While I was taught that in elementary school, I was also taught about the 3/5ths compromise as early as middle school. By the time high school rolled around I was being taught about reconstruction and the corrupt bargain of 1877. I guess I’m lucky I got a good education in the north because I am aware that’s not necessarily the standard nationally.
I was also taught these things in the south, living in North Florida. As part of a 1 semester Florida history class in middle school, we also went into each of the spanish conquistadors and how they murdered their way across the continent.
My AP history teacher gave us copies of Zinn's A People's History of the United States as a supplemental to our textbooks. She was an awful teacher overall, but I appreciated her trying to make sure we had multiple perspectives.
Then I went to an elite east-coast private college, where I almost failed US History because I called the professor out for teaching Lost Cause bullshit.
He also characterized the 2000 election as "a perfect tie" that could've just as easily been decided by a coinflip instead of the more historically agreed upon view of the Supreme Court ratfucking Florida's recount.
Yeah we talked about colonialism in my middle school.
However, it was discussed as a fact of history and we went into detail about the slave trade triangle and all that.
And we did it without politicizing it. It was facts-based rather than pushing some weird political narrative about how america is heroic, or america is evil. Fancy that... just teaching history.
Sometimes moralizing is necessary. In Canada we had one teacher go into detail on the kidnapping of indigineous children and the residential schools they were sent to where they were often beaten or raped. I'm glad that teacher did that since many of my contemporaries were not aware of that history and some remain oblivious into adulthood. There's nothing worse for a nation than people having a false sense of pride in it (as we're seeing in the US currently).
In Canada we had one teacher go into detail on the kidnapping of indigineous children and the residential schools they were sent to where they were often beaten or raped
That isn't moralizing dude. That's just telling facts.
The moralizing/politicizing part is when you tell the kids that it's their fault and they should feel bad about it. It isn't, and they shouldn't.
Technically, it was founded on the principles of liberty and equality for all. Just not the practices of liberty and equality for all. it was an aspiration, a goal of our forefathers.
But the way they teach it in school is pretty deceptive— as if it was all accomplished magically on that day in 1776, when, even today, it’s a constant struggle— a goal that we’re much closer to, but still remains elusive. that’s the part they don’t teach.
Nah, I was taught the latter way in school. They pretty explicitly told us about the 3/5 compromise, the lack of voting rights for women, etc. Really, its pretty hard to avoid the idea that all people were not seen as equal in the eyes of the constitution when ratified, when you know that we have a whole unit on the civil war coming up.
I remember in school learning about the different areas of the tongue tasting different things, and then we had an experiment to try it, and everyone was like "wow it works!" but I told the teacher it didn't work for me, and I got told I was doing it wrong =w=
Anywho, the entire thing about different tastes being localized to different areas is bullshit, so that's 1 point to me and 0 to the teacher
My daughter and I did this for one of her science projects. I would drop lemon juice or sugar water somewhere on her tongue, and she was able to taste everything everywhere.
It was so long ago I don't remember, but I hope we got a good grade on that one!
Same experiment I had lol. Had to pat down our tongues with a paper towel and then put sugar/lemon/pepper and whatever else on it :3 and yeah, I very much could taste everything everywhere haha
Yah you didn't succumb to confirmation bias. I knew as a kid this was wrong because they said viewer was treated in the back... yeah then explain when i got laundry detergent on my fingers forgot about it and when to clean my fingernails layer and the tip of my tongue is absolutely tasting bitterness.
I remember the same teacher had a test question which was something like “you and a friend are playing at a landfill, and your friend spills sulfuric acid all over themselves, what should you do?” and the ‘correct’ answer was “pour sodium hydroxide on the spill” instead of my answer of “pour water on the spill.”
I had another science teacher who made a huge deal about her chronic Lyme, which is this really weird alternative medicine thing.
30 years ago, it was still taught that we Belgians went to the Congo out of benevolence, to help lift up the people there. Not one mention of rubber quota or chopped off hands. Fuck that indoctrination.
France: the French revolution was poor people rioting. We are starting to accept that it was rich people killing each other to replace monarchy, and using poor people as a side-effect, kind of like... what we have right now, what a coincidence!
It was "self-made" rich people (bourgeoisie) vs "birthright" rich people (nobility). We still got some cool side-effects though. Some of those bourgeois legitimately kick started what we call left and progressive politics today (Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat).
A lot of the early (1789) revolutionaries were from the nobility and even the clergy. Many of the reactionaries were up and coming bourgeois who were about to make their way into the nobility. Sorry Marx, you got a few things right, but that one was an oversimplification.
The vast majority of the victims of the reign of terror were commoners. The nobility were underrepresented at the guillotine, besides a few obvious high-profile cases.
It appears as though Robespierre legitimately lost his mind at some point. He attempted to introduce a “cult of the supreme being” with himself as high priest that focused on adhering to his own idea of virtue. Anyone not virtuous enough, which was effectively literally everyone else, was liable to be executed.
Early in the revolutionary wars, the revolutionaries had arrested so many people that the Paris jails were super overcrowded. Some people didn’t want the armies to leave Paris for the front lines because maybe all those jailed people would break out and cause trouble. So Marat proposed that they reduce the incarcerated population… by killing them all. September 1789 was a bad month to have been a petty thief in Paris.
So many of the popular notions about the revolution are distorted or just ass-backwards.
Yes, Marquis de Lafayette was a famous example of a noble going against the privilege system and in favor of democracy.
I think Robespierre is one of the pioneer of both left ideology, and left extremism leading to autoritarism and its crimes as we later saw in communist Russia and China.
If i may, please look into Kurt Eisner as well! And especially the type of democracy he wanted for bavaria and later germany (a council republik where you also elect your workplace leaders and can always unelect them!)
Yes it did. "God created all men equal, so why is nobility and clergy worth more than a farmer" was his idea. Nobles hunted him. Even martin luther warned against him
It did definitely did, the Terror and then Napoleon empires were dictatorships. It took a century for a a democratic republic to stabilize with improvements for the common people happening progressively (under early republics but also under the empires).
