Asklemmy @lemmy.ml

7d ago

What was a fact taught to you in school that has been proven false during your lifetime?

219 comments

Everything about Christopher Columbus.

The United States operates on the principle of three co-equal branches of government, which check and balance each others power.
- This is painful.

"You need to learn this because you won't always have a calculator on you!"
- That wasn’t so much a “fact” told in school as it was a prediction, and it was true for them. Some people carried pocket calculators, but most people didn’t. Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts, but most didn’t.
  Failing to predict society’s norms in 20 years isn’t the same as teaching a false fact.
  
  Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts
  wat
  
  The same was told to me even as everybody already had mobile phones with calculators in them or even iPhones
- Basic mathematical literacy is a prerequisite to being able to use a calculator.
- I feel have super power by being to calculate accurate tips without needing to crack out my phone.
- Yeah but its such a hassle to find, so...

That I was a republican. The teacher gave out this political alignment quiz that was incredibly biased asking things like "do you like lower taxes or higher taxes?" and "do you like more freedom or less freedom?" All the questions basically lead you to the same answers. So the entire class basically had the same result.
This was in middle school so I wasn't even politically engaged yet. I didn't realize how crazy this was until years later.
- the quiz:
- Seems like the teacher was ahead of their time, or way behind it depending on whether they drew inspiration from Moms for liberty or Adolf Hitler.
- That's funny. I had a teacher do something like this but in the other direction. All the questions had answers that pretty much forced you right into the blue. Shit like "do you think homeless people should be given assistance or should homeless people be shot and dumped into the sea?" Or "I think everyone deserves to find love vs gay people are the spawn of Satan".
  It is worth noting that I went to a very left leaning and notoriously "hippy" private school (against my will). I eventually managed to get expelled for smoking weed and not snitching on all my friends.
  I don't think teachers really should be pushing their political or religious agendas no matter what. School is for learning core basics in various categories.
  
  n many countries, including the United states, the core studies are taught through the end of Junior High School. And that's when mandatory education ends. So you should expect to see a lot more variety in high school.
  As a teacher myself, I don't try to tell students what to believe, but I certainly don't run away from talking about political issues. If you're teaching English or science or social studies or foreign language, and you are working hard to avoid politics, you're doing your students a disservice.
  For example, suppose you're teaching high school economics right now. Would you honestly not talk about the Trump tariffs? That would be the most ludicrous idea imaginable. Clearly the students want to know what's going on, they hear it on TV, they read it in the newspaper, and you're the expert so you should be telling them what's going on. Right? And if you're going to talk about them, you're probably going to be critical of them with good reason.
  But anyway, I've heard people express views similar to yours over the years, and essentially many people with that view think that school could be or should be talked entirely by mindless robots. I don't think that's a great way to teach kids, I'm happy I didn't grow up in such a system, but if that's what you want then more power to you.
- Ironically, I have read that there was a study that found that the most gullible kids in elementary school grow up to be republican. I'm not kidding.
  
  I don’t think that would surprise anyone. The GOP has been a giant grift since at least Reagan. A loooot of people out there can’t tell when they’re getting scammed.
  It’s one reason why educated voters tend to be further left on the political spectrum.
- I hated this so much in high school.
- There's essentially no difference between reps and dems tbh
  
  "Essentially no different" is overselling it. "A lot less difference than there should be" is better.

Trickle down economics are an effective way to redistribute wealth
- Did we conclude that, I thought its still heavily debated.
  Some argue in the 50s and 60s the US was spending Europe's gold to build highways and infrastructure, gifting Americans the wealth with a continuation of the new deal, they then defaulted in 1971 as inflation eroded foreign debt owed.
  Some feel some form of debt accrual is how we derive such a consumption focused standard of living, which is misallocated capital that ends in someone holding the bag when it can't realistically be paid back, or when population doesn't grow fast enough like in Japan or most of the developed countries.

The D.A.R.E. program.
- We congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
  
  I'm addicted to dopamine, and I'll take any drug I can to get more of it.

That tastes have specific regions on the tongue. We actually had to protest when that shit was taught at our son's elementary school. Don't know if it came up for our younger daughter.
Poor kids at school had old atlases where Germany was still separated. But I guess that's just obsolete and not false knowledge.
- Yeah, I remember that one. We even did an experiment to "prove" it. I was like, "I kinda taste it everywhere". I don't remember what the punishment for that one was exactly, but it was pretty severe, and I didn't do anything wrong.
  
