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What's some outright false shit that your schools taught you

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I went to a public school in the San Jose/Monterey bay area of California during the early-mid 90s. A lot of my teachers didn't sugercoat or tell the common lies about the events/figures routinely taught in school. We learned about the real Columbus (not a murca discovering superhero), Gandhi, treatment of Native Americans, etc.

I don't know if it was the curriculum as a liberal state or just some teachers trying to spread social awareness. I mean, it was super common there to be pro LGBT within the school system.

I'm sure there was some misinformation that is commonly spread throughout middle school, though I would have to assume from my experience that it would be due to ignorance instead of outright lying based on the truths that they did teach us.

Edit: I also had the great fortune of having liberal leaning parents, and my dad had gone through Catholic school as a kid. He was able to point out a lot of the BS that would be propagated about slavery, Native Americans, etc. Shame he kind of did a 180 politically, though he's still very left leaning on social issues.
 
Tertullian said:
This is the best one. What on earth?



Edit: I'm pretty sure I was taught the wrong explanation of how airplanes fly.

airfoil.png
Click to expand...

Angelus Errare said:
This is amazing!
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If you guys want to know the right explanation, here it is:

Here's a video explaining how lift works using Newton's and Bernoulli's principles.

Here is a video showing the flow on the top of the airfoil doesn't have any relation to the flow under an airfoil
 
The first time I ever realized that adults weren't necessarily all that smart and to my greater surprise, even teachers could be idiots. The honor of teaching that innocence damaging lesson goes to you, Mrs Bredehoft.

I was in 1st or 2nd grade. She was teaching us about the human body. She asked the class what allows us to move our bodies. I raised my hand and told her "muscles."

She told me no, and got a couple wrong answers from other students. I raise my hand again and she calls on me again.

Again I tell her that I really think it is muscles and explain that they pull on our bones to move us around. Now annoyed, she tells me I'm wrong and not to raise my hand again.

Then she calls on another kid who says "Bones" after hearing me mention them. Congratulates him on being right, repeats to everyone that our bones move our bodies. I'm giving her a dirty look and she gives me one right back.
 
P3P5I said:
If you guys want to know the right explanation, here it is:

Here's a video explaining how lift works using Newton's and Bernoulli's principles.

Here is a video showing the flow on the top of the airfoil doesn't have any relation to the flow under an airfoil
Click to expand...

Summary for those who can't watch videos now. There are two major causes for lift:
1. The simple Newtonian defection of air down from the underside of the wing imparts an upward force.
2. The Bernoulli pressure difference caused by the different wind speeds above and below the wing does create lift too, but the wind above the wing actually goes fast enough that it goes past the wind it was "paired up with" before it was split
 
Last year a very smart and hard working American Policy professor told us that "The Civil War was not fought over slavery." You could feel the unease and eye-rolls coming from the upper level students.

I had just taken American History 76-1870 and studying the event made me realize how wrong it is to say "it wasn't about slavery." Sure, it was about the economy, states rights, cultural divisions but those were economics about slavery, states rights about slavery, and cultural divisions about slavery. I can understand the desire to not reduce a war down to a single word, but that's doesn't forgive claims that it's not about that single word and reason.
 
My school taught everyone that adding a ' made it possessive. They also told us that buffalo were extinct.

We were also told that cursive would be the only form of writing get acceptable in high school.
 
Not false info, but one thing that bothers me greatly about my schooling is that from grades 4-10 the only thing English classes were about was book reports and persuasive essays. While I understand the need to make sure that children are able to read books and comprehend what they're reading, it was bullshit that everything that's actually interesting about language and literature is compressed and confined into the last two years of high school.
 
Tertullian said:
This is the best one. What on earth?
Click to expand...

It was a small private school with a focus on "creative learning". My parents knew it was a joke from the start, but instead of withdrawing me, they antagonized the shit out of the teaching staff. Teachers responded by singling me out at every opportunity.



The same year, my 4th grade math teacher gave this question to the class:

If half the students from class A wear red on valentine's day, what percentage is that?

50%. Easy. Everyone gets it right. Then she follows it up with this:

If half the students from class A and ALL of the students from class B wear red, what percentage of the students are wearing red?

I say 75%, bunch of other students say 75 or 150(?). Teacher says it's 150%. Of course, we're all wrong, because the question is impossible to answer without knowing how many students are in each class. I argued with the teacher, because I was kind of a little shit, and ended up getting sent to the hall.