Thats how they teach it? Even here in germany (atleast in my state bavaria) they teach it that the revolutionaries were from all paths of life. Even some clerty and a few minor nobles were on their side. But the main front were the bourgeoisie (land owning city people)
The revolution started after the king called the Estates General in hopes of solving the debt crisis that had come in a large part from funding the American Revolution. The Estates General was a body made up of representatives of the three estates, the aristocrats, the clergy, and everyone else. The representatives of the third estate we're primarily new money bourgeoisie, but they were elected, unlike the other two, and could therefore claim to represent the people. After failing to come to an agreement, the representatives of the third estate broke away and formed the National Assembly.
How much the National Assembly actually represented the people is debateable, but they did have some claim to that, unlike the other groups. There were also several mass actions like the storming of the Bastille that indicated support for what the representatives were doing, at least in the early years of the revolution.
Many countries, like America, had actual economic mobility. There was a time where working hard could improve your economic status.
My family lost everything. Twice. Once to over-leveraging before a mortgage collapse in 83, and secondly to a house fire. We lived in an absolute fleabag of a moldy motel, a stereotype like you'd see on-screen, for about 10 months. The mold was so bad we had tiny mushrooms.
We got back, both times, to a stable home life in a mortgage and a fresh start. Dad paid off his home before retirement, by working his absolute ass off.
That's just not feasible now, just one generation later.
Anyway, there was a time when hard work did get you something; so treat that as a historical thing and not a falsehood.
worse than that, if you do too good of a job you will be deemed too useful to promote, so not only will you be rewarded with more work but with career stagnation
Not everyone has the luxury of quiting a job on a dime like that and constant rejections when looking for a new job while being dogpiled at work will not help someone's mental state.
I think it's true, but I'm very few places. In the Marines, I was able to turn hard work into promotions, and now I'm regular life, I turn hard work into extra money, but only because I work for myself. So basically it only works in socialism or if you're at the top of the ladder.
That's less a lie and more 'teaching the ideal.' The problem isn't learning how the system is supposed to work. That's how you learn to be a mechanic. You learn how an engine is supposed to work so you can spot where it's gone wrong. The issue is more one of there are millions of people and they get 10 minutes on how it's supposed to work and then only 3 of them go into politics and learn how it actually works/doesn't work. Democracy requires more than a one week chapter on civics, once a year. We all have to be mechanics, or at least be prepared to try.
I mean, good luck. The Principle-Agent Problem is a classic of sociology, particularly with respect to business. If you can solve it, there's a Nobel in Economics waiting for you.
Democracy is an attempt at aligning in the interests of the plurality principles with their government agencies. But there's obviously a whole lot of flaws with democracy generally speaking, even before you get into the particulars of the American system.
I do think that the Lockean Social Contract, as the foundation for any governmental system, is a more interesting and more well-thought-out concept to explore than the mythology surrounding the American three-branch system. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent does an excellent job of breaking down how a public body can be turned against its own interests. Zinn's People's History gives a ton of insight into the underbelly of the American political beast and how people respond to industrial and state oppression. State and Revolution does an excellent job of describing the role of the state in society and how it can best be dismantled.
But the endless debate around whether US Government works as described or intended really loses the forest of social economy for the ideological tent post trees. Fetishization of the US system only contributes to its rot and our own downfall.
That homework isn’t discriminatory. Not all kids have lives that allow them to do it. If you can’t cover all the bases in whole ass 8 hours I’m there a day that’s on you, not me. This is only true k - 12, college level courses are voluntary so having some homework could be considered ok.
You do have a valid argument. There are lots of children that don't have an environment that allows them to do homework or study.
I don't think this means we should get rid of homework. Homework is essentially practicing what was learned in the classroom. Learning is a constant process, it doesn't automatically happen after being exposed to a topic during the course of an 8 hour day. Learning anything requires practice. (The neurons that fire together wire together.)
If little Billy did the homework and got a bunch of stuff wrong, that helps the teacher identify and diagnose the skill issue, (in theory.) If little Billy didn't do his homework at all, the teacher has no idea Billy could be struggling to learn the material until after he has been tested. It's a tool to help students practice, and a tool to help teachers assess and diagnose. It shouldn't be used as part of the rubric that determines what a child's grade for the material is at the end of the term.
You also run into the issue of little Billy not doing his homework because he already understands the lesson and doesn't want to waste his time.
My math teacher would make me take tests sitting next to her because I wouldn't do homework but aced the tests. Eventually she realized I wasn't cheating, I was just able to grasp the concept from her lectures alone.
But quizes should be used to determine which students need extra practice on a subject. Since everything is digital now, it wouldn't be difficult to build the algorithm.
My grandmother was a school teacher. She was very clear about homework: kids should not have any. Kids are kids, they simply are not designed to sit still and work on school work all day.
She expected there to be learning time, play time, sports or activity time, family time, and bed time. There is something useful to be learned in all phases of a persons day, its just different.
If a child was struggling, she would stay after school and work with them, or spend more time during the day with them. At worst they may have to finish up something assigned in class they didnt finish in time, but thats it.
But this assigning homework for homeworks sake, she really did not like that idea at all.
She knew if Little Billy didnt know what was going on, not due to homework, but due to classwork and interaction at school.
No, discrimination is discrimination, school is as many hours as a full time job, if an education system can’t teach kids what they need to know in that amount of time it’s failing. Discrimination is wrong.
Same! And I grew up in the Midwest/south. I first heard of it from the show The Watchmen and really thought it was part of the fictional narrative until I got curious and looked it up. Terrible, and also terrible that it stayed so hidden.
Look man, saying that the army wants a complete lack of critical thought in its soldiers is an entirely different conversation from 'do soldiers even have critical thinking skills'. You gotta pick one before we can communicate together.
I'm trying to engage in conversation with you in order to figure out how that was connected to my original statement about the lies that are frequently taught in schools.
