Asklemmy

Some children are taught in school that God created the earth. Some of us were allowed to learn that humans cannot effect climate change, allowed to discuss it openly, and allowed to graduate with that idea without ever being corrected. Children are being taught today that slavery and colonialism were good things for some people.

The United States operates on the principle of three co-equal branches of government, which check and balance each others power.

Racism used to be a problem until Lincoln and MLK fixed it.

That glass is a liquid at room temperature, just a very viscous one so it doesn't appear to flow. It's not. It's not a crystalline solid so it has an internal structure similar to a liquid, but the structure is definitely solid at room temperature because the components are not capable of moving relative to each other like a liquid would.

It was false then but my seventh and eighth grade science teacher told us that blood was blue. My mom was a nurse so I knew that it was bullshit but was definitely confused because he was my science teacher.

Trickle down economics are an effective way to redistribute wealth

The D.A.R.E. program.

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!

"You need to learn this because you won't always have a calculator on you!"

The myth that glass is 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

Hear about pluto? Pretty messed up huh?

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.

I was taught that Pluto is a planet. How could they have been so wrong???

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.

That fluoride and vaccines are bad for you… tbh, I only believed it for 2-3 weeks until I did my own research, but it was a frightening clarification. Didn’t believe that teacher a single word after that.

I was chucked into Christian school.

So... a lot of it.

That tastes have specific regions on the tongue. We actually had to protest when that shit was taught at our son's elementary school. Don't know if it came up for our younger daughter.

Poor kids at school had old atlases where Germany was still separated. But I guess that's just obsolete and not false knowledge.

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."

That adults are mature and know what they are doing.

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✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

I would say "cursive is how adults write, you'll need to know it", but that wasn't true then either.

Trickle down economics (well, it's not like there was a time when it was true)

That blood is actually blue until it gets in contact with air

That humans came out of Africa once and then settled the rest of the world. In reality there was a constant migration of humans in and out of Africa for millennia while the rest of the world was being populated (and of course it hasn’t ever stopped since).

I love how much DNA analysis has completely upended so much “known” archaeology and anthropology from even just a couple decades ago.

That America is the best and most free country in the world.

Taste buds are arranged by flavor in four sections of the tongue. Complete load of horseshit.

Multiplication tables (I still know them mostly). I have a calculator on damn near every device now.

Things will always get better <-- this one is the biggest lie of them all

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 had a substitute teacher who saw the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ads against John Kerry and repeated it to the class like it was 100% fact.

The moon was spun out of the same stuff as the earth. That was fact in the early years of my education. A few years later there were multiple theories: co development, captured a wandering planetoid, the Thea impact, and a fourth one I can’t remember but I think it was something dumb like planetary mitosis. By the time I graduated the Thea impact was considered the only viable theory.

Study and work hard will make you successful.

• that Pluto is a planet

"Those bullies will be working at a gas station while you'll be the boss!"

Making grimaces and being told that your face may remain that way if you don’t stop making them… 🤡

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.