  I remember getting detention on first grade for telling my classmate that a whale had beached here in finland. It happened, it was on the news. Same thing again after I told my classmate about some asteroid that is going to kill us all. On 6th grade the whole class was given detention for not having music books with us because the teachers had decided to change the schedule that morning.
- There's a weird thing here. I totally accept that the traditional tongue map is pseudoscience and debunked, but if you're paying attention to something like wine or good chocolate, letting it spread across your whole tongue really does seem change the flavor and bring new aspects to what you're tasting.
  My subjective impression is that there is some effect to exposing the whole tongue to a stimulus, and I'd really like to understand it more - but when you search the web, you pretty much just get deconstructive articles about the old model, and not much about what might actually be happening.

Some children are taught in school that God created the earth. Some of us were allowed to learn that humans cannot effect climate change, allowed to discuss it openly, and allowed to graduate with that idea without ever being corrected. Children are being taught today that slavery and colonialism were good things for some people.

It was false then but my seventh and eighth grade science teacher told us that blood was blue. My mom was a nurse so I knew that it was bullshit but was definitely confused because he was my science teacher.

Trickle down economics (well, it's not like there was a time when it was true)

Racism used to be a problem until Lincoln and MLK fixed it.

I was chucked into Christian school.
So... a lot of it.
- *everything

I would say "cursive is how adults write, you'll need to know it", but that wasn't true then either.
- Cursive is such a bad way to write. I used to have to decipher sloppy cursive notes on how to check airplane fixtures. I even learned it in school!
  
  Good cursive flows very nicely. I got to watch my grandmother's handwriting deteriorate as the dementia and Alzheimer's took her. Was always amazed for well she wrote when i was younger, but her handwriting turned pretty incomprehensive as her brain was eaten away by the disease
- "You need a pen licence because that's what you use at work".
  Um no. Secretaries, lawyers and journalists used typewriters and engineers used propelling pencils. Builders had these odd rectangular shaped pencils that could write on anything. Fitters and boilermakers used chalk.
  Only schoolchildren used biros.
- cursive sucks ass. im not reading that garbage
  
  I actually use it myself sometimes when taking notes. It's just the natural way to write for me. It's faster and more space effective.
  
  I cant even read my own cursive from back then.
  Now i know how my teachers felt and why they constantly told me i write unreadablely. Used to be able to read it fluently lol

Basically everything I can recall being told in D.A.R.E program classes (war on drugs era propaganda taught in public schools in the USA) was utter nonsense and fabricated bullshit. After actually having personal experience with most of the substances they vilified, none of the effects - good or ill - are what I was taught in that ridiculous program.
On the contrary, some of the fear tactics they used made me curious to investigate on my own. The breathlessly scared rural teacher describing the mind bending effects that "magic mushrooms" was supposed to have sounded fascinating to teenage me. In reality, they are very fun and therapeutic to use, but nothing like the wild Alice in Wonderland mind journey they made it sound like it would be.
- Drugs Are Really Excellent?

That humans came out of Africa once and then settled the rest of the world. In reality there was a constant migration of humans in and out of Africa for millennia while the rest of the world was being populated (and of course it hasn’t ever stopped since).
I love how much DNA analysis has completely upended so much “known” archaeology and anthropology from even just a couple decades ago.
- Whats about DNA??
  
  Gene sequencing wasn’t really a thing (at least an affordable thing) until the 2010s, but once it was widely available archaeologists started using it on pretty much anything they could extract a sample from. Suddenly it became possible to track the migrations of groups over time by tracing gene similarities, determine how much intermarrying there must have been within groups, etc. Even with individual sites it has been used to determine when leadership was hereditary vs not, or how wealth was distributed (by looking at residual food dna on teeth). It really has revolutionized the field and cast a lot of old-school theories (often taken for truth) into the dustbin.

That America is the best and most free country in the world.
- And eagles and burguers
- Basicly every Pole in the 90s were taught and thought like that

Taste buds are arranged by flavor in four sections of the tongue. Complete load of horseshit.
Multiplication tables (I still know them mostly). I have a calculator on damn near every device now.
Things will always get better <-- this one is the biggest lie of them all
- The multiplication table is still fact even if you have a calculator.
  
  6 x 6 mothefuckers. Y'all tell me that didn't immediately form "36" in your brain.
- I need to use multiplication at work every single day, it's extremely handy to remember them.
- Is it so bad to know your multiplication tables? It’s lowk a quality of life thing yknow. imo it’s just a good thing to know so you aren’t entirely reliant on the calculator for an answer.

