What was a fact taught to you in school that has been proven false during your lifetime?
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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.
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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!
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I learned that it’s not ok to be intelligent but completely incapable of remembering to do things of remembering the things that the teachers thought it was important for me to remember.
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I was chucked into Christian school.
So... a lot of it.
*everything
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Supersize me was fake and the almonds are not a useless byproduct of evolution.
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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.
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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.
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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
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That America is the best and most free country in the world.
Basicly every Pole in the 90s were taught and thought like that
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IT'S BOTH
What? As in Schrödinger's cat? Interesting!
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When was that?
Late 70s early 80s.
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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.
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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
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Making grimaces and being told that your face may remain that way if you don’t stop making them…
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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
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Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts
wat
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.
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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.
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Pluto is a great test for what types 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.
If they do say pluto is a new kind of dwarf planet they arw more accepting of new information and belive in the scientific method.
It's a great quick test when meeting news people.
Or the third option of they recognize that scientifically Pluto is a dwarf planet and no longer a 'full' planet, but they also anthropomorphize everything to an unhealthy degree and don't want to hurt the feelings of Pluto by saying it isn't a planet anymore
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I was also taught this in school, along with many very unscientific things. When they eventually taught us about evolution (they had to because of national curriculum) they couldn't stop stressing how it was "just an outdated theory" and showed us additional videos which "disproved" it
Come on, I like a good "look at how stupid those Americans are" as much as anyone, but for it to be funny it has to be within the realm of what could possibly be true.
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Dont know about the first two, but heart disease do. heart stroke happened to my mother and both her parents, her dad died from it. My fathers dad died of brain store and doctors say he heart is also weaken(mostly from smoking 30+ years)
For two and three, even if there weren't a genetic component, the lifestyle and dietary habits of a family absolutely do impact the next generation of the family. Learned behaviors that increase of alcoholism or heart disease absolutely count as "runs in the family". Further, "runs in the family" never meant "everyone in the family absolutely has it".
(None of this directed to the comment I'm replying to, just continuing the thought of the comment.)
