• 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.

  • treadful ( treadful@lemmy.zip ) 
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    2 years ago

    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.

    • 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.

        • 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.

  • 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.

    • Yeah, I remember that one. We even did an experiment to “prove” it. I was like, “I kinda taste it everywhere”. I don’t remember what the punishment for that one was exactly, but it was pretty severe, and I didn’t do anything wrong.

      • 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.

  • will_a113 ( will_a113@lemmy.ml ) 
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    2 years ago

    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.

      • will_a113 ( will_a113@lemmy.ml ) 
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        2 years ago

        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.

  • 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

  • Haven’t seen anybody post this but how gender and sexuality is, schools are so fucking about straight mom and dad only relationship and nothing else. Man and wife bullshit when there’s infinite amounts of gender and sexuality and diversity out there. Fuck I hate Amerikkka

    • I am from germany. Sex ed is not just manditory but also part of normal lessons all two years. The body, genetics, sex itself and how a baby is made and how protection and STDs work and which are there next to condom and pill

      Funnily enought i wasnt present the whole male sex ed part so idk if they talked about queernes. Being in a psychiatric hospital they only had german, math, english, classes so litterly only the essentials

  • Luke ( lukecooperatus@lemmy.ml ) 
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    2 years ago

    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.

  • hddsx ( hddsx@lemmy.ca ) 
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    2 years ago

    -Coequal branches of government

    -Separation of Church and State

    -Life terms for SCOTUS ensures political impartiality

    -The second amendment was so that we could defend ourselves (see: redcoats)

    -Bohr system