There are some things we learn at school that are accurate at the time yet are found to be false later. At the same time, some things are already incorrect, but we are taught them regardless because the teacher lacks knowledge or their information is outdated.
Most people will likely have had this experience. And because it’s always fun to share and read about these things, when one Reddit user raised such a question online, the post blew up, with people bombarding the comment section with replies. Scroll down to see what they wrote. And if this list doesn't satisfy your hunger, have no worries because we have two more of these for seconds and dessert!
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I was told theres no such fish as an alligator gar when I chose it for a report. The teacher refused to let me look it up on the internet(very early at the time and "untrustworthy") or encyclopedia(would take too long). So she asked the kid in the room who was known for being into animals. He had never heard of it, so it couldn't possibly exist.
I will NEVER not be salty about this
When I was in junior high in the mid 80s, our Earth Science textbooks had continental drift, and our teacher said, "Okay, so I need you to ignore all of Chapter 4" (or whatever it was). "Plate tectonics has been the accepted theory taught in colleges for 10 years now, but K-8 textbooks haven't caught up yet."
I feel like the version of plate tectonics I learned was a tiny bit garbled compared to what kids learned 10 years later, but my teacher was directly pulling from college texts and published scientific papers and distilling it down for 6th graders, so more power to her!
“Just ignore the bullies and they’ll go away”
“You can be anything you want to be when you grow up”
We were taught that Rosa Parks didn't get up from her seat because "she just got tired one day"; that the entire action was the spontaneous action of a lone woman.
In fact, the entire thing was scripted and choreographed. While Parks was a seamstress, she was also the secretary to the president of the local NAACP chapter.
She was recreating the protest done by Claudette Colvin. The NAACP wanted Parks to recreate it because Colvin was very dark complected, and a single mother.
The NAACP thought Parks, who was lighter skinned, would appeal to white audiences seeing this on TV
It was a planned stunt, she tried 3 buses before one had a driver who reacted. It is also why they were able to respond so fast. But sometimes you need to force events to bring progress for a very real issue. And Parks had to be brave, because given the south back then, she is lucky she was not violently assaulted. She was brave even if it was a planned stunt
Komodo dragon bites were deadly due to high concentrations of bacteria, not venom. Turns out that they are, in fact, venemous
I’m now under the impression that we did not, in fact, have a nice friendly thanksgiving dinner with the native Americans
In the early 80’s we were told that soon we would soon use the metric system in the US.
Still waiting .
We had lessons on how to get out of quicksand at school.
I have no doubt that the method is valid - but the ‘disproven’ bit for me is the need to know how to get out of quicksand. It really isn’t an issue.
In a similar vein, we had a lot of education about stranger danger. Again - not disproven. But much more valid would have been education about how much child abuse and abduction is committed by someone known to the victim. Australia’s Most Wanted had me petrified to look out the window at night. Turns out the dangerous person wasn’t lurking outside waiting to get in. He was a member of my family.
That as a kid, strangers were going to constantly offer you [illegal substances] . Thank you, D.A.R.E. program.
"putting aboriginal children in schools was okay at the time (I was taught ) and they wanted their children to go. The aboriginals were treated with respect and their traditions and values were protected." - Canada in the 90's, more specifically my social teacher in grade 6 or 7.
Pretty sure now that's not how it went down.
When I was little, I was taught about the brontosaurus, mighty long-necked plant eater of the dinosaurs.
Later, I was taught that, whoops! They accidentally stuck some random bones together and there was never any such animal.
Later still, I recall hearing that, oh, actually, there was a brontosaurus after all!
Or was there?
To this day, I am still, as a 42-year-old man, unclear on whether or not there was ever such a thing as a brontosaurus.
To clarify for those wanting to know if it is a Dino or not, (in the simplest terms possible): It was actually Apatosaurus that was mixed up. With the Apatosaurus, they had previously never found a head/skull with rest of it (same with the brontosaurus), so when they found one just metres away, they assumed it was for the same Dino (Spoiler alert: It was not). Because of the mix up, they thought it was a type of Brontosaurus. However some people did not agree and put the head of another completely different Dino on it. They eventually worked it out (in 2015), found the right head, and established that it was not a type of Brontosaurus. So while we've never found a head, the Bronto IS a Dino
Eggs are bad because of cholesterol.