Oh. Hey Velma. Sorry about the misgendering. Won't happen again.
*edit
My critical reading skills went out the window today.
You can read the previous stuff, but corsicanpuppy was saying the not even the army, which is more famous than public schools for dlsiking free thought, taught that listening to authority without giving it any critical thought was the way to go, much less public schools.
still? That's actually really surprising. Not sure if that's more of a whitewash or more of a greenwash. Like maybe the teachers are racist idiots, but maybe they know and just like the tradition and want to give the kids something fun to do that feels good in a dark world. I don't think greenwash is the right term for that, but yeah.
I know a couple teachers that teach younger kids, I'll have to ask what they do.
I don't know what the existential results of teaching them their country is based on slavery and genocide. History for children is just as much about mythology as anything.
I would be willing to bet that whatever the Germans teach it isn't some version of "and the jews were so happy that they piled into the trains and camps."
We were taught 5 states (solid/liquid/gas/plasma/condensate (BEC and superconductors)), which has always felt like a decent enough explanation for 3rd graders. If you barely understand how to read a phase change diagram, you don't really need the confusing duality of being told "hey so this is totally wrong if you're a chemist, but fundementally true if you're an engineer" when you're still iffy on concepts like "vacuum boiling is not witchcraft".
Huh, that's really interesting. I'd have expected it was prior to condensate being introduced, not plasma, since plasma can be easily demonstrated in the classroom but condensates have really only been easily demonstrable for at most two decades. Very curious - do you remember if you had a standardized curriculum, and if so which one it was?
I also found it weird, I was taught 3 in school, but Plasma was already being considered a different state, just wasn't taught in schools. Condensate had only just been experimentally created and I didn't even knew about them until this thread.
Pictures of the civil rights movement are in black and white even though color photography existed for decades. They're only in black and white to make kids think it was longer ago than it was.
Color photos were a thing, but they were significantly more expensive than black and white until around the 1970s. They were mostly saved for special occasions.
Plus, news papers didn't really do much full color until the 80s. Before the mid 50s it was basically just the comic pages that had color. It was the launch of USA Today in 82 that popularized the way newspapers use color today.
Photographers capturing events shoot a lot of film, and there was no compelling reason to shoot in color at the time.
It's almost certainly isn't a conspiracy to make students think it happened a long time ago.
They are in black ad white because that was what was frequently used for newspapers and stuff. Color film was often not as clear and the color tech they used was very hard to use with dark skin. So action shots of a march or speech ae just esier to do in black and white at the time.
Schools definitely like to pretend that its over and thats probably why they dont show any color pictures, as there were almost definitely color portraits of MLK and stuff, but the tech was actually a surprisingly limited factor as well.
I remember my first description of communism from a teacher in 5th grade.
"The government can force you to work in any field they decide. If they need dentists, they might just force you go to dentists school for 4 years. If after that, they decide they need plumbers, they will send you to plumber school and you will be a plumber. You don't get to choose. If you don't like it, they will send you to Siberia, which is a bad place."
In theory, they could have done something like that, but outside of wartime conscription, why would you?
Plus, for basic practical reasons, a communist government is still broken into a million organisations, which operate and hire just like anywhere else.
Which certainly persists to this day. People saying that the USA is "only 250 years old" while ignoring all of the First Nations/ indigenous peoples. It even ignores all of the European peoples that were there before the it was called USA.
I don't seem to encounter this with Canada very often which is interesting. And if we are going off of dates the current nation/ government is created why don't people say "oh well Germany is a young nation, they don't understand history"?
because through happy accidents (US tried to consciously do this through denazification but that was abandoned, while the USSR did successfully consciously do this for East Germany), the young (West) Germany was instilled with an extremely high sense of historical remorse partly because they were young.
i’ve never heard people say even half of “US is a young nation, they don’t understand history”
In Germany, a lot of the times it's taught that we barely did colonialism. Like, "colonialism was bad but it was mostly other countries". Meanwhile, in reality, German colonialism saw the first mayor genocide of the 21st century.
I'll add to that:
And that germany improved the lives of people in the colonies because they build railway and Electricity
Also: the classic "people didnt know the nazis would do such things." "Austria was the first victim of the nazis" both ofc wrong. Austria participated actively in all crimes germany did and the centiment that germany and austria should unite was wide spread in both. And OF COURSE THE PEOPLE KNEW WHAT THE NAZIS WERE PLANNING TO DO!
The group leader in dachau also told us "the gas chambers here were luckily never used"
Another good one is about reunification that it was all peacful and happy and sunshine, unlike its actually gutting out the entire industry and economy of east germany.
I remember that when I was getting this “lesson“, my first question was “what about medication’s?“ And my teacher replied with “those aren’t drugs“
And I replied “then why do they call it the drugstore?” then my teacher sent me to the principal’s office for being “smart“. I didn’t understand what was wrong with being “smart“.
Because you can quite easily grow your own weed avoiding them sweet sweet tax money you're forced to pay when buying tobacco products. That's the only logical explanation I could craft and I've been thinking about the same question for a long time.
About 100+ years ago, drugstores/pharmacies were referred to as the “Druggist“. In Europe, the term “Chemist” was more popular. I would imagine that would be the etymological origin of the term.
Yeah, if you do acid you'll stick a pencil in your eye, or you'll try to claw your skin off. Turns out the real bad part of acid was that sometimes you might get sad for a bit, and you'll probably reach a point where you want the trip to be over, but it's not a big deal.
Kind of related, but in fifth grade, on the first day of school, my teacher told us that our most important homework every day was to play and have fun, which gave me a lot of hope for the year.
But then it turns out that he assigned a lot of homework, and I felt like I never got to do the homework #1 of play and have fun. It seemed like he had lied to us about which homework was the most important because it didn't affect our grade whether or not we played after school, but if we didn't do homework, not only did it affect our grade, it also meant we got taken out of recess.
