People Are Sharing "Facts" From School That Were Proven Wrong, And You Might Want To Take A Look At These
Listen, we all can probably name a thing or two that we learned growing up that was no longer relevant or had been totally disproven by the time we became adults.
Reddit user u/yepvaishz recently asked people, "What was a fact taught to you in school that ended up being disproven during your lifetime?" I personally saw a few of mine in the thread — maybe you will, too:
1. "The food pyramid."
"It was all a scam from Big Grain."
—u/kumakami89
2. "When I was a kid, the Giant Squid had never been captured or photographed, and some people talked about it like it was el chupacabra. My little brother always said he'd be the first person to get footage of one. Sadly, it has since become an ordinary animal that we know exists. RIP the Kraken."
—u/EarthExile
3. "Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis."
—u/panda388
4. "From an educational filmstrip: 'Saturn has four beautiful rings.' The Voyager photos of the thousands of rings had come in, like, a week before we watched this."
—u/robaato72
5. "I had a teacher in fourth grade that would force left-handed kids to write with their right hand. She said that it was the normal way to write and would benefit them later in life. (Circa 1974.)"
6. "Your tongue has different areas for tasting different tastes: sweet on the tip, sour on the sides, bitter on the back, etc. I feel like this was some elaborate prank played on my generation. But I remember seeing this in my elementary school biology textbook. I don’t even think it was disproven. Like, they just stopped telling this lie. WTF."
7. "Germany would never reunite. The French would never allow it."
8. "'You won't always have a calculator in your pocket!'"
9. "In a late '90s computer class, it was, 'We’ll never have terabyte hard drives in our lifetime, or a need for that much data.' Heh, now you can get terabyte Micro SD cards. Wild."
—u/abidingyawn
10. "Pompeii was buried slowly by falling ash. They pointed out that remnants of people were found right in the middle of doing things but didn't realize this contradicted the burying being slow. It's now thought that it was buried very quickly by pyroclastic flows — instead of superheated gas traveling over 200mph."
—u/ablativeyoyo
11. "Blood is blue until exposed to oxygen."
—u/mwjb86SFW
12. "That you’re gonna end up working a minimum wage job if you don’t go to college."
13. "Playing with computers is a waste of time and won’t lead to a career. This was said to me by a very old and bitter teacher. Twenty-five years in IT and counting."
—u/zerbey
14. "Glass is actually a liquid, which is why old windows look droopy. I was definitely in my 20s before I learned that wasn't true."
—u/Try2Relax
15. "That Christopher Columbus was a great guy, and all the Natives rose up in celebration when he came. Yeah, I don't teach history that way."
16. "I was always taught Mississippi's secession from the union in the Civil War was to preserve the state's right to be independent and had nothing at all to do with slavery. That Confederate heritage was about family and not racism. Slavery is mentioned in the very first sentence of the first paragraph of the letter of secession as the primary reason. They decided if they couldn't own humans anymore, it would crash the economy."
17. "So many, but I’ll start with cold-blooded dinosaurs. I was in college when opinions about them changed."
18. "That people only use 10% of their brains. I mean, some do, but that’s not normal."
—u/Constek
19. "That microwaves kill all the nutrients in food."
20. "Hard work will be noticed and rewarded."
21. "My history teacher taught us Italy is in Africa."
22. "Ain’t isn’t a word."
23. "RIP ninth planet, [Pluto]."
—u/MHipDogg
Have something else to add? Tell me down in the comments below!
These entries were edited for length and clarity.
