People go to school to learn things, so it’s not that crazy to expect them to be correct, right? Well, unfortunately, sometimes they might not be. Some ideas, whether coming from peers, other acquaintances there, or even teachers, tend to be far from reality, and quite a few redditors seemingly learned it firsthand.
Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently shared the facts they were taught to be true in school, but have been disproven in their lifetime. Their answers covered everything from the food pyramid, to calculators, and even George Washington’s teeth, so scroll down to find them on the list below and see what other topics the false information covered.
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If you don’t do well you’ll end up being a garbage man. F**k you! Garbage men are awesome and make more that teachers. Also, less likely to get shot on the job.
There’s never been a war fought on Australian soil. 1990’s 3rd grade teacher proclaimed it proudly. Indigenous Australians would beg to differ.
Not my lifetime, but my Mom's sister was initially forced to write with her right hand, despite being left-handed. Since they went to Catholic school, it was taught, as fact, that being left-handed was something something Devil.
When my Aunt started Grade 1, my Great-Grandfather died a couple weeks into the school year and bequeathed some money to the church and school. The family would not give it to them unless my Aunt was allowed to be left-handed.
Amazingly enough, the Priest, upon prayer and reflection, determined that being left-handed wasn't a problem anymore. Isn't that something? That's how my now 78 year old Aunt changed science at Blessed Sacrament when she was 5 years old.
Prejudice towards left-handed people has even shaped language. The word "sinister" (as a synonym of creepy/ominous) originates from the Latin word for "left hand", whereas "dextrous"/"dexterity" similarly comes from the Latin word for "right hand".
well not to nitpick but Dexter was pretty sinister
Load More Replies..."why are there suddenly so many left handed people" amazing what happens when you stop trying to force change on something that's always been there. Left handed people aren't questioned anymore. Now do trans people. Who have also always been around.
Great point! And you would think that we would have evolved past this already, it's the 21st century, for f*ck sakes.
Load More Replies...Yep, "no money" changes a lot. Local church said they couldn't baptise me without father's signature. Father was a PoS and refused to do anything. As soon as my mother said "fine, so she won't get baptised then", it suddenly became possible. The f*****s wanted to force my Mum to talk to the guy who beat and raped her.
and they say religion does no harm. foh...
Load More Replies...My step dad was the same. Is left handed but was forced to write with his right hand and was told he was writing rubbish - turns out he was mirror writing with his right hand
Boomer here. They changed me from left handed writing to right. And then in fifth grade, my teacher held up my handwriting exercise in front of the whole class and declared "this is the worst handwriting I've ever seen"! From that day on, I gave up writing cursive unless forced to and started writing in block print all caps, since that was easier to read. My handwriting still sucks and I struggle when I write a check in cursive (on rare occasions thankfully). I'm glad that they don't do this very often any longer.
My primary teacher was forcing me to write with my right hand (even if i am left handed) then complain for not having nice hand writing.
My mom actually asked my preschool teacher to make sure that they wouldn’t discriminate against me because I was left handed. I can’t imagine being punished for just using my dominant hand (aside from the ways society already punishes me with the way everything is designed for righties, but I digress).
The teachers would tie my mothers left hand to the chair. 1940s America
My grandpa had that happen to him, tied his left hand behind his back to force him to use his right. Turns out that writing was the only thing he used his right hand for. Everything else he used his left. He cast with left (fishing), he shot with his left and when doing things like chopping wood again his left. Teachers tried forcing my brother who is younger than me into the same kind of thing our grandpa went through, it was one of the few times my mom stood up and made herself heard.
Curiously enough, my nephew writes with his keft, but throws with his right. I asked him once how he chose which hand to do which activity and he said he doesnt choose, he just " knows" somehow.
Load More Replies...I am left handed and am of a vintage when kids were forced to be right handed. That did not happen to me. There weren't many lefties when I was growing up. There sure are now! I work where there are a ton of them and sometimes, the lefties outnumber the righties. SCORE!!!!!
My ex husband is left handed but wound up amadextous because when he was in kindergarten (1980) his teacher saw to it that all kindergarteners in her class were right handed.
My step-dad is left-handed, so things like our family computer were usually set to left-handed orientation. I never noticed until my early twenties that this affected, in a positive way, my ability to use both hands to do some things, including using a mouse, using number keypads, driving using primarily my left hand, etc.
Being left handed or ambidextrous runs in my family, but i dont have it. When i was younger, i tried to do things with my left hand ( eat, brush my teeth ) but ot was so hard.