I got pissed (and kept insisting she was wrong), so she called my father in after school to say I "had some trouble in math." This conversation was burned into my memory, since I was still out in the hall from earlier. I still remember both of their faces being in a constant shit-eating grin for the entire conversation, both of them so fucking focused on proving the other one wrong.

After a bit more antagonizing and some public humiliation for the teacher, she admits she was teaching directly from the textbook, and just misread it.



Eventually I got withdrawn from that school, but instead of being put in a public school, I got some weird tiger parent homeschooling.
 
adamsappel said:
There are plenty of reptiles, amphibians, birds, etc. that are vibrantly colored. However, I believe I phrased it, "Why do they have to be green or brown? Why can't they be any color?"
Click to expand...

Reptiles aren't terribly closely related to amphibians being amniotes and all.

Extant reptiles also tend to fairly dull too - especially larger ones. Birds have more vibrancy in general, but those that do tend to be small tropical species.

So while I think it clear that dinosaurs were more than "green or brown" I also think it is unlikely that they were "any color" - for example pink with purple dots. Like extant species most were probably the colors of their backgrounds with a minority with secondary sexual characteristics or aposematic coloration.
 
Lucario said:
It was a small private school with a focus on "creative learning". My parents knew it was a joke from the start, but instead of withdrawing me, they antagonized the shit out of the teaching staff. Teachers responded by singling me out at every opportunity.



The same year, my 4th grade math teacher gave this question to the class:

If half the students from class A wear red on valentine's day, what percentage is that?

50%. Easy. Everyone gets it right. Then she follows it up with this:

If half the students from class A and ALL of the students from class B wear red, what percentage of the students are wearing red?

I say 75%, bunch of other students say 75 or 150(?). Teacher says it's 150%. Of course, we're all wrong, because the question is impossible to answer without knowing how many students are in each class. I argued with the teacher, because I was kind of a little shit, and ended up getting sent to the hall.

I got pissed (and kept insisting she was wrong), so she called my father in after school to say I "had some trouble in math." This conversation was burned into my memory, since I was still out in the hall from earlier. I still remember both of their faces being in a constant shit-eating grin for the entire conversation, both of them so fucking focused on proving the other one wrong.

After a bit more antagonizing and some public humiliation for the teacher, she admits she was teaching directly from the textbook, and just misread it.



Eventually I got withdrawn from that school, but instead of being put in a public school, I got some weird tiger parent homeschooling.
Click to expand...

Isn't it only 75% if the number of students in class and b are equal?
 
My teacher in elementary school actually had us read both negative and positive articles about Christopher Columbus. That was actually pretty cool now that I look back on it.
 
Calibus said:
- You will use advanced mathematics the rest of your life. I cannot think of a single time I had to use trig, calculus, geometry, etc to solve a real life problem. Algebra is as high a math I've ever used in daily life, and even then, rarely.
Click to expand...

Seriously, students know it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit, the teachers know too. I always tell students I tutor that if they don't want to use maths later on in their professional life, they won't need to, but most big professional sectors can/do make use of mathematics experts.

Math opens way more doors than other subjects taught in highschool, but you don't have to take any of these professional paths, and most people won't need it.
 
I had an AP geometry teacher that was asked by two separate students at different points in the year what use the class was going to be in their adult life. The first time, he gave the usual vindication that all sorts of mathematical and engineering jobs use it and we'll use more in our daily lives than we expect, etc. The second time someone asked what they'd use it for, he said "You won't." and explained that math classes are mostly just a framework for thinking logically or something. Jokes on him, I actually DO use a lot of geometry in game coding. But actually I forgot everything I from that class within like a year and I ended up having to relearn everything I need to know. What even IS school?
 
genjiZERO said:
Reptiles aren't terribly closely related to amphibians being amniotes and all.

Extant reptiles also tend to fairly dull too - especially larger ones. Birds have more vibrancy in general, but those that do tend to be small tropical species.

So while I think it clear that dinosaurs were more than "green or brown" I also think it is unlikely that they were "any color" - for example pink with purple dots. Like extant species most were probably the colors of their backgrounds with a minority with secondary sexual characteristics or aposematic coloration.
Click to expand...

If we're going to be so pedantic, "pink with purple dots" isn't a color.
 
Nothing really comes to mind. They did a pretty good job. But one thing does come up, but I knew it was wrong and just didn't say anything because it was so stupid.

Back in sixth grade, one of my classmates was asking since there was a hundredth and a thousandth in decimals, why wasn't there a "oneth," and my teacher said probably because it's too small. Like, wtf? 1/1 and 1 are the same, that's why.
 
