I made a website that tells you, based on the year you graduated high school, what your school (probably) got wrong!
School Got Wrong
I learned that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. And that busywork and adhering to the rubric is far more important than learning or producing anything useful.
I went in hoping to learn some cool knew facts and already knew them all. Feels bad man.
Also seemed like more so myths than stuff that was actually taught and then later revised.
Check out Wikipedia's List of Common Misconceptions.
That was a trip
Yeah, that was my big issue with the sites content. I wanted to find a list of obscure things taught wrong by decade, but all I could track down were a few myths that were shared across many different decades, so it led to the current (and imperfect) result.
I want to try and update the site to be more focused on what you mention - things that were taught and later revised, but the only way I can think to do that so far is track down old textbooks and compare them to what's known now, which I'm not sure the best/most efficient way to do that, or even where to find textbooks by year.
All this to say, hopefully I'll be able to improve the site in due time to make it better represent different facts and whatnot
It's a neat website, but it is very America specific.
For example, I'm Australian and I wasn't taught about slavery or genocide of our native people in high school. Hell, I was taught that the Stolen generation was a misnomer and children were only taken voluntarily or as an act of mercy... I graduated in 2008 so it wasn't exactly the dark ages. Referring to the planned exterminations of the natives as "battles" and "conflicts" at best was another one. they didn't even mention the shit that went down in Tasmania.
it's not just the dumb stuff like food pyramids and taste zones, even in schools today history is being glossed over
I’m also a 2000s Australian high schooler and we had a notorious lack of Australian history taught to us. My school preferred to teach us the histories of pretty much every other country but our own. We didn’t learn a single thing about indigenous history at all, bad or good.
And then we struggle to understand the divide between the yes/no vote on The Voice.
I had a history teacher in (US) high school who was not afraid at all to tell his students the whole truth about stuff like this. Its too bad he was the only one not allowed to teach government classes.
Strange. The site doesn't quite work properly for me. I set my decade, then changed it so I could see my parents and all the myths were the same.
Then I clicked around and they are the same for every decade that I selected.
That's odd, thanks for pointing it out. I'll see if I can't make a fix
Same for me.
Browser is Safari on iPhone 15 Pro Max.
I think it's possible that people are simply confused because the answers are the same for most decades. But one thing I would try maybe is setting the "value" of the different options, since that's what you're reading.
As I understand it, if no value is set, the browser should return the name instead, so the way you have it should work, but that may vary depending on browser.
EDIT: I tried to give an example, but lemmy keeps filtering out my explanation even if I enclose it in code tags. Hopefully you know what I mean.
Same for me. Everything on the list was stuff I already learned was bs so I went back a couple decades and it was the exact same list.
I graduated in 2003. My DARE teachers basically taught drug abstinence and telling an adult about people offering you drugs. The really didn't talk about gateway drugs and what it does to your brain. This was in Illinois.
You're not the first person to mention some regional differences. Think this is opening up a bigger research project of year graduated to region!
I graduated a few years before you, also in Illinois, and can confirm that.
I can also confirm that I have not resisted the devil’s lettuce.
I graduated in 2017, they definitely did for me in elementary school.
Update with context for you all since this post is unexpectedly taking off,
This was a small project I made in 5 hours as just a "huh, this would be neat to make!" and as a first coding project. I mostly shared it expecting a little bit of feedback but nothing too major, clearly I underestimated what to expect from it lol.
There's been a lot of really good suggestions for how to improve the site and make it better, so thank yall for that! Things I'm planning on doing are:
-Making open source so people can edit. Its just basic HTML and JavaScript so nothing too complex there
-Suggestions box on the site
-Some type of regional variations listed on the site
-If possible, more obscure myths and more tied to the curriculum of schools
-Optimizing the site for mobile
Probably more to come as well, but no estimates on a timeframe since I'm very much so new to this haha
Edit: Additional clarification, yes this site is only viable for Americans right now. Would love to help make it work internationally but I'm sure not the person to try and say what people in other countries were taught in school, so if someone wants to help with that lmk!