Asshole was trying to teach you “how the real world works” by touting self care as paramount and then assigning seemingly higher value tasks to test your penchant for a good “work-life balance”. I’d feel betrayed too!
And animals knew about it before that, if we don't want to be specist.
It was the old world civilisations discovering the new world for the second time, and for the first time that lead to wider contact. (Columbus himself died before it was found to be a whole continent)
When I was in school, they taught us the Tongue Map
For the uninitiated: the theory is that only certain sections of the tongue taste certain things, such as sweetness, sourness, bitterness, etc. It's also total bullshit.
I have heard of schools teaching this as a caution against blindly trusting authority. It's easily disprovable with a simple experiment, and we even did that in class. Simple stuff, like placing sugar on different parts of your tongue to see if you can only taste sweets in the sweet zone.
I told my teacher that I didn't taste any difference, it was all the same. She told me I must be wrong because that's not what it says in the book. That itself could have been a lesson about trusting authority, and I think that at the end of the day you could tell your class it was all an experiment. But that never happened and is a pretty heavy thing to lay on a six-year old.
Either way though, it's a valuable lesson in critical thought and blind trust.
Routine trade doesn't have many 'important' events likewards because running smoothly is just normal life. Only one instance of merchants trading poor quality copper is noteworthy, because it didn't change the trajectory of a violent conflict.
This reminds me. You often hear it said "history is written by the victors," and while there's truth to that, I much prefer "history is written by those who wrote it down."
Because writing was, for most of history, an expensive and time-consuming process that only a few had access to, there are some big implications from that. One of which being that nobody was very inclined to write down the mundane day-to-day because it just wasn't worth it and few had any interest in preserving it.
Ouh, i recently learned that war is likely a product of humans abandoning their nomadic lifestyle for settlements and agriculture.
Yes, there was certainly violence between humans before, but since tribes were always on the move, resources at their current location weren't as valuabe/ worthy of defence. No berries here? Guess we'll move on.
Another tribe fishes here already? What is increasing your survival chances? Moving along the shore, looking for a different fishing spot or violently take the occupied one?
If you grew crops on fields it absoluetly made sense to defend your location. You can't take these plants with you, but they'll yield a lot of food you wouldn't want, or could affort to lose.
Communism and socialism are bad and never worked, as well as the lie that the settlers in the Americas were merely escaping religous prosecution, rather than wanting to kill people for land as already privledged Yeomanry. Also that the slave trade existed in Africa, in reality slavery was not an industry in the African continent and instead Europeans leveraged a small technological gap to trade slightly more advanced technology purely for slaves, which created the slave industry.
Pretty much every history class not so subtly points you to the conclusion that the US had racism, it was bad, but we defeated it so people complaining now are just spoiled.
...when I was a kid. That shit is probably way worse now.
That's more a Yankee standard education. The semi-former Confederate states are more along the lines of it was good, but good got defeated, so we have to keep up the good fight.
That Custer was ambushed and nobody knows who killed him or why.
He broke ranks and took his troops into an ambush. His arrogant opinion of the fighting abilities of the Lakota and his lust for gold made his defeat elementary. But even though he was a deserter Sherman had to defeat the Indians and so he had to make it a tragic thing
That different parts of your tongue taste different things.
When I was little, we did an experiment where we were supposed to "feel" which part of our tongue we were tasting things with, and I was like, "pretty sure I taste it everywhere". That teacher was fired for her anger issues at the end of the year, and that was certianly one of the moments where it came out, haha.
Me coming up with excuses for missing work in High School: "Um, my parents both died in a horrible accident, I got cancer, and my dog ate my textbook."
Me coming up with excuses for missing work in my job: "Yeah, I didn't do it."
I frequently wanted to kill myself, the idea work would be even worse than school really didnt help because school was absolutely awful. So it will only get worse isn't a great message.
Not really a lie but I'm surprised how little they covered major international events, especially wars like WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam, etc.
All of them were basically a 3 paragraph maximum excerpt before you went back to reading about some random local policy or societal change that didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Biggest lie though was teaching kids that secondary sources like news publishers were reliable sources of information lol. NYT and the Washington Post sucked a long time before the internet. WP especially was just straight Imperialist propaganda sometimes.
Just because they're not a primary source doesn't mean they can't be biased or reporting false information.
Not really a lie but I'm surprised how little they covered major international events, especially wars like WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam, etc.
Is this in the US?
Because the version I learned about in my indoctrination American education was a lot of this was covered, but on a extremely Pro-american slant. Like literally everyone was struggling until America stepped in and stopped the Nazis, communists, etc. Even the narrative around the Vietnam war was that it was Americans helping the poor struggling citizens of Vietnam.
The bavarian socialist republic was a chaotic murderouse revolutionarny group that had to be crushed by the military because they were murdering people just for the fun of it and it was not supported by the people.
The exact opposite is the case. The people were big in support of it, it would have lead to full pure democracy but the SPD corrupted and destroyed they saw it as a threat to their perfered order of a none direct democracy with still clear societal seperation of wealthy and the rest
Not a lie, but a giant gloss-over: Germany was really late to the whole colonialism stuff. Almost all of the Americas, Africa and Asia was under colonial rule by the time we breifly got into the 'game'.
Left me with the impression that Germany was by far not as bad as other colonial nations. I wasn't even sure about where former Colonies were located, which countries are there currently and how German rule was. Turns out we were shitty overlords, like everybody else.
people also get really bent out of shape that history changes... because we learn more about it and historians change their consensus and interpretations of events over time.
Pluto is no longer a planet. It was a planet for a long time, but the definition changed because of new evidence that was discovered.
But people are so stubborn about stupid shit like this, they'd rather 'protest' these changes and new interpretations than just chill and be like 'oh ok, makes sense'. Or god forbid... choose to learn the new information rather than stay stubbornly ignorant about it.
Your teacher in 4th grade wasn't lying to you about Pluto or anything else, they just didn't know and they teach what is in the book, and the authors of the book probably didn't know either.