Was homeschooled which gives me some interesting experiences - but some outright false shit I was taught.

- Vaccinations are bad
- Evolution is false
- Premarital sex is bad
- Maths and english are the most important things in the world (never really received a proper education on anything else)
- Weird views on australian history.

etc. Thank god for the internet.

And now I'm studying to be a elementary school teacher and am a passionate advocate of science and reason.. amazed that I turned out that way considering my educational experience.
 
Just thought of a good example. My 8th grade science teacher (who actually mostly did a good job) taught us that Copernicus discovered that planets move in elliptical orbits. I tried to convince her it was actually Kepler but she insisted. I figured trying to further argue was a waste of time so I just gave up.
 
Aylinato said:
The title is outright wrong. Pray do tell what you believe the civil war was fought over, and I'll show you all the evidence to prove it was fought over slavery.
Click to expand...

To be fair META said ending slavery, not just slavery. While the war was absolutely fought over slavery, outright ending slavery didn't become a goal of the North until near the end.
 
My RE teacher once spent a whole class making up shit that proved Jesus was a real person, even if he wasn't the son of God. I believed him for far, far too long.

Not that Jesus wasn't real, I'm not aiming to ruffle any feathers, just that if he was real there's really not much proof sans the bible. Which some people don't consider proof.
 
Mercury is a toxic material that can instantly kill you on contact, and a broken thermometer needs to be disposed of with a hazmat suit.
 
ComputerMKII said:
WyOXUYu.jpg


lol
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No way. Is this from a current, government-sanctioned textbook (say, used in the past 5 years)?

For those of you wondering, the text is about the right-wing/left-wing divide in politics. The shocking part is that it's shamelessly cliché: it says that the difference between the two essentially boils down to liking money vs. not caring about money. It no-so-subtly paints people with right-wing sensibilities as greedy arseholes.

I mean, the French education system has a history of leaning towards the left, everyone knows that, but this is beyond pathetic.

Again, ComputerMKII, do you have more details on the source of this piece of filth?
 
Blood is blue.BS

NathanCX said:
My RE teacher once spent a whole class making up shit that proved Jesus was a real person, even if he wasn't the son of God. I believed him for far, far too long.

Not that Jesus wasn't real, I'm not aiming to ruffle any feathers, just that if he was real there's really not much proof sans the bible. Which some people don't consider proof.
Click to expand...
History channel said he was a real person and that's all I needed to know.


http://www.businessinsider.in/35-Sc...ow-the-Earths-surface-/slideshow/21038392.cms
 
Kilrogg said:
No way. Is this from a current, government-sanctioned textbook (say, used in the past 5 years)?

For those of you wondering, the text is about the right-wing/left-wing divide in politics. The shocking part is that it's shamelessly cliché: it says that the difference between the two essentially boils down to liking money vs. not caring about money. It no-so-subtly paints people with right-wing sensibilities as greedy arseholes.

I mean, the French education system has a history of leaning towards the left, everyone knows that, but this is beyond pathetic.

Again, ComputerMKII, do you have more details on the source of this piece of filth?
Click to expand...

I'm not 100% sure about the book's reference but it's from an SES (another source says History) textbook for the Terminale ES class, published by Hachette. The excerpt circulated in the news in 2013 so I guess it's recent.
 
The Albatross said:
For elementary school level misinformation:
- The people thought that the Earth was flat before Columbus. No mildly educated people in Europe thought that the Earth was flat. Learned communities had known about the round Earth since as provably long ago as the Greeks.
- The tongue thing surprised me now, I didn't know that was wrong.

Junior/High school level misinformation
- FDR's New Deal legislation did not end the Great Depression. The economy did not recover until World War II. Public schools basically teach the opposite, that the New Deal was a magic pill and the Great Depression ended as soon as FDR took office. If you take a look at high school level history text books, the story is told through photos especially. Any chapters about 1928 - 1932 or Herbert Hoover show people living in destitute, dirty shantytowns / Hoover-villes. Anything about FDR or 1932 - 1939 shows people working on grand construction projects like the Hoover Dam... which, of course, started in 1931.
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Well, to be fair the second World War basically was an extension of the New Deal economically, it was a massive stimulus. You could easily make the argument that the New Deal didn't go far enough with that in mind.


Anyway, less of an outright lie than a glaring omission, but my Tasmanian history class completely failed to mention the Black War, which was more or less a genocide. Instead, the whole class was a wank over James Cook and the Anzacs. Thanks John Howard, you fuck.
 