Load More Replies...Op, are you my long-lost sibling? That's what they did to my Mother - hence, how she became ambidexterous.
My mom was born in 1940 and went to public school in Chicago IL (US). She was left handed and forced to use her right hand when she went to school. She did end up using her right hand primarily, and her hand writing as an adult was beautiful. But she was born left handed and remembered how difficult it was to have to use her right hand as her dominant hand.
My mum in the 1940/50s,was forced to write right handed. And in the 60/70s I also was forced to write right handed at 2 different schools (had a few as my father was in the army ). When my mum found out , she went to the school and read the riot act to them and they stopped . She was adamant I would not have illegable writing like she did , as after school she went back to her left hand and it affected her writing really badly by then.
And after my son completed suicide my Catholic cousins said it's no longer 'believed' that doing that sends you to hell. Well well, isn't that just peachy news to a Baptist!!!
My moms stepdad used to hit her hand with a ruler if he saw her write left handed. She is now ambidextrous
The church changing their religious beliefs because of money? No way!
My father-in-law is left-handed and in school was forced to write with his right hand or get whacked on the knuckles with a ruler.
My oldest daughter, a straight A student through entire school, was called dumb by teacher for being a Southpaw. Teacher, principal and I had meeting, I talked they listened, teacher was transfered...
Great story! Then again, what was that thing about money being the root of all evil? Lol.
My Mom too. Was it wrong? Absolutely! But, we shouldn't judge the past by today's standards. People have done many wrong and/or damaging things over the years, out of ignorance, tradition, or belief. "Left-handedness has a long history of being considered inferior. Roman culture was superstitious, and left-handedness was associated with bad things. When Christianity became the dominant religion, some things stuck around among the culture. Up through the mid-twentieth century in the United State, some sociologists and psychologists theorized that left-handedness was associated with stubbornness and criminality. In fact, even today some cultures consider the left hand to be “dirty.” It is most certainly true that the laity and clergy were people of their culture and therefore shared some of the superstitions of their day, including prejudices against left-handedness." Also, in Christianity, the right-hand was considered "godly," as referred to in Scripture: Jesus is seated at the right-hand of God the Father.
Religion is evil. Oh if you make the church rich I guess you can be left handed. F**k those people.
Fun fact: In scientific study, the terms are right-handed and non-right-handed, because even people who write with their left hand often do other things with their right hand, like maybe they golf, bat, or hold a racket right handed.
My primary school teacher told me our bodies can't make new blood and we're born with all the blood we'll ever have. As someone who got nosebleeds I knew it was bollocks. When I questioned that adults are obviously bigger so have more blood she said it's watered down.
These people teach kids.
That I’d fail in life because I was not good at math.
I always had a hard time with math and physics and chemistry.
Turns out I am just not good with numbers, but succeeded with languages. I have a natural talent for languages. I am a translator and conference interpreter. I work with 5 languages.
My math teacher told my mom I’d never amount to anything if I didn’t master math. I was there and her words scarred me for life. I have been terrified of failure ever since.
People who are into the sciences and maths tend to think those are the only worthy professions and the humanities are a joke. I'm not surprised this teacher said s**t like that.
That while being on your period you'll only loose one spoon of blood! That's such a bs
The average amount is around 50ml, which is 3-4 tablespoons, but it varies a lot between one person's different periods and between individuals.
Pretty much everything about Christopher Columbus.
The United States government prevents abuse of power through a well-engineered system of checks and balances.
A system to prevent the abuse of power has never existed. It is sort of like someone saying, "Make it idiot proof." Can't be done, there is always an idiot that will find a way to mess something up no matter what you do to prevent it. And there will always be people that find a way to abuse power that they have been given.
If you study well and have excellent grades, you will end up with a nice job and lots of money.
Your permanent record will follow you into adulthood
I wish it did. Someone was bullying my friend and threatening to kill people so I reported them and they got suspended and it won't even affect them when they're an adult
Myers Briggs garbage.
I even fought with my professor about it.
Turns out in the end I was right.
In pharmacy school around the turn of the century we were taught that people in legitimate pain don't get addicted to opiates and opioids.
There's an element of truth to this. Sadly the current opioid crisis in the US has lead people to believe that addiction is inevitable, but that's not true either. I used morphine for several months following a major trauma, but slowly reduced the dosage as the pain levels diminished. Not because I was worried about addiction, but because as the pain reduced the feelings it brought of simply not giving a shot about anything are not something I was comfortable with. I knew deep down that I really _should_ give a shot. Some people apparently like this feeling, others like me absolutely do not.