It should work better on mobile devices now, but if there's any repeated issues let me know and I can try to fix them.
It should also be public on Github, check out the description tab on the website for more info. My first time making a project open source (or even having one at all) so lmk if there's any issues!
Most of the selections give you the exact same outcome. Neat idea, but it needs work.
One thing that's kind of funny to me about this is the 1940s, which has a lot of the ones from modern times...
You were probably taught at some point that we'd never be able to map out the entire human genome due to its complexity. However, in 2003, we documented the first 92%, and in 2022 we documented the remaining 8%.
I could be wrong (and I'd be super interested to hear if this was the case), but... Were we teaching kids about the human genome before we even knew the structure of DNA and before we knew that DNA carried genetic information? I know we knew DNA existed, and it was probably hypothesized that it could play a roll in genetics before the Hershey-Chase experiments in 1952, but I'm not sure whether most schools would talk much about anything resembling the human genome in the 1940s? What would have been in the curriculum then? It's actually kind of wild how much the scientific landscape has changed since then.
From what I could trace, the 1940s myths were most likely spread around then (a lot were circa 1930s), just perhaps less commonly. I can definitely attest that at least in the scientific literature then, that was a common enough idea to be inaccurate since, so I'd assume that it was taught to students when approaching biology too. If I'm wrong on this though I can remove this from the site
Did anyone else learn that eggs are dairy products? (Meaning, the word 'dairy' encompasses both eggs and milk. Not that eggs are somehow produced by cows)
Yes, and for some odd reason a lot of folks I know who are lactose intolerant are also slightly allergic to eggs..
Yes! Never really thought to question it though... now I'm re-thinking everything I thought I knew about food clarification!
I had attributed that to our fuzzy food categories. Some of which are due to how ingredient usage doesn't map well to botany, some is just marketing.
I suspect the perception of eggs as dairy could have shifted for practical reasons: lactose intolerance became more visible, and we needed a short way to say milk and milk products, without using the word milk.
Cool site, maybe you can open source it, so people can contribute improvements. I have a few ideas myself:
I could add those functionalities myself if needed.
Posting a reply now, should be a Github link on the site to it as public. If not, github.com/MiraLazine/SchoolGotWrong
I think it should be open source but if its not lmk, I'd love to have some help on this because I mostly did this to learn
Cool, I’ll have a further look at it tomorrow when I’m home.
Open source is defined differently by different people. Some define it by the code being open to see for the public. Some define it by it’s license. In your case both the code is open and an open source license is used.
blank.docx i added this file by accident how do i delete a file in github
I can see you’re a bit new to it 😁. There is a button with … dots with the option to “delete” the file. Keep in mind that it will stay be retained in the history.
A fun fact about taste for you - there is actually no such thing as a 'taste map,' or the idea that different areas of the tongue result in you tasting different things. At most, there's just different regions of sensitivity to taste!
Always thought this was weird and didn’t make sense to my tongue.
You might've been taught that lemmings are known to commit suicide because they're just that unintelligent. Turns out, this isn't true - they're smart enough to stay alive!
I blame the video game.
The theory of a taste map had no scientific basis, i remember funnily enough writing in a school paper that the taste map didn't exist and got a lower grade for getting my answer wrong even though in hindsight i was the one who was right and i got forced to believe in a medical myth.
You were probably taught at some point that people in the time of Christopher Columbus all thought the world was flat. However, this is a myth that pervades history - most people knew the earth was a globe! (Source)
Goddamnit! I've heard that so often already.
And then I learned separately that even the Greeks already knew not only that Earth was round, but even its circumference at a pretty good accuracy.
These two 'facts' genuinely had me thinking we must have lost a ton of knowledge from the Greeks...
The Renaissance was fueled in part by the fall of Constantinople and all of the Greek texts that came with those who fled to Italy.