Study and work hard will make you successful.
- Broadly speaking, failing to put in effort does tend to lead to worse outcomes.
  ...Unless your parents have the last name "Musk" or "Trump".
- Depends on your definition of successful

That blood is actually blue until it gets in contact with air
- Easy to proof: Vaccumated capsule to draw blood.
  No contact with air and still red.
- I remember my science teacher in seventh grade saying this. I was just very confused because my mother who was a nurse said it was just a dark red.

The myth that glass is a very thick liquid. It's actually much weirder than that. https://gizmodo.com/the-glass-is-a-liquid-myth-has-finally-been-destroyed-496190894
- I tried to argue this with a science teacher who chose that specific material for a question about phases, and I assumed she was asking for this tricky reason. She marked me wrong and wouldn't accept my personal research on the topic as makeup. I was humiliated. I hope she's dead now.

that Pluto is a planet
- PLUTO IS A PLANET!
  
  I thought it was Mickey Mouse's dog 🤔!
  
  Ok Jerry.
- This was my first thought as well!
  
  Pluto is a great test for what type of person someone is.
  If someone says Pluto is still a planet. They have a personality where they are immovable and can't accept scientific change and everything has to be how they first learned it.
  If they do say pluto is a new kind of dwarf planet they are more accepting of new information and belive in the scientific method and love to be wrong. Since it means we learn something new.
  It's a great quick test when meeting new people.

"Those bullies will be working at a gas station while you'll be the boss!"
- the bullies have weird families with 4 stupid looking kids, but im still getting laid and i have no debt

I have one that was proven false, and then later re-proven true: the existence of the brontosaurus.
When I was in elementary school, we were taught that they existed, they were big, etc. Then, at some point while I was in college, I discovered that actually what we thought was a brontosaur was a brachiosaur or an apatosaur. And then, when my kids went to school and learned about the brontosaur, I discovered that actually, they did exist!

I was taught that Jupiter had 17 moons, Saturn has 12 and Pluto has 1. Many more have been discovered since.
Then there's the whole "different areas on your tongue taste different flavors." Like you only taste sweet with the tip of your tongue, the middle tastes salty, etc. I remember being given various substances by my fifth grade teacher like sugar, coffee, lemon juice, table salt etc. and we tried putting them on different areas of our tongues and we were like "...no, we taste everything everywhere."
- I was always so confused by the tongue areas because it never seemed to work for me. Especially sweet, I tasted sweet far more at the back than on my tip.
- Were you guys eating coffee grounds in your 5th grade science class? Your next teacher either hated it because you guys were bouncing off the walls or loved it because you were all wide awake and paying attention.
  
  We were each given like a quarter teaspoon of grounds and a toothpick.
  
  A tiny amount on like a q-tip. Not enough to effect anything except flavor

A huge number of aspects of the US's geopolitical enemies, and its own mythologization of the Founding Fathers and early settlers.
There was also a really bad political test with liberalism on the left and conservativism on the right, and we had to take a test and put what we got in front of everyone, which was very strange.

Physical Vs chemical changes.
It was typically taught that physical changes are differentiated from chemical changes because they could be "undone" or that they had "no chemical reaction." Which was very confusing, because you can't uncut paper, and dissolving stuff in water clearly results in different chemicals being produced, yet both were examples of physical changes (actually the latter is sometimes taught as a chemical change). Furthermore, most chemical changes are actually reversible.
It has since been recognised that this classification is BS, and most changes actually exist on a continuum.
- I distinctly remember my fifth grade teacher trying to pull that.
- I am teaching this next week. It is sometimes painful how simplified we have to make content for middle school. You are expressing what science teachers hope for from students. You were curious enough to explore further and ask questions, the true purpose of science.

I was taught the Philippines was a US territory. I just learned last night that hasn’t been true since 1946. I went to school in the 90s.
- Philippines was a US territory
  that hasn’t been true since 1946.
  I mean... It was a US territory. Well, at least it was under control of the US in some way. I think one of/the first cruel and unusual constitutional challenges was over something that originated in the Philippines.
  
  I suppose phrasing wins there. I meant u was educated in the 90s that it currently was a territory.

-Coequal branches of government
-Separation of Church and State
-Life terms for SCOTUS ensures political impartiality
-The second amendment was so that we could defend ourselves (see: redcoats)
-Bohr system
- Unless you are by far the oldest person on Earth, these were disproven far before you were born
  
  Fair, but this is/was still commonly taught in schools. That's what the original question was.

