night... and those two students had been particularly enthusiastic learners during the school year, making the highest grades in their class. (The next day, those girls rounded up their peers who were not gone for the holidays and gave her a surprise party. She cried all the more, of course.) Essentially, if this troper doesn't feel like she is doing something worthwhile, she is miserable, and she often fails to see how educating others in her fields is actually worthwhile because she does not feel that having brains did her enough good.

Subverted in that she really does love when a student "gets" what she is teaching and/or when a student proves that what s/he learned from her was indeed not useless in their own life. Also subverted in that teaching is what saved her from a hard-knock life that often found her homeless, so it is rather silly of her to think that her knowledge is completely irrelevant.

Please, for the love of God, don't think of knowledge as useless and worthless. Shouldnt the fact that your students threw a party in your honour be enough proof against that? Or when you see a student benifit from what you've taught them? Some of the best advice I've ever gotten was from teachers, and I'll never forget the life lessons they taught me, I promise you that.

One of the two physical science teachers This Troper had at her high school was this. He didn't teach us anything, he just sat and read the newspaper and made us read the text book for an hour, then made us copy a page or two from the text book for homework. One time several boys in my class brought a break dancing movie to class, and cleared out a bunch of empty desks at the back of the class so they could break dance to the music, and the teacher ''just let them do it!''

I had several of these. My biology teacher in high school was on the verge of retirement and so didn't care anymore that some days he would write out a hall pass for TheLibby without being asked, give it to her and say, "Here. Go to the bathroom, wander the halls, go visit another class, I don't care. I just need a ten-minute break from you." We, um, did a lot of coloring in that class. And it moved at such an unbearably slow place that I, a lazy lazy student, wound up with an average of ''over'' 100 because I never came within a mile of having to take any of the "homework" home and got extra credit on everything, just for doing it.

Somewhat subverted in my case. My chemistry teacher, who didn't take himself particularly seriously, openly proclaimed to be apathetic and only teaching because it was his job, as well as looking forward to retirement, but was in fact extremely good at his job, having been in it for 33 years.

This troper had a Principle Mathematics teacher like this in her freshman year, who flat-out told the kids that were only there under parental pressure that if they decided to never show up and intentionally flunk to get into the easier course, she would still mark them as present and not tell a soul. On the other hand, my science teacher told us he would be retiring before spring break, and in the days leading up to his last day he just... stopped coming to work.

This troper had an orchestra instructor who would put on a CD to teach them how to play, while she sat in her office and read. The teacher was soon fired.

I had a teacher like that when i was 10. He didnt bother teaching us stuff, barely even interfered when the kids in his class were misbehaving, and just gave us lots of colouring to do and put videos on to keep us quiet

Completely subverted with my High School. The longest attending teacher her started teaching at my school during the 70's and he is completely eccentric and fun-loving. Some people say he's insane, but I think he knows how to live.

At this troper's school, there is a geography teacher infamous for showing up to lessons 10-15 minutes late, sticking a video on and making his classes do the questions out of the textbooks. Needless to say, no-one ever learns anything in his classes; however, this troper managed to subvert this by learning something in the two years he taught her, then to double-subvert it by forgetting it all once she dropped Geography.

This troper had apathetic teachers in middle school. While I was being bullied for being the Twilight-hating tomboy who liked anime, the teachers did nothing about it.

My mom had a teacher like this. He just showed videos of other (better) lectures

This troper had a music teacher for four years (5th, 6th, 9th and 10th grade) that did nothing but tell us weird stories, for example about how he blew up his brother's toy steam engine at age 12. In the first semester of 10th grade, he did ONE test and only gave As, Bs and Cs, claiming he found it unethical to give worse marks. In the second semester, he said he didn't feel like giving any grades and whether we were okay with just getting the grade from the first semester again. Of course, everyone agreed since nobody had anything worse than a C. However, this troper transferred to a different school in grade 11, where she had an EXTREMELY TOUGH music teacher. She eventually got a B in that class, but she had to work hard for it, due to missing out 4 years of music.

Her new school had a physics teacher who, apparently, had been a really cool guy. Then his wife left him and he became an asshole who only showered once a week.

She also had an ethics teacher who was competent in his subject, but just teaching at the school because he had failed to finish his PhD, and bitter about it. Fortunately, he did not let it out on the students, becoming apathetic instead and he was a fairly nice guy if you talked to him one-on-one. He taught during the last two periods and sometimes, he'd tell his students: "I'm not in the mood for teaching today. Just go home. But leave quietly, so the principal won't notice." He also ignored it if you cheated on tests, even if it happened right under his nose.

An education-major friend of this troper once told her about a popular saying within her chosen field: "If you genuinely love kids and want to see them do well, teach elementary or high school. But if you ''hate'' kids, teach JuniorHigh." The idea is that within a year or two teaching in a junior high setting (and having seen what this particular age bracket is capable of), most teachers that previously cared won't give two shits about their students anymore -- they could just rip each other to shreds, and they wouldn't bat an eyelash. That's considered to be the main reason why junior high seems to have such a disproportionate number of apathetic teachers.

In high school, this troper had a physics teacher whose idea of teaching was putting on a video and spending the class period reading the newspaper.

This troper had a physics teacher in whose class it is virtually impossible to get anything other than an A or B. He also had a very easy math teacher during Junior year, followed by a very, very, hard (As in violating homework workload limits by a factor of three (for my not-mentally-damaged classmates, I hate math and thus would take about five times too long on the rare occasions I did any) every single night levels of hard) math teacher Senior year, which almost had very bad results when mixed with (what all signs (e.g. attempted suicide) indicate is, despite no formal diagnosis) depression. That got off-topic fast.