The real truth is that the catholic church purposefully wanted people stupid and uneducated and that's why people started believing in the flat earth even after the Greeks. but they don't teach you that in school!
When I was in school, Pluto was still a planet. And it still is in my heart!!
I've never understood this obsession. Odds are you've never heard of Ceres, but it was once called a planet. It's now considered a dwarf planet, like Pluto. Pluto is also less massive than Eris, so if you include Pluto you should also include Eris. None of these have cleared their orbit though.
I understand it's frequently just a joke, but it's always rubbed me weird because some people actually became science skeptics because "suddenly Pluto isn't a planet" or whatever. Really the reason is because the list would get really long if we included everything.
Ceres and Eris weren't talked about at all when i was in school. They were like a family relative that nobody talks about.
I understand the reason behind the change, its just fun to say that earth kicked them out of the league of planets.
"You heard about Pluto? Messed up, huh?"
Since you seem to be knowledgeable and I'd like to continue discussion, do you think there are "earth like" dwarf planets that could support life?
Pluto is still legally a planet in New Mexico and Illinois.
You've probably seen/heard this song already, but just in case. Pluto is Hot Shit.
Ive heard other songs by him, not this one. Always great tunes.
I remember my little brother coming home from DARE convinced that my dad was an alcoholic for having a single beer after work then said little brother breaking down in tears over it. Good times.
LOL, I cracked a beer open one night and my kid laughed, pointed, and yelled out,"You are a Homer!!"
EDIT: I also remember when DARE came to my school and this cop had a big baggie of weed on his table. I said,"Damn! That's a lot of weed!"
Then the cop replied, very seriously,"THAT'S ENOUGH MARIJUANA TO KILL YOU!!"
My friends and I just laughed and walked away.
"Probably didn't know we could map the human genome... but in 2003..."
I graduated high school in 2003, and had already heard the human genome had been mapped before entering high school. It may not have been true at the time, but I never once heard that it wouldn't be completed due to the complexity. lol
Actually quite a few of these were already being taught at my high school before it was more common knowledge. Like the stuff with Columbus and Edison. Which now makes me think my school was actually more progressive than I initially thought.
I graduated in the 2000's and the only falsehood from this list I remember being taught was the one about taste buds.
Yea I feel like a lot of these came from friends or other sources, and not necessarily from school.
I have definitely been told by nurses to tilt my head back if I had a nose bleed.
Honestly I don't recall my schools ever having a "school nurse". I assume most of the teachers were trained in first aid. I went to school in Ontario. Are school nurses an American thing?
Cool concept but your site really needs some work done. I heard in school that lemmings would kill themselves and i went in the 2010s. This is only one such example, the best thing you could have done is map out which myths are most common where instead of the decade, and it would also be useful to add a important corrections list for the more important facts which you probably were misinformed about.
Pretty cool site. I like that you’ve included sources for most of the points. I was aware of the 2000’s falsehoods, but I’m sure there are many who aren’t!
Thanks! I'm hoping to update it with some more obscure ones, but I think the fact that I had a little bit of trouble finding true myths is a good thing haha
You should add the Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus re-re-classification debacle. That one spans multiple decades.
It just listed a bunch of myths and old wive's tales that no one at the time thought were very credible anyway. Literally all of the "facts" they list were common chain letter/email memes that everyone trotted out at parties to sound smart and hip. Nobody ever believed what DARE told us, we always knew Christopher Columbus was an asshole, and every first aid class I've taken recommended against the whole tilt you head back thing.
@ElderWendigo @MiraLazine agree to disagree, a lot of those things I was definitely taught - if not in school then at least by adults who thought it common knowledge. Especially the nosebleeds (I had them all the time as a kid, and the amount of blood I ended up swallowing is..... A lot.) and knuckle cracking (my guess - started by teachers annoyed by kids making knuckle-noises during class)
Christopher columbus was definitely taught as an "American hero" up until he wasn't.
