The world is moving at an incredibly fast pace. Sometimes, it's hard for our education to keep up. Sometimes, teachers teach things that are just plain wrong. Here, Redditors shared their favorite "lesson" that they learned in school that is no longer true, or completely irrelevant. If you want to see more, check out the source at the bottom of the page.Â
1. But it's in the food guide!
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Nope. Just a slogan paid for by Kellogg's.
jasdjensen
2. This is an oddly specific one
I always heard that the komodo dragon, the largest living lizard on Earth, was such a successful predator because its mouth was so filthy and septic that the microbes in the saliva would cause fatal infections on its prey. The dragon would track the wounded animal until it eventually collapsed and would eat it. This, as it turns out, is not true or at the very least not the whole story.
It takes days for microbial infections to begin to show symptoms in an animal as large as, say, a water buffalo, but animals were collapsing hours after being bitten, not days. Microbial infections from their saliva couldn't explain how rapidly these large mammals were being killed.
This lie was repeated throughout my childhood, and I even heard it repeated at the San Diego zoo as recently as last year. As it turns out, komodo dragons are able to hunt so successfully because they their saliva contains venom that they produce from their venom glands.
pezzshnitsol
3. That's not how I learned it!
In psychology class we learned about the bystander effect in the Kitty Genovese story where apparently she was assaulted and killed. She cried for help but her neighbors in the building apparently assumed someone else was going to help her. Turns out the story was embellished by a reporter so that it sounded like no one did help her but her neighbors actually helped and she died on the way to the hospital.
Quig101
4. Still waiting...
I was taught in grade school that we had to know the metric system because the United States was going to adopt it like, any day now. For sure.
That was about 30 years ago.
ahighcoldstar
5. An oldie but a goodie
That there are only 3 states of matter.
Wandering-Minstrel
6. Ahh the good old days
You're only allowed to use ONE source from the internet in your paper. The rest needs to come from books. And god forbid someone else beat you to that book you needed, you might not see it for TWO weeks.
crochetyhooker
7. "Right..."
Christopher Columbus was the first dude to discover America, and tried to bargain with the Indigenous peoples but couldn't work it out because of "cultural differences".Â
RileyClark
8. Fibre optic fur
Polar bears stayed warm because their fur was fibre optic and absorbed heat from the sun. It IS true that they stay warm from their fur (along with their fat), but it's not fibre optic.Â
rogannn
9. Cursive is the gateway drug
You HAVE to learn in cursive writing. Higher schooling will not accept anything that isn't cursive.
Zillcaytr
10. We would all be dead if this were true
I don't know how much common is it but I learned that "If the earth were 1cm closer to the sun, we would be burned; 1cm further from the Sun we would be frozen" thing.
No, we wouldn't. The distance is changing all the time, during a year. That's how it works.
chevalier_balibari
11. How wrong they were
You're not gonna have a calculator every where you go.
bigredm88
12. This is actually a really good point about how education systems fail us
Negative numbers. For 4 years of elementary school I'm told that you can't subtract 8 from 7 and so the problem is unsolvable. In 5th grade the answer is suddenly -1. Why wait 5 years to reveal that? Can students under 5th grade not handle the concept of negative numbers? I hated math after that and wondered what else would just suddenly be changed on me.
Oldsodacan
13. Outdated health classes
We weren't taught about the female pleasure system, and were taught that the only way to "truly" have sex was with a penis inside a vagina. They didn't even touch on gay / lesbian sex or other forms of pleasure.Â
Anonymous
14. Lemmings aren't actually, well, lemmings
I learned in school that lemmings (the small rodents) follow each other robotically, even to the point where they'll walk off cliffs to their deaths. Wrong! This "fact" was actually staged for a Walt Disney documentary back in the 60s or so.
APartyInMyPants
15. Huh, hadn't thought about that
When I was a kid we were taught that penguins feet didn't freeze because of their circulation. Turns out they have antifreeze proteins in their blood that bind to ice crystals and stop them from growing so their blood stays liquid well below 0 degrees.
damondefault
16. Dinosaur lies
A brontosaurus is no longer a thing (now called apatosaurus)
[deleted]
17. I can't even imagine how this went down at home...
That two blue-eyed parents can't have a brown-eyed child. Apparently not only is this pure crap - the genetics of eye colour is more complex than that - it led to a lot of kids being rejected by their real fathers before DNA testing became available.
toomanyrougneds
18. I'm pretty sure that she should have known that without Googling it
My 8th grade biology teacher told us that only identical twins were possible and that there was no scientific possibility for identical triplets, quints, etc.
Imagine my surprise many years later when I discovered this was a blatant lie. I'm still confused as to how she could have possibly believed that but then I remember that was before the internet.
hilhilbean
19. This one never made sense to me
The tongue has different "taste zones". No. No it doesn't.Â
how_lee_phuc
20. Feathers?!
Most tyrannosaurs were completely feathered and their posture was really long and sprinty. At least that is what we can believe now after more study. At the time I was to believe that they were like upright iguanas with big teeth.
insipid_comment
21. Don't trust everything you read!
I learned that fat is the biggest cause of heart disease, which isn't true. Turns out, sugar companies paid off scientist to focus the blame off sugar and push it onto fat.
