The United States operates on the principle of three co-equal branches of government, which check and balance each others power.
This is painful.
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.
the quiz:
Ironically, I have read that there was a study that found that the most gullible kids in elementary school grow up to be republican. I’m not kidding.
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.
deleted by creator
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
The D.A.R.E. program.
We congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
I’m addicted to dopamine, and I’ll take any drug I can to get more of it.
Trickle down economics are an effective way to redistribute wealth
Did we conclude that, I thought its still heavily debated.
Some argue in the 50s and 60s the US was spending Europe’s gold to build highways and infrastructure, gifting Americans the wealth with a continuation of the new deal, they then defaulted in 1971 as inflation eroded foreign debt owed.
Some feel some form of debt accrual is how we derive such a consumption focused standard of living, which is misallocated capital that ends in someone holding the bag when it can’t realistically be paid back, or when population doesn’t grow fast enough like in Japan or most of the developed countries.
“You need to learn this because you won’t always have a calculator on you!”
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.
Some supermarkets has calculators built into their carts
wat
Tiny photocell powered calculators used to be everywhere. There were “thin” ones to fit in your Costanza sized wallet, Mousepads with them built in, and my wristwatch in 6th grade had one with tiny rubber keys.
It was a magical time till be alive. 5318008
Yep, back in the 90s they were in some places. My local supermarket had one like this, except without the annoying ad on the left side.
The same was told to me even as everybody already had mobile phones with calculators in them or even iPhones
Basic mathematical literacy is a prerequisite to being able to use a calculator.
I feel have super power by being to calculate accurate tips without needing to crack out my phone.
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.
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.”
I was always so confused by the tongue areas because it never seemed to work for me. Especially sweet, I tasted sweet far more at the back than on my tip.
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.
We were each given like a quarter teaspoon of grounds and a toothpick.
A tiny amount on like a q-tip. Not enough to effect anything except flavor
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.
Whats about DNA??
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’
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!
That America is the best and most free country in the world.
And eagles and burguers
Basicly every Pole in the 90s were taught and thought like that
I was chucked into Christian school.
So… a lot of it.
*everything
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 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
I tried to argue this with a science teacher who chose that specific material for a question about phases, and I assumed she was asking for this tricky reason. She marked me wrong and wouldn’t accept my personal research on the topic as makeup. I was humiliated. I hope she’s dead now.
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.
Drugs Are Really Excellent?
deleted by creator
Racism used to be a problem until Lincoln and MLK fixed it.