Koriandrr said:
Not quite sure what Macedonia would have to do with Greece. All I know is that their language is more or less a dialect of Bulgarian, both countries can easily communicate and understand each other, however Macedonia claims Bulgarians took this language from them and that Cyrillic more or less originates from them, which contradicts every history book ever, except theirs. Not to mention that they've been around for like 25 years, before that it was Yugoslavia, which is now 3 countries (correct me if wrong). You don't see Serbians going around claiming they created everything in the Balkans.

Just to make sure - I'm not trying to stereotype here, I've only had multiple experiences, sitting and drinking on the same table as Macedonians, Bulgarians and Serbians. In a situation like that all they would talk about is history and who came up with what. :D
Click to expand...


Yugoslavia turned into a lot of countries, Macedonia, Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia

Sometimes they say more than that, but those are the main ones.
 
That we would use cursive every day of our lives

Aylinato said:
The title is outright wrong. Pray do tell what you believe the civil war was fought over, and I'll show you all the evidence to prove it was fought over slavery.
Click to expand...

Slavery being the catalyst doesn't mean it was specifically fought over it. The Civil war was fought to prevent secession.
 
davepoobond said:
That we would use cursive every day of our lives



Slavery being the catalyst doesn't mean it was specifically fought over it. The Civil war was fought to prevent secession.
Click to expand...


But the secession was caused by the South refusing to abandon slavery. I suppose you could say that the North was concerned about secession and not the well being of slaves, but the South's reason for leaving was the issue of slavery.

It just seems that anyway you come at it the root cause was slavery.
 
mac said:
But the secession was caused by the South refusing to abandon slavery. I suppose you could say that the North was concerned about secession and not the well being of slaves, but the South's reason for leaving was the issue of slavery.

It just seems that anyway you come at it the root cause was slavery.
Click to expand...

There is a difference between a root cause and what you are at war for.

The root cause was slavery, yes, but what happened as a result of the slavery issue? Secession by the southern states that did not want a change in their lifestyle and the federal government who wanted to keep the country together.

The motivation on the norths part to fight was not to free slaves, it was to hold the country together. Would the war have been fought if the south didnt secede?
 
Christopher Columbus was a hero who founded America on his first voyage to prove the earth wasn't flat and made peace with the indians which is why we celebrate thanksgiving.

I shit you not I still remember that class. Man when I first wiki'd Christopher Columbus I was convinced that Wikipedia was wrong. Such an eye opener.

But thats not the worst. I too took the test of testing different flavors on different parts of my tongue. Why would they teach that shit?
 
Wait what...blood isn't blue? I know it's red when you bleed but I remember them swearing up and down that once it touches oxygen it turns red. The hell public education.
 
I dont see how anyone can argue that slavery is what drove the US to civil war.


Anyways, looking through this thread I feel lucky with the teachers I got. Worst I can think if was them telling us 9/11 happened because they were jealous of our freedom. Even as 3rd graders it didnt take us long to start poking holes in that, though.
 
I went to a Catholic High School in Canada. Every year in Christian Ethics we'd have an abstinence only 'sex ed' person come to class for a couple days or whatever. I remember this lady saying that condoms don't protect against HIV because the virus is smaller than the pores in the latex. Even at fifteen I knew she was wrong, but it always kind of stuck with me how fucked up it was.
 
Calibus said:
- You will use advanced mathematics the rest of your life. I cannot think of a single time I had to use trig, calculus, geometry, etc to solve a real life problem. Algebra is as high a math I've ever used in daily life, and even then, rarely.
Click to expand...

I would hardly call trigonometry and geometry "advanced" mathematics. You're quite likely to need them at some point if you're doing some DIY stuff.
 
"Go to college. It doesn't matter what you pursue. Chose a major you love and the money will follow."

Do high school teachers get commissions or something? I heard this so much. Luckily, I didn't buy into it.
 
SigmasonicX said:
It's one of those things that makes absolutely no sense if you try to actually match it up with your own experiences, but it never matters enough to think about, so you never realize it. Think about it: have you EVER had something taste more sweet at the tip of your tongue than the rest, at least enough that it would seem like all of your sweetness taste buds are concentrated there?
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I tried it when I was young and I didn't feel jackshit. I thought my tongue was broken
 
Hypron said:
I would hardly call trigonometry and geometry "advanced" mathematics. You're quite likely to need them at some point if you're doing some DIY stuff.
Click to expand...

Advanced compared to basic 1+1 math I mean. I don't do any DIY stuff, so I've never really had cause to use it.
 
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