Omitting important context entirely is not simplification. Just saying 'these are the words and principals they aspired to, but did not do themselves' can be conveyed to young children but generally isn't taught until they are in their teens.
In USA I think it's all the religious stuff deifying the founding enslavers. Let's be honest these people were genocidal enslavers, rapists, etc. The "revolutionary war" was largely so that they could maintain slavery and their disgusting privilege. These people are idiotic fash, not the geniuses they're portrayed as. They were fighting for evil.
This understanding of the history of USA almost completely explains most of its history.
Fighting for evil? I know one example is not enough, and ignores completely the plight of native americans from the founders. But to say they were fighting for evil I would say is a mischaracterization.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Most likely, everyone dead by 1950 was a total bastard, if you measure them by modern standards. If you go all the way back to the 1700's, that's could include tolerating or participating in slavery, and of course colonial atrocities.
The American founding fathers were radical progressives for their day, though.
Literally everyone dead by 1950. Not because they were born bad, but because there's only so many ideological pits you can climb out of single-handedly. Statistically, there's going to be something that would, today, get whatever person ahead of their time canceled.
John Brown wasn't so big on women and queers, IIRC. Probably not non-Christians either, although that's just a guess, since a lot of abolitionism had religious undertones.
The “revolutionary war” was largely so that they could maintain slavery
The civil war obviously was. The revolutionary war was back when the British were still pretty heavily involved in slavery, though. Is there evidence this was a specific driving factor?
Most everything that's taught as the US "defending itself" against a foreign aggressor.
Yes, there are some specific instances the US legitimately needed to defend itself. However, this narrative that the US, especially as its promoted under the guise of "respecting our troops", is mostly false.
Most wars the US fought were imperial and fought for the ambitions of American oligarchs.
I'd actually argue the narrative that's central to US propaganda, that "soldiers fight for our freedom" is extremely harmful to said soldiers themselves. Their service and sometimes lives are wasted on the rich, not for freedom. People should really stop joining the military until that changes.
East germany being portrailed only as pure evil and horrible. While yes dictatorship and all that, how ever people did life normal lives and there were aspects avout east germany that were, especially for its time, ground breaking good!
MBTI is fun and seems to work well when done for no practical purpose
I participated in the MBTI communities in Reddit and people seemed to be sorted by something important they had in common you could see the stereotypes of the 16 types in their subreddit designs or their absence from reddit
It's useless in the workplace because it's too easy to game
I agree that there are clear patterns that arise, but there is no scientific evidence to suggest that the axes chosen (aside from introversion/extroversion) map importantly onto the brain. You could just as easily pick any other personality traits to form other patterns.
It's not scientific. It fails in science the same way it fails in industry, through being too easy to game. They chose the axes to follow the Jungian psychology model, that's why the words don't mean much like their usual meaning
Even introversion and extraversion don't mean their usual meaning. Although the rules that start with E are usually more extraverted (in the conventional sense) than those which start with I.
I don't know if its a lie exactly, but probably the most damaging thing was being conditioned into not defending or speaking up for myself.
I got attacked, thrown into a main road. I was told it was my fault for making myself an easy target because I was playing in some woods after school.
I so rarely ever defended myself because of how scared I was of the punishment being worse than the bruises. I used the internet to escape from it and my parents threatened to take away my PC if I ever got an after school detention. I felt like defending myself was wrong.
The only times I did defend myself was when it was extremely bad and I no longer cared about the possibility of punishment. A guy was sexually assaulting me and I punched him in the face so hard that he completely stopped, almost like his brain rebooted for a good several seconds. Then his nose started dripping blood over the floor.
Teacher was fucking furious with me. When asked why I did it I just looked at the floor and muttered "I don't know". I was probably about 14, I didn't really know what sexual assault was, like maybe if he had been ripping my clothes off? I just knew I didn't like what he was doing and wanted him to stop.
That there are different "learning styles", and that some people learn better with one over another. (Visual learner, auditory learner etc.) Same for "love languages"
It's pretty much not. Literally everyone learns best by "doing", and the other styles (reading, visual, auditory) depend much more on the content (visual graphs are good for geometry, reading is good for history etc) than the student. Also people's responses on surveys about learning styles are very inconsistent, it's pretty solidly disproven since about 2008
if you have disabilities that make you unable to learn in one style then of course some styles won't work for you. Near-sighted people who can't afford glasses already experience reduced performance in school. People like me who have Auditory Processing Disorder kind of get fucked in the ass if the teachers don't have any additional resources other than speaking in front of class.
But generally, learning styles was disproven. The difference of retention between ones "preferred learning style" and the control was insignificant, but learning in varied styles is better than only absorbing it in only one way. Relating information to another also helps more.
Oh boy, the list is long. We are teaching physics and chemistry like it's a dogmatic religion, raising people who will believe everything as long as authority says it's true.
Languages are taught as word and rules memorization, not use. You can spend ten years learning a language at school and you will not be able to hold a conversation with a stranger in country that speaks it.
Depending on how big of a fan of liberalism your history teacher is either every gay pair in history is just good friends or every two men who entered the same room in history are gays. No in-between.
Whole literary interpretation is just forced indoctrination. "Write your opinion so teacher can punish you if your opinion does not match the one written in government-approved book".
Biology as another religious dogma lookalike. Medicine is literally just statistical guesses. The drug you are given was most likely tested on rats and then tested on poorest students who needed cash to survive. It proved 90% successful on them, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work on you. There were failures like drugs tested on white students that happened to have terrible effects of black people, and hose drugs were just sent to africa because "they passed tests on volunteers". Your doctor isn't prescribing you shit because he knows it works, he guesses what will help you because most of your symptoms fit hundreds of diseases. Most of the time your doctor will prescribe you specific thing because it worked when he had similar patient recently. Gods I could go for ages on this, my wife is in medical profession and I was constantly bombarded by her analyzing all scientific studies during COVID and talking about how shitty the panic was. The only thing I learned from that is that I can trust local doctor in nearly all cases and government/media propaganda in almost none.
