I do have a question about your status as a PhD student. As a graduate student you should not be in a class that is taught by anyone other than a professor. In addition, at most American grad schools any PhD candidate (and sometimes MA candidate) who is even slightly qualified is usually given a TA position. Seeing as you are a grad student, but not a TA (presumably like the TA you are upset with), I think you are simply jealous that you did not qualify for funding at your institution. And you also feel more entitled to education and funding since you are an adult student. As a young TA, I frequently find adult students to be far more arrogant and condescending than the younger students.

well if you're that old, then you should know that talking back to a teaching will get you a nice whipping or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc1EjlFJMUc

i HATE those awful grad student/ta instructors. Here you are going to a real college or university, paying all of this money expecting to get an education from an experienced, qualified instructor and instead you get stuck with some young, pretentious, obnoxious powertripping a-hole who wants to pay the whole world back for the fact that they can't get laid. This is not to say that there are no good ones, because there are, but universities have no business forcing us to accept them in lieu of people who already have their advanced degrees and at least some measure of actual field experience - unless they're willing to reduce the price of the credit hours to reflect the reduced quality of the education. There is nothing more demeaning, more insulting and more downright immoral than to take thousands of dollars in tuition money that someone (a consumer no less) has shelled out expecting to get something of a real education, and instead handing them off to some ass kissing lacky who probably knows even less about the subject than the student. I literally left my last school and transferred to another one just to get away from those butt plugs. I've never been happier.

gvgu

burn

The TA was out of line, unless you are one of the obnoxious know-it-all older students that never shuts up and offers your "insight" on everything.

I find it hard to believe that you got kicked out of class for that. What did you do? Throw a fit?

Whatever people! TA's a douche. They usually are! I say OP talks to Prof. and tells him just that!

Read Carnegies "how to make friends and influence people" there is a whole chapter on how to approach correcting someone - even when it's appropriate to stfu. In this case, the TA was wrong and you have the inkling to correct him, just be political about it. If you think that is wrong - well, look at the world - people that know how best to interact with people do much better in life.

You need to speak with the Dean about what happened. It's ridiculous that a TA would do that to you, and even moreso, it means that they're not teaching that part of history correctly.