Bad math teacher

Math teacher who caters only to the interests of normals; such a teacher assumes that his or her students aren't interested in how math works, they just want to be able to use it. This philosophy of how to teach math is relatively new, being the result of the advent of tools that don't requre a feel for the numbers to use, particularly the calculator. Teaching math this way frustrates geeks and makes it difficult for people with no degree of natural talent for math to learn anything.

See also bad computer teacher.

I visited my nephew's school a few months ago. I walked into his math class (he's in fourth grade), and his teacher was talking.

"Just line all the numbers up. Make the decimal take up one space, and then add each column. A decimal point is like a zero - you can't add it."

On the board is written:

 1.2
 2.1
+10.2
-----
 4.32

Now, what I'm thinking is, how does she pick which row to put the decimal in?? (I chose to be in denial of the larger issue at hand - how in the hell this person was allowed to become a math teacher.)