What was a fact taught to you in school that has been proven false during your lifetime?
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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.
I distinctly remember my fifth grade teacher trying to pull that.
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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."
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The United States operates on the principle of three co-equal branches of government, which check and balance each others power.
This is painful.
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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.
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.
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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.
Wonder how many new ones it's creating.
Scientist: 'Look at this science thing that is definitely true because DNA!'
Narrator: 'It wasn't true' -
Sure. You're very funny.
Funny? Do you think religious schools don't exist?
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That glass is actually 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
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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!
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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
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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?
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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)
That's like saying black lung runs in families because your family all worked in the mines.
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I spend a portion every day removing tapes, shipping them offsite and inserting new tapes
Annoying but must be done
can i have a job at your place
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The D.A.R.E. program.
We congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
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There are 10 Commandments.
No - there's 14.
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.)
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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
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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."
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
That was also a "theory" that "predicted" that China would go politically liberal
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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