That glass is a liquid at room temperature, just a very viscous one so it doesn't appear to flow. It's not. It's not a crystalline solid so it has an internal structure similar to a liquid, but the structure is definitely solid at room temperature because the components are not capable of moving relative to each other like a liquid would.
- It's also not the reason church windows are thicker at the bottom, a common myth that my ex-colleague with a PhD in polymer chemistry(!) somehow bought into
  
  Glass not being a polymer still does suggest they're talking out of turn

Haven't seen anybody post this but how gender and sexuality is, schools are so fucking about straight mom and dad only relationship and nothing else. Man and wife bullshit when there's infinite amounts of gender and sexuality and diversity out there. Fuck I hate Amerikkka
- I am from germany. Sex ed is not just manditory but also part of normal lessons all two years. The body, genetics, sex itself and how a baby is made and how protection and STDs work and which are there next to condom and pill
  Funnily enought i wasnt present the whole male sex ed part so idk if they talked about queernes. Being in a psychiatric hospital they only had german, math, english, classes so litterly only the essentials
- can you be more specific
  
  What do you want more? This is pretty specific, what was taught to them about gender and sexuality, in particular that gender only exists in two forms, and no mention outside of heterosexuality. Pretty sure most of us had a similar experience in school about these subjects
  Edit: downvoting until you reply. It's not intellectually honest to ask such a question and kite off

That fluoride and vaccines are bad for you… tbh, I only believed it for 2-3 weeks until I did my own research, but it was a frightening clarification. Didn’t believe that teacher a single word after that.
- Fluoride can be bad for you, just at much higher doses than they put in water supply. It can cause issues with bones and neurological development. Again, only in very high doses over a long time. It happens a lot in poorer countries where they can't treat well water.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_fluorosis
- I think people underestimate the problems with teeth hygiene. It can cause dimensia, so teeth should be brushed before you eat, though avoid mouth wash.
  
  @turnip
  It can cause dimensia
  I'm sorry, what the fuck? And what is "dimensia"? Does it have anything to do with spacetime dimensions?
  @Nikls94
  
  And don’t forget to floss! As soon as I learned that my gums don‘t bleed because of the metal thing, but because food between my teeth decays and that decaying decays my gums, turning it all into poop, I started to floss every second day.
  Why should I avoid mouth wash though? My routine is floss - mouth wash - brushing

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was seen as just one of several possible theories, rather than accepted fact.

Not only in School, even at university I was taught the DNA structure was solved by Watson und Crick. But they stole data from Rosalind franklin and even openly admitted it years later.
- Edison ivented the light bulb in the US. No, it was Tungsram in Hungary. Edison did employ him as a result though. Bell invented the telephone. No, it was Edison labs. Bell stiole the patent from an Italian guy when he was working in the patent office. Philco invented the TV set. Nothing to do with it, it was Edison-Marconi. The CRT controller was invented in the Soviet Union hence the Philco invention story.
  
  I'm having a hard time fund evidence that AG Bell stole anything from an Italian, do you have any more information to keep me look this up?
- Along with Franklin, I believe a grad student, Raymond Gosling. I feel I'm forgetting about another big contributor, but who knows.

We don't know what the appendix does, the whole pluto thing, I think the Oxford comma is going out of style, and cursive in general.
But I love cursive, mine was "very nice" according to my teachers.
- Oxford comma for life!
  
  I was taught to use the Oxford comma by my parents, Ayn Rand and God. I had a strange upbringing.
  
  It’s useful, helps with the flow of the ideas, and is more like the sentence is spoken.
- Eh, Pluto isn't really something proven false, just that we found more objects like Pluto that made more sense in their own category. It's classification, like there weren't always separate categories for feature films and short films, there wasn't a separate category for dwarf planets when it was just Pluto.
  Oxford comma is useful. I think what's getting popular is just complete disregard for spelling and grammar.
- Thank you for your continued support of the Oxford comma.
- I've been working on my hand writing, and these kids can't read cursive. I worked real hard and my young coworkers were like bart.Bart. I developed my own short hand during college. My notes might as well be encrypted. I can't be old! I'm still with it!
  
  My handwriting turned around after I got a fountain pen. I went from doctor to pre-med handwriting. Having to think more about how to form the letters has me taking my time. No need to rush when I'm writing with a fancy pen full of cool ink.
- Oh I didnt think of the Pluto thing! Thats a good one

That CO2 makes up 0.03% of the atmosphere. But it was true then.
- When was that?
  