I'm not gonna touch on history. I already know that americans might as well read superman and batman comic books instead of their history books and the knowledge would be the same. My own country has serious victim-hood kink in it's history books that I'm severely sick of.
Home economics I think are the worst. According to what government wants youth to know about economy: food is a luxury, work is an obligation and trying to check what politicians do with your money is a crime.
I'm just going to address your first point, what aspect of physics and chemistry are taught as dogmatic? I was science I was taught was framed as the consensus based on the preponderance of evidence not religious dogmatic based on authority. Maybe your experience was different but even in the catholic school I went to that wasn't my experience.
We're constantly taught about "the laws of physics", etc., when no such "laws" exist. They're simply well established theories. Likewise we're told that physicists are discovering the "laws of the universe". Etc. This is rampant throughout physics - not just in education but in all media, news, etc. It feeds into grifts like "AI" because people are used to sloppy, meaningless language. It completely undermines any scientific understanding.
(I don't care/know enough about chemistry to comment on that. Probably more grifters using bullshit language to get funding.)
Laws is easier to say than well established theories :) seriously if you whole beef is simply the well established term i think you're trying to hard to find fault
You clearly don't know anything about the current drug development and clinical testing methods. Please look into it more before spouting such nonsense.
Wow now THAT is a wiild requirement.....Why would you need something tested in every human alive to know it's good enough to prescribe to someone that's going to die without it? Do you understand how statistical probability works?
If I told you you have cancer and I can give you a treatment that works 90% of the time and is your best option (which is literally how they frame it), that's not good enough for you? I shouldn't offer a service that I can't guarantee will save you, I should just say "sorry bud, I have a really good idea of what almost always works but....it hasn't been tested on you yet so we just shouldn't do anything"
I said nothing of the sort. I did suggest familiarizing yourself with the actual drug discovery timeline. But clearly you did not. Obviously testing a drug on everyone is stupid and impossible, obviously.
I what country is it taught like a dogmatic religion? Can't be Denmark, Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, France, or Spain (all countries I have personally lived in or have family). I wonder what your background is, as the only kinds of people I hear talk about science being taught like a dogmatic religion are either themselves heavily religious, or are conspiracy nuts.
That depends on the language. Some languages have lots of rules, others are more loose. Some have a difference between spoken and written languages. Here in Denmark the language curriculum has changed somewhat, from largely learning the written language to largely learning the spoken language. Either way, memorisation is how it has to start.
I've only ever seen the "in-between", never those extremes. I still wonder what country you're from. I've experienced this duality more in fandoms.
The literary classes I went to required everyone to defend their opinions and interpretations on whatever novella or short-story we've read. You'd actually lose points if you just parroted the common perception without being able to explain why you agree with it.
Statistical guesses, huh? Is that what repeated experimentation and observation is to you? Just guesswork? Yes, the panic during COVID-19 was indeed stupid, but what does that have to do with the study of biology? How does that relate to the studies your wife read or your trust in your GP?
By this comment I am guessing you come from Germany. Makes me question the validity of your previous statements.
For your first point, you can add Canada. It is not taught like that there (personal experience) although the more you learn, the more you see how the "laws" are more theories that actually explain things than 100 % fact. But that's beside the point the original commenter was making.
I hate it when people say "just theory". In science facts are theories. Everything is theory. Your whole existence is a theory. A theory is something that has held up to observations, testing, and scrutiny.
People conflate hypothesis and theory all the time. Doesn't help that all media basically does the same.
100 % agreed. I just never know exactly how to simplify things very well to appeal to people who may not have a strong Science background vs. people who do. I'm a working chemist, so I know what you're saying though.
225 Comments
JayleneSlide@lemmy.world · 192 pts · 18d
The United States was founded on principles of liberty and equality for all.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world · 84 pts · 18d
While I was taught that in elementary school, I was also taught about the 3/5ths compromise as early as middle school. By the time high school rolled around I was being taught about reconstruction and the corrupt bargain of 1877. I guess I’m lucky I got a good education in the north because I am aware that’s not necessarily the standard nationally.
blarghly@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 18d
I was also taught these things in the south, living in North Florida. As part of a 1 semester Florida history class in middle school, we also went into each of the spanish conquistadors and how they murdered their way across the continent.
tmyakal@infosec.pub · 18 pts · 18d
My AP history teacher gave us copies of Zinn's A People's History of the United States as a supplemental to our textbooks. She was an awful teacher overall, but I appreciated her trying to make sure we had multiple perspectives.
Then I went to an elite east-coast private college, where I almost failed US History because I called the professor out for teaching Lost Cause bullshit.
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 18d
Any academic peddling lost cause bullshit is a complete joke. Just curious, were they from the south?
tmyakal@infosec.pub · 12 pts · 18d
Of course they were.
He also characterized the 2000 election as "a perfect tie" that could've just as easily been decided by a coinflip instead of the more historically agreed upon view of the Supreme Court ratfucking Florida's recount.
AskewLord@piefed.social · 12 pts · 18d
Yeah we talked about colonialism in my middle school.
However, it was discussed as a fact of history and we went into detail about the slave trade triangle and all that.
And we did it without politicizing it. It was facts-based rather than pushing some weird political narrative about how america is heroic, or america is evil. Fancy that... just teaching history.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 17d
Sometimes moralizing is necessary. In Canada we had one teacher go into detail on the kidnapping of indigineous children and the residential schools they were sent to where they were often beaten or raped. I'm glad that teacher did that since many of my contemporaries were not aware of that history and some remain oblivious into adulthood. There's nothing worse for a nation than people having a false sense of pride in it (as we're seeing in the US currently).
AskewLord@piefed.social · 2 pts · 17d
That isn't moralizing dude. That's just telling facts.