Pretty much all of these examples were pretty often and commonly debunked by all of my teachers, parents, and adult mentors. But that's exactly why lists like this are garbage, both of our experiences are anecdotal. You just can't make blanket claims about things like this about entire generations.
Columbus was more a lie of omission than outright falsehood. That item on the list was probably closest to a universal truth taught across the US, as long as you ignore any school with an indigenous student body. But, most of our teaching about any historical figures in grade school is a near obscene over-simplification of the actual people and events.
Any suggestions for more widely spread myths? Wanna incorporate more but had trouble finding them as being definitely taught in schools
widely spread myths
That's your problem. You can't seriously argue that these myths were being taught as fact in school because they weren't. They're all myths spread by common idiots through word of mouth. Common public misconception on the facts can and does happen very independently of actual education, as evidenced by antivaccers lately. The only things you could honestly add to a list like this would be some scientific theory that has been definitively disproven or amended. Maybe something like changing training about CPR would qualify also.
But those kinds of things are boring. It's much spicier to claim that people were taught that Columbus's contemporaries thought the world was flat even though that was just an over simplified story told to 5 year olds to explain why they got out of school on Columbus Day. Meanwhile anyone that didn't sleep through trigonometry should learn that Eratosthenes showed the world was round about 1700 years before Columbus. I would believe that there are some lazy educators out there that would teach such myths as fact, but to claim that it was at all universal is silly. The whole premise of "old generations dumb, look what they believed" is just so smug and offensive. I must be getting old.
• Contrary to what DARE might have taught you, marijuana is not considered a substantial gateway drug, with the best evidence being limited in nature, and with most marijuana users not going on to use other drugs. (Source) Yeah learn all that DARE BS.
• You were probably taught at some point that we'd never be able to map out the entire human genome due to its complexity. However, in 2003, we documented the first 92%, and in 2022 we documented the remaining 8%. (Source) nope I was told we will map it soon
• This one got shared by school nurses all around, but did you know that you shouldn't tilt your head back if you have a nosebleed? This could cause you to choke or vomit as a result of blood going back into your throat, or - more severely - trigger a vomiting reflex and cause inadvertent harm. (Source) Nope but my mom is a doctor so I leaned from a lot from her
• You were probably taught at some point that people in the time of Christopher Columbus all thought the world was flat. However, this is a myth that pervades history - most people knew the earth was a globe! (Source) Yup
• On the topic of Christopher Columbus, you might've been taught that he was a pretty upstanding guy, or at minimum just that he was average in terms of morality. Take a second to Google his relationship to slavery and genocide. (Source) EHHH kind of, we talk briefly about him mass cutting off people hands and enslaveing people.
• A common myth that gets thrown around a lot in health classes is that cracking your knuckles can cause arthritis. This, as it turns out, isn't true - it's perfectly safe to crack your knuckles as much as you'd like. (Source) Heard that in school mom said it was wrong, I heard both the myth and the fact
• The original food pyramid was introduced in 1992, and seemed to imply that there were different tiers of 'importance' to what food you ate. Since changed in 2011, this was deemed an inaccurate and potentially harmful way to view food intake. Food is food after all! (Source) Nope never learned that there where tiers of food each part is good for you
• A fun fact about taste for you - there is actually no such thing as a 'taste map,' or the idea that different areas of the tongue result in you tasting different things. At most, there's just different regions of sensitivity to taste! (Source) Nopw, saw taste map never learned that it was supposed to show where you taste things
• You've no doubt heard of this myth, perhaps not just from school - the idea that we only use 10% of our brains. This isn't true - we use all parts of our brains, just at different times since each neural location has a specific purpose! (Source) Yeah heard that
• Another common myth is the idea that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. He was in fact not the inventor, just someone who helped to optimize its efficiency. (Source) yeah heard that
• There's a good chance when you were younger, you heard classical music in the classroom to try and make you smarter. However, this is a myth - there is no such link between music and intelligence (or that we can measure intelligence for another matter!) (Source) Yeah heard that
• You've probably heard a lot about Thanksgiving being a supposedly peaceful gathering among Pilgrims and Indigenous Americans, but this is actually a myth - it led to a bloodbath brought on by colonial settlers. (Source) Yup heard that.