  Late 70s early 80s.

My favourite one was that the earth is 6000 years old
- Where did you go to school? Everybody knows its 2025 years old.
- I am a Christian and I don't believe that. I could go on at length about how the Bible doesn't support that idea.
- The question was about things taught at school.
  
  It's called a Christian school, i wouldn't recommend it

Making grimaces and being told that your face may remain that way if you don’t stop making them… 🤡

Going to college was guaranteed success in life.

The appendix is a vestigial organ that doesn't actually do anything in humans. (It might still fit the definition of vestigial, but it's far from useless and we keep learning more about how valuable gut health is.)
- My appendix came damn close to killing me. I vote “not valuable”. :)

My sysadmin professor told me to not learn about tape backups because they are going away soon
Like 3 years later ransomware was invented
- tape backups are definitely still a thing. it's one of the cheapest ways to store a shitload of data for a long time
  
  I spend a portion every day removing tapes, shipping them offsite and inserting new tapes
  Annoying but must be done
- holy crap a sysadmin class? that is wild, son. i must be an old man
  
  I went to a trades school which offered IT computer systems as a 2 year diploma. Fast track to a job back in the early 2010s. That path would never get you into IT today lol
  The specific class I mentioned was windows system administration
- Idk you can only ‘learn’ them if you have one and even the shittiest tape drive I could find as a consumer doesn’t help me at all with a tape library. We have our tape admin (=our architect) who we thank god every day for because we didn’t have to bother with it. Now he’s retiring this year.. F
  
  We had one in the lab though and just ignored it

Supersize me was fake and tonsils are not a useless byproduct of evolution.

How planes generate lift.
- Did they finally find that out? Last time I checked even PhDs in aerospace engineering still added "we think" at the end of their explanations.
  
  NASA has a webpage on aeronautics that says lift is the mechanical force created by a solid object turning a flow of liquid or gas. They also have an equation for calculating lift for any solid object/fluid combo.
  
  The wing experiment with hundreds of pressure sensors shows lower pressure on top and more on bottom.
  
  It is known yeah. Another user commented it. If you take a wing and put it in a wind tunnel you can put sensors in its wake to measure the pressure. By manipulating the fluid flow you can change the pressure. So low pressure on top and high pressure on bottom. Multiply that by the surface area and you get a force. Smaller force on top of the wing, lower force on the bottom of the wing. So the wing goes up. Of course theres some physics going on in the fluid that explains the change in pressure, but this is just a quick and simply-put explanation because I took a fat amount of zquil and am tired.
  Source: Im getting a PhD in aerospace engineering
  Edit: I had to do this in a wind tunnel during one of my undergrad courses. It was fun playing with the wind tunnels, would recommend
- What doesn't help is that plane pilots are basically taught a different version of physics to spare them from liquid dynamics and to see the forces on an aerofoil as independent ones which makes it all pretty confusing for a layperson trying to get a basic understanding of both and marry the two

By the time I was in school the Bohr model was already proven inaccurate, but was taught anyway because the orbital model is too esoteric for teenagers 🙄.

In my college Econ 101 class I was taught that "economic liberalism" would lead to political liberalism. I knew that was a myth back then, but my professors insisted. Twenty years later we've got economic nationalism and political fascism taking over everywhere.
- That was also a "theory" that "predicted" that China will go politically liberal

That adults are mature and know what they are doing.
- -
✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

I had a substitute teacher who saw the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ads against John Kerry and repeated it to the class like it was 100% fact.
- What

Hear about pluto? Pretty messed up huh?
- You know that's right!

The moon was spun out of the same stuff as the earth. That was fact in the early years of my education. A few years later there were multiple theories: co development, captured a wandering planetoid, the Thea impact, and a fourth one I can’t remember but I think it was something dumb like planetary mitosis. By the time I graduated the Thea impact was considered the only viable theory.

I was taught that Pluto is a planet. How could they have been so wrong???

"This is the best time of your life, it will never be as easy." I wasted more time at school than at work and I didn't have Fridays off, so that was a lie.

There are 10 Commandments.
No - there's 14.
And most of them also have sub-commandments, just to confuse it further.
- 613 mitzvot! ± a couple hundred, depending on whether you're a Kohen, live in Israel, if the Temple has been rebuilt, or are the first-century sage Hillel (in which case there's one mitzvah and 612 articles of commentary.)
- Here's video evidence from a documentary I watched abouy what happened and why they ended up with 10.

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