All fat was bad for you, thus fat free foods became a thing for a while.
That George Washington’s teeth were made of wood. No. It’s so much worse
Surgery can be performed on very small infants without anesthesia because pain reception isn't developed yet.
I've covered this on here before. While that may be the outward explanation given....we still, to this day do not understand HOW anesthesia functions. We just know that it does, and the line between "working properly" and "no longer breathing" is very, very fine even in ideal circumstances. An infant, is about as far removed from ideal as you can get, and an infant that REQUIRES surgery is even further removed. At the time, the risk of using anesthesia on an infant, was greater than performing surgery without....but the average person, let alone parent probably isn't going to accept this. Nor would they accept the more blunt rational of "it doesn't matter if they feel it, because they are never, ever going to remember it" Medicine is about risk assessment. All of it comes with risk, always, you could be the 1 in 1,000,000 allergic to that popular OTC med....doctors have the job of finding the LEAST RISKY course of action.
The system/time will take care of putting “bad guys” where they belong.
In America, at least, the federal prison system is so broken that it does more harm than good.
Carrots are good for night vision.
This was a lie the British used to explain how they could spot German bombers during WWII. The truth, that they had broken the German Enigma machine and were decoding secret messages, was kept a secret for decades. The full story was not told until the 1990s.
I consider the Enigma coverup to be the best kept secret in human history.
TBF the push to eat more carrots was real; with most foods rationed they were in plentiful supply and were pushed almost as a sugar substitute. The 'good for the eyes thing was not pure invention, but was picked up and exaggerated by the RAF to possibly help hide the fact that some British planes were starting to be equipped with radar. Carrot cake anyone?
I once asked one of my elementary school teachers what a rainbow was, and she told me scientists hadn't figured it out. I walked around until my early 20s thinking that. Also, I think it was this same teacher who told me Columbus thought the Earth was flat. They were training teachers a different kind of way in the 70s and 80s. It's honestly one of the reasons I'm thankful for the internet, because depending on your teacher or an outdated encyclopedia for answers could be a real roll of the dice.
You only use 10% of your brain each day.
That might actually be true for the people who promulgate this nonsense.
In grade school they told us that the Titanic would never be found. Not exactly a disproven “fact,” but still amusing that technology has advanced so far in such a relatively short amount of time.
Dinosaurs being cold blooded.
ulcers were from stress (most are from bacteria)
Neanderthals were a less evolved human ancestor
Sugar makes kids hyper
But wouldn't stress weaken your immune system, making it easier for harmful bacteria to grow in your body?
It takes 7 years to digest gum
I was told that if I ate apple seeds an apple tree would grow in my stomach.
Blood is blue until exposed to oxygen, then it turns red.
Everyone knows that blood is blue just look at your veins. LOL. A variation of this I have heard is it is red going away from the heart because it is oxygen rich, and blue when returning to the heart because the oxygen has been used up. Nonsense of course, it just looks blue because of the colors that the skin blocks letting only blue to reflect back to our eyes.
I learned tongue taste maps at school. Turns out it’s complete nonsense.
That’s just how science works. They find a theory and then they learn more and realise that their theory was wrong. No doubt it’ll happen again in future.
Using plastic bags will help save the environment
Taking into account that paper bags were previously used, which were practically single-use bags and that to make them it was necessary to cut down trees, it can be said that it served for a time to save the environment as an intermediate step to other types of bag materials.
That male pattern baldness trait passed down from your maternal line. Mom's side loaded with full heads of hair, however found out early I received zero of the genetics promised.
IIRC, there's a certain gene that can cause baldness, only on the X chromosome. But it's not the sole reason that can cause someone to go bald.
A little bit before my time and most teachers already knew it was wrong but it was still in my third and fourth grade science books since they were dated to when it was still in vogue in the 70s even though we were told to mostly ignore it, but Global Cooling. I imagined massive ice ages by the time I was an adult since I ignored my teachers and read the passages anyway. I was disappointed to find out how wrong it was. Heh.
That we only have 5 senses
“No one is going to wait for you to look up information in the real world, you have to know it” has to be the most insane thing I ever heard
Not school exactly but in grade 4 we had the D.A.R.E program come talk to my class and they said a lot of stuff that's not true. I remember them saying weed has more chemicals in it than cigarettes, and caused cancer faster than cigarettes. Anything that goes in your lungs that not oxygen can cause cancer but I don't think it causes cancer faster?
The thing about weed is that it is generally safer than "regular" cigarettes in the short term... however, it can (and does) have some pretty nasty effects in the long run (we're talking about regular usage, of course). So the notion of weed being "perfectly safe" is a lie as well.