The moralizing/politicizing part is when you tell the kids that it's their fault and they should feel bad about it. It isn't, and they shouldn't.
homes@piefed.world · 37 pts · 18d
Technically, it was founded on the principles of liberty and equality for all. Just not the practices of liberty and equality for all. it was an aspiration, a goal of our forefathers.
But the way they teach it in school is pretty deceptive— as if it was all accomplished magically on that day in 1776, when, even today, it’s a constant struggle— a goal that we’re much closer to, but still remains elusive. that’s the part they don’t teach.
blarghly@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 18d
Nah, I was taught the latter way in school. They pretty explicitly told us about the 3/5 compromise, the lack of voting rights for women, etc. Really, its pretty hard to avoid the idea that all people were not seen as equal in the eyes of the constitution when ratified, when you know that we have a whole unit on the civil war coming up.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 18d
I just do not believe this. These are people who regularly raped their slaves, and then enslaved the progeny.
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 17d
It was an aspiration for white men specifically. It took centuries for the definition of humanity to expand from that perspective.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 17d
No. Not at all. Give me a break. No women, natives, enslaved people, etc.
DaGeek247@fedia.io · 5 pts · 18d
If we didn't have this lie, people wouldn't be as mad when they found the parts where it is untrue.
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social · 148 pts · 18d
I remember in school learning about the different areas of the tongue tasting different things, and then we had an experiment to try it, and everyone was like "wow it works!" but I told the teacher it didn't work for me, and I got told I was doing it wrong =w=
Anywho, the entire thing about different tastes being localized to different areas is bullshit, so that's 1 point to me and 0 to the teacher
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world · 45 pts · 18d
My daughter and I did this for one of her science projects. I would drop lemon juice or sugar water somewhere on her tongue, and she was able to taste everything everywhere.
It was so long ago I don't remember, but I hope we got a good grade on that one!
blarghly@lemmy.world · 40 pts · 18d
The lesson is to give the authority figure the answer they want to hear so they'll leave you alone!
sgh@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 17d
This guy works ^
TabbsTheBat@pawb.social · 11 pts · 18d
Same experiment I had lol. Had to pat down our tongues with a paper towel and then put sugar/lemon/pepper and whatever else on it :3 and yeah, I very much could taste everything everywhere haha
DrPop@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 18d
Yah you didn't succumb to confirmation bias. I knew as a kid this was wrong because they said viewer was treated in the back... yeah then explain when i got laundry detergent on my fingers forgot about it and when to clean my fingernails layer and the tip of my tongue is absolutely tasting bitterness.
XiELEd@piefed.social · 5 pts · 18d
Was also confirmation bias in action
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
We “learned” that in 6th grade science.
I remember the same teacher had a test question which was something like “you and a friend are playing at a landfill, and your friend spills sulfuric acid all over themselves, what should you do?” and the ‘correct’ answer was “pour sodium hydroxide on the spill” instead of my answer of “pour water on the spill.”
I had another science teacher who made a huge deal about her chronic Lyme, which is this really weird alternative medicine thing.
myrmidex@belgae.social · 134 pts · 18d
30 years ago, it was still taught that we Belgians went to the Congo out of benevolence, to help lift up the people there. Not one mention of rubber quota or chopped off hands. Fuck that indoctrination.
manxu@piefed.social · 12 pts · 18d
It wasn't even "the Belgians." It was the king that owned the place, if I remember right.
myrmidex@belgae.social · 11 pts · 18d
Absolutely correct. Curriculum probably couldn't get into those matters of transition in fear of exposing the rotten stories surrounding it.
manxu@piefed.social · 14 pts · 18d
No wonder the King Leopold statues are under attack in Belgium like Confederate generals in the USA.
myrmidex@belgae.social · 5 pts · 18d
They kept silent about his palaces of course 🙃
vorpuni@tarte.nuage-libre.fr · 2 pts · 17d
I was explicitly told the reports of chopped hands were greatly exaggerated.
Disgusting.
myrmidex@belgae.social · 1 pts · 17d
Looking back it's amazing how ignorant school kept us.
one_old_coder@piefed.social · 104 pts · 18d
France: the French revolution was poor people rioting. We are starting to accept that it was rich people killing each other to replace monarchy, and using poor people as a side-effect, kind of like... what we have right now, what a coincidence!
oce@jlai.lu · 59 pts · 18d
It was "self-made" rich people (bourgeoisie) vs "birthright" rich people (nobility). We still got some cool side-effects though. Some of those bourgeois legitimately kick started what we call left and progressive politics today (Maximilien Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat).
becausechemistry@piefed.social · 22 pts · 18d
A lot of the early (1789) revolutionaries were from the nobility and even the clergy. Many of the reactionaries were up and coming bourgeois who were about to make their way into the nobility. Sorry Marx, you got a few things right, but that one was an oversimplification.
The vast majority of the victims of the reign of terror were commoners. The nobility were underrepresented at the guillotine, besides a few obvious high-profile cases.
It appears as though Robespierre legitimately lost his mind at some point. He attempted to introduce a “cult of the supreme being” with himself as high priest that focused on adhering to his own idea of virtue. Anyone not virtuous enough, which was effectively literally everyone else, was liable to be executed.
Early in the revolutionary wars, the revolutionaries had arrested so many people that the Paris jails were super overcrowded. Some people didn’t want the armies to leave Paris for the front lines because maybe all those jailed people would break out and cause trouble. So Marat proposed that they reduce the incarcerated population… by killing them all. September 1789 was a bad month to have been a petty thief in Paris.
So many of the popular notions about the revolution are distorted or just ass-backwards.
oce@jlai.lu · 5 pts · 17d
Yes, Marquis de Lafayette was a famous example of a noble going against the privilege system and in favor of democracy.
I think Robespierre is one of the pioneer of both left ideology, and left extremism leading to autoritarism and its crimes as we later saw in communist Russia and China.
becausechemistry@piefed.social · 2 pts · 17d
Give someone the power of life and death and they’ll start to equate attacks on them with attacks on the state which deserves death
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 17d
Thomas Münzer and the peasent revolts with the Memminger Charter and the ditmarscher peasent republic: Hold our beer we'll join
oce@jlai.lu · 1 pts · 17d
Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about how m. It's quite intriguing that his revolutionary ideas came from his theology according to his wiki page.