My poor Grandma was restricted to one egg per week by her cardiologist in the 70s, and it was pitiful how much she cherished that egg.
Respect those in authority.
The government, your company, your boss have your best interest at heart.
If you work hard and play by the rules, you'll get ahead.
Feign respect for those in authority. They may be totally incompetent at running things, but they have a well-crafted chamber of horrors for anyone who displeases them
I remember learning that MSG (sodium glutamate) was really bad for you. It was one of those things I heard both at school and in my family to the point where we wouldn’t buy any product that had MSG in the ingredients.
There have been multiple studies showing no evidence of adverse health effects from MSG. There is a subset of people that report hypersensitivity to it. But in double blind experiments, their symptoms tend not to show up when they don’t know they’ve eaten it. Conversely the symptoms DO show up when they think they’ve eaten it but haven’t actually.
Conclusion: MSG is literally just salt and glutamate protein, which is separately in just about everything you eat anyway.
I've got 2 good ones.
I had a social studies teacher tell me that Asian eyes were slanty because it was a defense mechanism for sand blowing in the wind. This was who taught topics like history and geography. She also said some other racist stuff against Asians that I won't repeat here.
That same teacher told us that the city of Buffalo was named by taking the original native American name for the land Belle Fleuve (which is French for beautiful river or something) and "mucking it up". I never questioned why native Americans were giving things French names.
Anyways, in hindsight I now realize she was a terrible teacher.
I don't think the eyes theory is that far wrong. Current scientific theories point to protection for desert environments and/or high levels of UV light.
Humans are the only animals that use tools.
Ravens, magpies, sea otters, bonobos, various monkey species. Anyone else think of one?
I've seen serval videos of bears opening car doors
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I was never taught that. In fact I was taught the complete opposite. When did you got to school, 1899?
When did you go to school then? I was taught animals do not make tools. Then a few short years later it was changed to animals do not make tools. It has of course since changed again
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Any animal that can open a latched door or gate is effectively using a tool, and we know there's plenty of critters that can manage that. It's creating or selecting a specific item for a specific purpose that requires more than a basic understanding of cause and effect. However, I think more creatures are doing those "suitability assessment" processes than we usually consider. A nesting animal collects materials that are appropriate for the construction of a nest, which implies that they are able to recognize what items are suited for that purpose. Hermit crabs are known to essentially queue up behind larger crabs to facilitate exchanging discarded shells when they've outgrown the one they're using. We don't give animals enough credit as thinkers and problem solvers.
Exactly. I had a dog that was an escape artist. When he was at the groomers, he would easily escape from his latched crate and then let all the other dogs out. They finally just stopped putting him in a crate. Clever humans!
Load More Replies... Aliens in 1947: "We are the only ones who can go to space" . . . 1948: *Rhesus monkey goes to space* .... Alien: *Makes first contact with the leader of Rheus* /jk 🙃
shore birds at sea world learned how to use fish pellets to catch small fish in their ponds.
I've seen video of a fish repeatedly picking up a rock and "throwing" it (I can't think of a better word) at an oyster to break it open.
Dolphins toss puffer fish at each other to get high. I would count it as a tool, sort of… 😂 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/
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TheGoodBoi I saw a crow drop a rock hear a person to distract them and then he stole the whole chip bag from that person. And then he did some kind of happy dance on the roof while he ate a couple of the chips
And language! In the sense that sounds have a symbolic and specific meaning. Vervet monkeys have words for aerial predator, arboreal (tree) predator and terrestrial predator. If a vervet makes one of these calls, the others in its troop will respond appropriately regardless of whether they can see the caller. If the sounds are played back out of sequence, they don’t respond.
Ravens and crows dropping stones into a bottle of water to raise the level, so they can reach the water to drink....
And lamb vultures fly up with bones and drop them on cliffs to break them. Using the cliffs as tools, I think.
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I was taught this as using a tool that was modified to perform a function. Still not true but less ridiculous.