I'm not saying go out and eat bacon, sausage, and steak for every meal. I'm not saying you can never eat sugar. I'm just saying we used to demonize all fats saying they lead to heart disease when we know now there are good heart healthy fats. We also went through a period where "reduced fat" foods where considered healthier even though they had extra sugar to compensate for the lack of taste. I'm not your dietician nor your cardiologist. I'm just noting there seems to be a shift in the tide on our views of sugars and fats.
SonsOfAnarchyMC
22. A structure built on lies
The food pyramid.
ThrushKnock
23. Eight glasses a day.
I was told to drink 8 glasses of water a day. Turns out, most of the water our body gets is through our food, and that much water isn't necessary.Â
pebble255
24. Blood lies
I remember being told that deoxygenated blood is blue. Liars.
qweswr2
25. Rest in peace, little buddy
Pluto was a planet while I was at school.
ambertheginger
26. In case you didn't know, this happened just in the past year
There is a country called Czechoslovakia.
FieryWest
27. Where's Snopes when you need it?
My dumb biology teacher in grade 8 told us "AIDS happened because a man had sex with a monkey."
I did not go to the best school.
Wonka_Vision
28. News flash: you are always growing
You're born with a set number of brain cells and that number can only diminish throughout your life. Not true.Â
ButternutSasquatch
29. *quickly runs to Google Maps*
The rain forest, at current rate of consumption, will be gone by 1996.
Alittlefishy
30. The great wall of LIES
The Great Wall Of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.
Sumtinkwrung
Comments have been edited for clarity.
I can't definitively say I've come face to face with the spirits. But I have had some unsettling feelings in the dark. Shadows are just shadows sometimes, but who can be sure.
I hear it...
Nbc Wings GIF by HULUGiphy"I was helping my dad clean my grandma's house after she passed and I went in and was trying to find a song in my phone and before I could I heard a cough plain as day come from down the hallway where her room was. She died of lung and throat cancer it was pretty crazy."
Running Past...
"When I was 5 I remember getting home from my grandpa's birthday party. For context my mom was pregnant with my brother at the time, so my parents had already bought his crib. I woke up in the middle of the night to find a women in a white dress and long black hair standing over my brother's crib. I managed to wake up my dad so he could take me to the bathroom. When I got back it was still there. It was only until morning when it disappeared. Every now and then I see a glance of what I assume is that thing running past the backyard."
The Cat
"My best friend and his wife had moved to a new apartment. I came over to visit a few times, and each time I'd see the motion of a cat in my peripheral vision. Not the image of a cat, but a sense of how a cat moves. Anyway, one day I finally cracked some joke about the ghost cat in the place and his wife was instantly saying "See! See! I told you we had a ghost cat!"
"excuse me"
"I worked graveyard shift in a dementia ward for 4 years and it was anything but quiet. I was working with a nurse one night when we both heard a resident say "excuse me." We looked around and no-one was there. I checked on the resident in question and she was fast asleep in her own room. Many of us also experienced someone whistling in the ward late at night and one nurse even managed to catch a video of it happening. It was unnerving to say the least."
Clueless
Skeleton GIFGiphy"I once saw someone short walk by me in my house. They walked into the laundry room which only has one way in. I walked into it behind them and they where gone. I thought it was my little brother but I went to his room and he was asleep. I still have no clue what that was."
- ImBolio
Now was everyone here positive they were sober? Just asking. Those are certainly spooky moments. I'd like some video footage please. Continue...
Reflections
ghost library GIFGiphy"I was up at 3am when I was maybe 7 or 8. I looked out the window and saw a woman in a white dress run across my yard. I could see through her. She was transparent like the reflections on the window."
"you alright?"
"So, my work place is haunted. I was having a really crap day, and as a cleaner, it's normal that me and my co worker will be the only ones left at night. So I was standing on the second floor, leaning on the banister for the stair case, when I heard this male voice say in my ear "you alright?" Clear as day. I turned around so fast and nobody was there and it scared the hell out of me."
- Rex-the-
Watching Me
"I remember as a young kid I usually use to sit in my bed and watch tv with my room door open while the adjacent guest bedroom next to mine would always have the door shut. I always remember seeing that door fully open and close by itself multiple times a day very slowly and gently. Never really bothered me much now that I think about it… but there were other creepier experiences I had in the same house that made me feel uncomfortable like I was being watched."
Betsy
"I went to the Betsy Ross House as a really little kid in the early 90s. Normal house but I was confused why the tour guide never talked about the woman on the chair crying at the edge of the bed in Betsy Ross's bedroom. So I asked about it. No one else saw the woman at the edge of the bed. I figured it was just a wax museum since there was a wax statue of a man in uniform rolling bullets in the basement."
"Years later, I was looking at haunted Philadelphia tours to go on with a friend and the Betsy Ross House was on it. I was like "woah! I was there!" and looked into it some more. Turns out there is a woman at the end of the bed crying and a uniformed man in the basement that people have reported seeing. There is no way that 8 year old me would have known about either of these things."
hello kitty...
hello kitty lol GIF by Animation Domination High-DefGiphy"I had this hello kitty Balloon In my bed room, it had a string and weight on it. So it was late, I had the lights on just Sitting on my bed. The Balloon turns, faces my door, slowly floats into my hallway and turns and floats into my sister's room. To this day I am scared of balloons."
They are among us and they like Hello Kitty. I'm probably rattling the paranormal cages and they'll come for me next, but I'm ready. I feel like this thread has prepared me.
Boo!
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