90s?
05
Site isn't working on my device.
What device are you on? I'll try to work up a fix
Android. I tried a couple of browsers. When i look very closely now i see a tiny little rectangle that i can click on and it brings up the decade options
I literally had creationist bullshit in my text books, so I'm thinking this site won't cover everything...
I strongly debated on including school based myths, but wasn't sure how to go about researching. I'll do some digging and see if I can't make an update
Southern schooled in 80s & 90s, here. They let us believe John Wilkes Booth was a lone actor and not part of an organized plot by southern men to assassinate the president.
The first time one of my northern friends mentioned that bit about a conspiracy, my little naive mind was rocked that schools might bend or bury the truth.
The rest of the list was pretty accurate. Except nurses in schools was a Hollywood myth to me. There was no budget for such positions. We could go to the school office and ask to call our parents if we weren't feeling well, and we'd better be feeling pretty awful.
I was schooled around the same time in NM, and was also taught Boothe acted alone.
The drop downlist for me is white text on white background, Android using Connect for Lemmy. It's fine when I try in browser.
Just FYI. Thanksgiving is the original blatant Cultural Appropriation. Thanksgiving was one of 13 harvest feast that the Native Americans in the area would hold each year. That's one of the reasons that Canada and The US celebrate it on different days.
We also stole most of their constitution, except the bit about "no law shall be passed that doesn't directly benefit all the children of the next 7 generations."
They had existed relatively stabley for 25,000 years, and we fucked it up, stole what we wanted, and trashed the rest.
This is just more misinformation, actually. Thanksgiving festivals were common in Europe before the colonization of America. See Lammas and Horkey. The settlers just continued their traditions in America. The native Americans had similar traditions, but the idea wasn't anything new to Europeans. Canada's Thanksgiving has moved around a lot over the years, but its current day was chosen to separate it from Remembrance Day. Its timing has nothing to do with Native holidays.
I don't who "they" are to really respond to the rest of your comment. You're kind of painting the Indians with an extremely broad brush. Almost nothing will be true about all the cultures of an entire continent. The Pilgrims primarily interacted with the Wampanoags, but they didn't have a written language and there's certainly no evidence their tribe existed for 25,000 years.
There's a common belief among the Iroquois that it should be considered how actions will affect the seventh generation, but the idea that that's in their constitution is a common myth. The Iroquois Confederacy itself was only formed about 1450. If you read the Great Law of Peace, it bears no resemblance to the US Constitution. Calling it plagiarism is ridiculous. There are not even any significant references to the Iroquois by Congress in the 1780s. This is another modern myth which originated in the last hundred years. The Iroquois constitution wasn't even written for a democracy.
Cultural appropriation is as old as culture. The oldest example I can think of is any pagan holidays that Christianity stole.
This is neat! Thanks for sharing :)
Agreed! Tho' there is so much more in each decade listing that could be shared. Science and knowledge continue to move forward.
Pretty accurate. My mom was very much invested in our education and contradicted a lot of this info when I was growing up so I learned the true facts.
Huh the Thanksgiving one I was taught that the Indians were nice to the new arrivals, but within a few short years that niceness was exploited and betrayed.
I guess maybe the welcome feast never occurred? But we certainly were taught the pilgrims drove the Indians out
We no longer say "committed suicide" because it's no longer a crime.
Otherwise it's great!
Huh... And here I thought people said "unalived yourself" because of internet censorship. 🤔
Eh, you can commit a lot of acts that aren't crimes. Like committing something to memory. Or being commited to an mental hospital.
I'm no expert, just sharing what I've learned in the few suicide prevention classes I've taken. Here is more if you're interested.
