Everything about Christopher Columbus.
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’s also not the reason church windows are thicker at the bottom, a common myth that my ex-colleague with a PhD in polymer chemistry(!) somehow bought into
Glass not being a polymer still does suggest they’re talking out of turn
Not a polymer but an amorphous solid like many polymers; I believe she popped that nugget while explaining crystallinity and glass transitions. She was quite knowledgeable otherwise but that little false factoid must have slipped through.
Hear about pluto? Pretty messed up huh?
You know that’s right!
“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.
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I feel have super power by being to calculate accurate tips without needing to crack out my phone.
Yeah but its such a hassle to find, so…
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:
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.
n many countries, including the United states, the core studies are taught through the end of Junior High School. And that’s when mandatory education ends. So you should expect to see a lot more variety in high school.
As a teacher myself, I don’t try to tell students what to believe, but I certainly don’t run away from talking about political issues. If you’re teaching English or science or social studies or foreign language, and you are working hard to avoid politics, you’re doing your students a disservice.
For example, suppose you’re teaching high school economics right now. Would you honestly not talk about the Trump tariffs? That would be the most ludicrous idea imaginable. Clearly the students want to know what’s going on, they hear it on TV, they read it in the newspaper, and you’re the expert so you should be telling them what’s going on. Right? And if you’re going to talk about them, you’re probably going to be critical of them with good reason.
But anyway, I’ve heard people express views similar to yours over the years, and essentially many people with that view think that school could be or should be talked entirely by mindless robots. I don’t think that’s a great way to teach kids, I’m happy I didn’t grow up in such a system, but if that’s what you want then more power to you.
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
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.
I don’t think that would surprise anyone. The GOP has been a giant grift since at least Reagan. A loooot of people out there can’t tell when they’re getting scammed.
It’s one reason why educated voters tend to be further left on the political spectrum.
I hated this so much in high school.
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.
There’s a weird thing here. I totally accept that the traditional tongue map is pseudoscience and debunked, but if you’re paying attention to something like wine or good chocolate, letting it spread across your whole tongue really does seem change the flavor and bring new aspects to what you’re tasting.
My subjective impression is that there is some effect to exposing the whole tongue to a stimulus, and I’d really like to understand it more - but when you search the web, you pretty much just get deconstructive articles about the old model, and not much about what might actually be happening.
The United States operates on the principle of three co-equal branches of government, which check and balance each others power.
This is painful.
Trickle down economics (well, it’s not like there was a time when it was true)
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’
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
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
The multiplication table is still fact even if you have a calculator.
6 x 6 mothefuckers. Y’all tell me that didn’t immediately form “36” in your brain.
I was thinking of a bed for some reason
Nope, went through “(6 × 5) + 6”. Slightly slower, but much more flexible since you can do that with any (base 10 representation of a) number that has a reasonable number of digits.
What? How is multiplying by 5 more convenient than any other number?
When dealing with base 10 representations, multiplying by 10 is a simple matter of adding zeroes;
dividing numbers that end with a zero by two is (usually) an afterthought;
doing both operations in that sequence is (usually) equally trivial, the only effortful thing I have to do is adding or subtracting a multiplicand, once or twice or thrice.It’s not easier than having the result imprinted in my memory, but it cuts away ~ three quarters of the table.
Is it so bad to know your multiplication tables? It’s lowk a quality of life thing yknow. imo it’s just a good thing to know so you aren’t entirely reliant on the calculator for an answer.
I need to use multiplication at work every single day, it’s extremely handy to remember them.
I would say “cursive is how adults write, you’ll need to know it”, but that wasn’t true then either.
Cursive is such a bad way to write. I used to have to decipher sloppy cursive notes on how to check airplane fixtures. I even learned it in school!
Good cursive flows very nicely. I got to watch my grandmother’s handwriting deteriorate as the dementia and Alzheimer’s took her. Was always amazed for well she wrote when i was younger, but her handwriting turned pretty incomprehensive as her brain was eaten away by the disease
“You need a pen licence because that’s what you use at work”.
Um no. Secretaries, lawyers and journalists used typewriters and engineers used propelling pencils. Builders had these odd rectangular shaped pencils that could write on anything. Fitters and boilermakers used chalk.
Only schoolchildren used biros.
cursive sucks ass. im not reading that garbage
I actually use it myself sometimes when taking notes. It’s just the natural way to write for me. It’s faster and more space effective.
I cant even read my own cursive from back then.
Now i know how my teachers felt and why they constantly told me i write unreadablely. Used to be able to read it fluently lol
Study and work hard will make you successful.
Depends on your definition of successful
Broadly speaking, failing to put in effort does tend to lead to worse outcomes.
…Unless your parents have the last name “Musk” or “Trump”.
- that Pluto is a planet
PLUTO IS A PLANET!
I thought it was Mickey Mouse’s dog 🤔!
IT’S BOTH AT THE SAME TIME
What? As in Schrödinger’s cat? Interesting!
Why does a mouse own a dog? And how come the mouse is also friends with another dog? What’s going on there?
Ok Jerry.
Eh, it’s more like our definition of what a planet is changed. I still think of Pluto as a planet.
This was my first thought as well!
Pluto is a great test for what type of person someone is.
If someone says Pluto is still a planet. They have a personality where they are immovable and can’t accept scientific change and everything has to be how they first learned it.
If they do say pluto is a new kind of dwarf planet they are more accepting of new information and belive in the scientific method and love to be wrong. Since it means we learn something new.
It’s a great quick test when meeting new people.
I recently heard that they discovered hundreds of Pluto sizes “planets” beyond Pluto, so they had to decided do we add 100 more planets or just demote Pluto to planetoid and ignore the rest
Eris? Didn’t Sephiroth kill her?
So presumably NASA is anti-science ?
Because they have redetermined that Pluto is a planet.
Or the third option of they recognize that scientifically Pluto is a dwarf planet and no longer a ‘full’ planet, but they also anthropomorphize everything to an unhealthy degree and don’t want to hurt the feelings of Pluto by saying it isn’t a planet anymore
I know - can the person accept hundreds of planets and that ours is less special, or do they need to change a definition (including exceptions) to keep their world view.
Well, Pluto being reclassified as a dwarf planet doesn’t really have anything to do with the scientific method. “Planet” is a manmade concept, we just changed the definition for that classification to avoid having to add the dozens of bodies we discovered since Pluto that would have also met the old definition.
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.