That you should tilt your head back when you have a nosebleed
I suffered from nose bleeds as a kid. The school nurse would ask me to tip my head back. I remember the taste of blood & the horrible feeling of it pouring down my throat. This was in the 80's.
Where did we end up on “you can see the Great Wall from space”? Because at different points that was both true and definitely disproven in various textbooks I had.
God damn, I'm gen x. We learned that given then-current rates of productivity, we'd all be working 3 day weeks by 2010. Without being told we'd be *paid* for 3 day weeks, or that our labour would be offshored to Chinese prison camps.
I'm a boomer. We were told that we'd have met aliens by 2010, and all be driving hover-cars while wearing silver lycra suits.
Blood is blue in your veins and only turns red when you bleed bc of oxygen
I was taught that in college you will spend all of your study time in a library reading and researching using books and reference catalogs. The internet was evil and full of lies and not a valid resource for academic research.
The last part is not wrong, you just need to know where to find the real facts. Not on Youtube were someone says the moon is bigger than the earth... 😅
That the teachers in the next grade up “Will not slow down”
I remember hearing that in middle school. High school teachers and college professors were super chill and helpful most of the time.
5th or 6th grade math teacher. "Math will only be getting more difficult" 😐
That carrots make your eyesight better. This was in the early 90s.
That's WWII propaganda to hide the existence of radar - although I understand that there is a minor improvement to night vision, which is enhanced by chemicals that go into the eye (hence how your eyes "adjust" to the dark).
Dinosaurs are cold blooded.
Early paleozoologists equated dinosaurs with lizards, so they assumed they were exothermic (cold blooded) but science keeps increasing knowledge, and now we know they were endothelial. It's in the bones.
My mom used to always say that muscle soreness from exercise was due to lactic acid. Now it's because of micro tears in the muscle.
Not entirely true. If you have acute muscle soreness, meaning you feel the soreness during and immediately after for about 24 hours, it's lactic acid buildup. If it's delayed onset muscle soreness, meaning you start feeling it a while after doing exercise and it lasts about 3 or so days, it's micro tears from the exercise.
I got "most slave owners were actually very caring of their slaves" when i went to school in Texas. Even as a little kid my reaction was ssuuurrreee they were
I got the same teachings from Oklahoma in elementary and earlier middle school. except my history teacher in middle school was actually awesome and decided to teach us about the KKK and those things even though he wasn't supposed to.
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Some lies taught in American schools: Columbus discovered America (not even close); many slave owners were benevolent and kind (laughably false); America was founded by devout Christians (Jefferson was mostly an atheist); America was founded as a Christian nation (nope it was all for the almighty dollar); the early Middle Ages were "dark" (absolutely the f uck not, not even kind of)
It’s called, “the half-life of facts”. Knowledge is always advancing, one theory replacing another. One fact replacing another. It’s why doctors HAVE to keep learning, keep studying, going to conferences, because medical knowledge is changing constantly.
As I understand it, the brontosaurus did exist, it just was renamed when they learned more about it. Now it's an apatosaurus.
When kids commented that it looked like the continents fitted together in the 50s we were told it was just coincidence.
I got "most slave owners were actually very caring of their slaves" when i went to school in Texas. Even as a little kid my reaction was ssuuurrreee they were
I got the same teachings from Oklahoma in elementary and earlier middle school. except my history teacher in middle school was actually awesome and decided to teach us about the KKK and those things even though he wasn't supposed to.
Load More Replies... Some lies taught in American schools: Columbus discovered America (not even close); many slave owners were benevolent and kind (laughably false); America was founded by devout Christians (Jefferson was mostly an atheist); America was founded as a Christian nation (nope it was all for the almighty dollar); the early Middle Ages were "dark" (absolutely the f uck not, not even kind of)
It’s called, “the half-life of facts”. Knowledge is always advancing, one theory replacing another. One fact replacing another. It’s why doctors HAVE to keep learning, keep studying, going to conferences, because medical knowledge is changing constantly.
As I understand it, the brontosaurus did exist, it just was renamed when they learned more about it. Now it's an apatosaurus.
When kids commented that it looked like the continents fitted together in the 50s we were told it was just coincidence.