Eh, you can commit a lot of acts that aren't crimes.
I'm no expert, just repeating what I've learned in a few suicide prevention classes. Here you can read more if you're interested.
Hey thanks! What's the suggested term instead? This is the first I'm hearing of the term differences so wanna fix it up
When talking about my son, I say took their life, or died by suicide. The phrase committed suicide diminishes the loss/act/cry for help by criminalizing it.
Alternately my best friend I say lost his battle with depression. I think the current internet self censored version of unalived is acceptable as well. I for sure would not be offended if someone asked if that is how my son died anyway.
ETA: any plans to make a mobile version? I am going to go dig out my iPad so I can read the list, my old eyes cannot see everything on my phone.
I'm glad to see that none of that was new to me.
Class of '89 here, that was pretty spot on.
@MiraLazine love this!! any chance you can add a submission box? (With a section for source cited ofc :p). I'm sure there's a bunch out there that people might think of and want to add.
That's a good idea, thanks! I do have an email listed for now but I know not everyone would want to email someone random so I'll look into adding that in a bit
@MiraLazine also there's the possibility -- you may be at risk of getting flooded with submissions :p
my 5th grade teacher said kurt cobain died of heroin overdose and not a shotgun to the head
Very cool
I’m very grateful that everything in there got debunked by my high school teachers
There's a good chance when you were younger, you heard classical music in the classroom to try and make you smarter. However, this is a myth - there is no such link between music and intelligence (or that we can measure intelligence for another matter!)
I've never heard anyone claim classical music makes you smarter. I have heard people say it makes you focus better, which is true to some extent. This was one of the first things my therapist recommended I try after being diagnosed with adhd. I can't imagine it isn't applicable to people without adhd, although probably to varying degrees depending on the person.
The only thing I take issue with is the specification of classical music. Some people have told me this is because classical music doesn't have words in it, which would distract you instead of help you focus. Not only can classical music have lyrics, but every other genre of music is perfectly capable of not having lyrics. I'm not sure if its even true that the lyrics would distract you in the first place.
Its pretty clear to me that the only reason people play classical music specifically for this purpose is because it makes them feel smart. You could argue that feeling smart might actually help you get things done, but I dislike the perception of classical music as smart people music in general. It's just a style of music, like every other. There's nothing that makes it superior or more sophisticated, its just what Europeans liked a few centuries ago.
They used to sell classical music CDs that claimed to make babies smarter.
class of 00 and I'm shocked at some of this shit. American schools must be the worst.
I had nosebleeds a lot and it was always common knowledge you never tilt your head back, like what the actual fuck.
I had nosebleeds a lot too and everyone always told me that it lets the blood clot better. I'd always tell them I'd rather it just bleed then. So I thought it was true, I just didn't care, it was uncomfortable.
It's not just America. ::: spoiler spoiler When I was younger i suffered from a lot of nose bleeds and my parents argued with my schools nurse to not get me to tilt my head backwards because the blood kept on getting stuck in my throat. :::
This is hilarious. Apparently the program did not pick up on staff grooming and raping young women.
Contrary to what DARE might have taught you, marijuana is not considered a substantial gateway drug
Lol, what? Of course it's a gateway drug. What the hell else are you going to try first, heroine?
The gateway drug to heroine is most often prescription opioids, not weed.
That was a thing i did learn about thankfully enough (european school system)
That’s like saying caffeine or aspirin is a gateway drug because you probably try those before harder drugs. That’s not the only qualification for a gateway drug: it has to significantly increase the likelihood of trying additional drugs, which marijuana in the US does not. Elsewhere it varies, but in the US, you’re not more likely to try heroin because you’ve tried marijuana.
In my country (The Netherlands) weed is defacto legal and widespread yet we don't suffer from a crisis as severe as the US has, if anything it's probably less likely that people go to harder substances since weed is so safe and widely available. I can even proudly say that I have never seen a junkie on the streets here.