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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Yeah, a lot of people seem to become teachers because they like being in a room full of people who won’t question them.
That particular teacher in the story was also let go at the end of the year, though, related to her treatment of students. It was kind of dramatic.
Junk DNA.
Junk DNA is still a thing - some parts of thr genome are verifiably junk, and the rest is just “unkown”. It’s just that some of the “unknown” bits back in the day have now been found to actually be useful. At least this is my understanding as a non expert.
Previously it was thought that non-coding sequences were junk, and enormous numbers like 99% were thrown around at the time. Later, we found out that more and more of the non-coding regions actually do various other things, and the scope of junk DNA got narrower as years went by. Nowadays, you don’t really hear that term much, because future scientists have a tendency of discovering new functions for sequences that were previously thought of as non-functional. There’s also debate as to where do we draw the line.
As usual, biochemistry is a fast moving target, and people have gotten cautions about these things. As more and more is discovered, older notions are updated or even thrown away.
That America is the best and most free country in the world.
Basicly every Pole in the 90s were taught and thought like that
And eagles and burguers
“You need to learn this because you won’t always have a calculator on you!”
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.
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.
The same was told to me even as everybody already had mobile phones with calculators in them or even iPhones
Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts
wat
Tiny photocell powered calculators used to be everywhere. There were “thin” ones to fit in your Costanza sized wallet, Mousepads with them built in, and my wristwatch in 6th grade had one with tiny rubber keys.
It was a magical time till be alive. 5318008
Yep, back in the 90s they were in some places. My local supermarket had one like this, except without the annoying ad on the left side.
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 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.
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.
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.
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It’s less that I don’t want them mentioning anything that connects to politics and it’s more about wanting them to just present information without any additional spin.
So “Trump has put tarrifs on x countries for x amount” vs “Trump has stupidly put x tarrifs on x countries because he’s a hateful tyrant” or whatever. I think you get what I’m trying to say.
I have absolutely no problem with talking about politics as it’s pretty much impossible to mention anything in history without it, but it can be done so in very different ways. I would prefer that teachers remain as neutral as they can while presenting only factual information on whatever political topics comes up.
Kinda how I wish the news would go back to facts first reporting as opposed to this current “rush the story out before we fact check anything and make the headline as polarizing as we can to generate maximum clicks. Who cares if we have to issue a correction later on page 97 in .5 size font (or at all) we just want clicks!” Type of “news” we have now.
I blame Reagan.
Political alignment tests have a serious case of intentional sampling bias
the quiz:
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.
Going to college was guaranteed success in life.
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
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.
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.
Nope, went through “(6 × 5) + 6”. Slightly slower, but much more flexible since you can do that with any (base 10 representation of a) number that has a reasonable number of digits.
What? How is multiplying by 5 more convenient than any other number?
When dealing with base 10 representations, multiplying by 10 is a simple matter of adding zeroes;
dividing numbers that end with a zero by two is (usually) an afterthought;
doing both operations in that sequence is (usually) equally trivial, the only effortful thing I have to do is adding or subtracting a multiplicand, once or twice or thrice.It’s not easier than having the result imprinted in my memory, but it cuts away ~ three quarters of the table.
I was thinking of a bed for some reason
I was taught that the moon landing was fake.
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.
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.
Along with Franklin, I believe a grad student, Raymond Gosling. I feel I’m forgetting about another big contributor, but who knows.
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.
-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.