Once you get to high school, nobody will accept papers not written in cursive
They didn't. We even had to write everything using a proper fountain pen. Ball points not allowed, nor felt tips, When roller-ball pens came along it became more difficult for teachers to spot the difference. Some people nowadays talk about 'cursive' as if it was some special sort of writing - in reality it's just writing, and if I write anything by hand these days it would still be the way I do it.
That animals are pure instinct machines. Turns out even flies may have sentience and can get PTSD from being swatted at. That’s effed up. I don’t want to traumatize a fly
The whole 'meteorite killed the dinosaurs' thing wasn't yet the accepted theory when I was a kid.
I wasn't even taught that they existed until I came to England. They did tell us that Behemoth and Leviathan bones had been mistaken for other creatures though, so there was that...
That moss always grows on the north side of trees.
Edit: Should have added, this so called fact would help you if you had gotten lost hiking as North would point to civilization or some s**t.
A lot of these weren't lies, but accepted facts based on the evidence at the time. Exoplanets have always existed, but until Kepler was launched, they were nothing more than theoretical, so it wasn't taught as fact.
Need to add, "being taught that Southern slave owners treated their slave like family, and the slaves were happy." That was taught into the 1980s, and is gaining traction again in Florida.
What! You mean that there are some people in the USA who refuse to accept black activist propaganda. How terrible of them.
Load More Replies...These are mixed with ignorant teachers being mean - this student will be a failure...VS. Science that was thought to be correct at the time. (Not misleading on purpose, just disproven with new facts). Might be best to recognise this before roasting things just for being 'wrong'
Why on earth does the Activity claim there is an answer to my post then 99% of the time it's just not here? Get it together IT.
When I was at primary school the largest dinosaurs, such as diplodocus, were too heavy for their legs to support their weight on land so our books depicted them standing in lakes, eating pond weed, buoyed up the water. They were believed to have part of their brains at the base of their spine, so it was a legit insult in the 70s to imply someone's brain was down by their bum as a way of calling them thick. I was taught that The Dark Ages in the UK was so called because after the Romans left all the clever things they knew how to do were all forgotten. At the time I was confused, thinking 'surely the Brits saw how they did them??' and couldn't see how I was wrong. Grew up and found out I wasn't wrong. The Dark Ages merely referred to the lack of documentation compared to when the Romans were in charge. Oh, and Elon Musk's most recent stupid comment reminded me of being taught that increasing automation in factories plus finding North Sea gas (which was going to end up practically free)
meant that in years to come people would barely need to work. It didn't come to pass then and it's not going to come to pass now.
Load More Replies...How about George Washington and the cherry tree. When he supposedly told his dad " I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree" That was a bs story to try push honesty on kids.
A lot of these weren't lies, but accepted facts based on the evidence at the time. Exoplanets have always existed, but until Kepler was launched, they were nothing more than theoretical, so it wasn't taught as fact.
Need to add, "being taught that Southern slave owners treated their slave like family, and the slaves were happy." That was taught into the 1980s, and is gaining traction again in Florida.
What! You mean that there are some people in the USA who refuse to accept black activist propaganda. How terrible of them.
Load More Replies...These are mixed with ignorant teachers being mean - this student will be a failure...VS. Science that was thought to be correct at the time. (Not misleading on purpose, just disproven with new facts). Might be best to recognise this before roasting things just for being 'wrong'
Why on earth does the Activity claim there is an answer to my post then 99% of the time it's just not here? Get it together IT.
When I was at primary school the largest dinosaurs, such as diplodocus, were too heavy for their legs to support their weight on land so our books depicted them standing in lakes, eating pond weed, buoyed up the water. They were believed to have part of their brains at the base of their spine, so it was a legit insult in the 70s to imply someone's brain was down by their bum as a way of calling them thick. I was taught that The Dark Ages in the UK was so called because after the Romans left all the clever things they knew how to do were all forgotten. At the time I was confused, thinking 'surely the Brits saw how they did them??' and couldn't see how I was wrong. Grew up and found out I wasn't wrong. The Dark Ages merely referred to the lack of documentation compared to when the Romans were in charge. Oh, and Elon Musk's most recent stupid comment reminded me of being taught that increasing automation in factories plus finding North Sea gas (which was going to end up practically free)
meant that in years to come people would barely need to work. It didn't come to pass then and it's not going to come to pass now.
Load More Replies...How about George Washington and the cherry tree. When he supposedly told his dad " I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree" That was a bs story to try push honesty on kids.