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 17d
If i may, please look into Kurt Eisner as well! And especially the type of democracy he wanted for bavaria and later germany (a council republik where you also elect your workplace leaders and can always unelect them!)
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 17d
Yes it did. "God created all men equal, so why is nobility and clergy worth more than a farmer" was his idea. Nobles hunted him. Even martin luther warned against him
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 18d
People seem to forget that it almost immediately led to a military dictatorship
oce@jlai.lu · 4 pts · 17d
It did definitely did, the Terror and then Napoleon empires were dictatorships. It took a century for a a democratic republic to stabilize with improvements for the common people happening progressively (under early republics but also under the empires).
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 17d
Thats how they teach it? Even here in germany (atleast in my state bavaria) they teach it that the revolutionaries were from all paths of life. Even some clerty and a few minor nobles were on their side. But the main front were the bourgeoisie (land owning city people)
Objection@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 18d
I think that's still an oversimplification.
The revolution started after the king called the Estates General in hopes of solving the debt crisis that had come in a large part from funding the American Revolution. The Estates General was a body made up of representatives of the three estates, the aristocrats, the clergy, and everyone else. The representatives of the third estate we're primarily new money bourgeoisie, but they were elected, unlike the other two, and could therefore claim to represent the people. After failing to come to an agreement, the representatives of the third estate broke away and formed the National Assembly.
How much the National Assembly actually represented the people is debateable, but they did have some claim to that, unlike the other groups. There were also several mass actions like the storming of the Bastille that indicated support for what the representatives were doing, at least in the early years of the revolution.
slazer2au@lemmy.world · 90 pts · 18d
Working hard will get you rewarded. When really you get dunked on with more work.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 18d
Many countries, like America, had actual economic mobility. There was a time where working hard could improve your economic status.
My family lost everything. Twice. Once to over-leveraging before a mortgage collapse in 83, and secondly to a house fire. We lived in an absolute fleabag of a moldy motel, a stereotype like you'd see on-screen, for about 10 months. The mold was so bad we had tiny mushrooms.
We got back, both times, to a stable home life in a mortgage and a fresh start. Dad paid off his home before retirement, by working his absolute ass off.
That's just not feasible now, just one generation later.
Anyway, there was a time when hard work did get you something; so treat that as a historical thing and not a falsehood.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18d
Ahh, so that's how the economy fell off a cliff. It all makes sense now...
slazer2au@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 18d
but it is a falsehood as it's not longer correct. I agree there was a time it was true, but that time has passed and we should not be teaching it.
Jaycifer@piefed.social · 5 pts · 18d
What do you think “historical thing” means?
joeljoelle@piefed.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 18d
This one for me too, hard work gets you nowhere without knowing people or ingratiating oneself and I am missing that gene
applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 18d
worse than that, if you do too good of a job you will be deemed too useful to promote, so not only will you be rewarded with more work but with career stagnation
AskewLord@piefed.social · 5 pts · 18d
for people who are workaholics that is a reward.
slazer2au@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 18d
until you are burnt out from overwork and can't move positions because you are "too valuable in your current role"
AskewLord@piefed.social · -2 pts · 18d
so just quit. if you're that good of a worker you'll easily get another job, probably with better pay.
slazer2au@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 18d
Not everyone has the luxury of quiting a job on a dime like that and constant rejections when looking for a new job while being dogpiled at work will not help someone's mental state.
AskewLord@piefed.social · -1 pts · 18d
but you have the luxury of being miserable and overworked, OK.
slazer2au@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
No, you have the misfortune.
AskewLord@piefed.social · -1 pts · 18d
i love fedi, everyone goes 'no but u'
reminds me of 4th grade.
clearly fedi is full of very mature superintelligent linux users, who resort to grade school insults when you don't agree with them.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
I think it's true, but I'm very few places. In the Marines, I was able to turn hard work into promotions, and now I'm regular life, I turn hard work into extra money, but only because I work for myself. So basically it only works in socialism or if you're at the top of the ladder.
dan1101@lemmy.world · 74 pts · 18d
Checks and balances in the US government. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Constitutional rights being unassailable.
All these are lies. I think it can be fixed, but it won't be easy.
sunsofold@lemmy.zip · 21 pts · 18d
That's less a lie and more 'teaching the ideal.' The problem isn't learning how the system is supposed to work. That's how you learn to be a mechanic. You learn how an engine is supposed to work so you can spot where it's gone wrong. The issue is more one of there are millions of people and they get 10 minutes on how it's supposed to work and then only 3 of them go into politics and learn how it actually works/doesn't work. Democracy requires more than a one week chapter on civics, once a year. We all have to be mechanics, or at least be prepared to try.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 18d
I mean, good luck. The Principle-Agent Problem is a classic of sociology, particularly with respect to business. If you can solve it, there's a Nobel in Economics waiting for you.
Democracy is an attempt at aligning in the interests of the plurality principles with their government agencies. But there's obviously a whole lot of flaws with democracy generally speaking, even before you get into the particulars of the American system.
I do think that the Lockean Social Contract, as the foundation for any governmental system, is a more interesting and more well-thought-out concept to explore than the mythology surrounding the American three-branch system. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent does an excellent job of breaking down how a public body can be turned against its own interests. Zinn's People's History gives a ton of insight into the underbelly of the American political beast and how people respond to industrial and state oppression. State and Revolution does an excellent job of describing the role of the state in society and how it can best be dismantled.
But the endless debate around whether US Government works as described or intended really loses the forest of social economy for the ideological tent post trees. Fetishization of the US system only contributes to its rot and our own downfall.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 17d
You mean Chomsky, the pedo-ally?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
The very same.
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world · 62 pts · 18d
That homework isn’t discriminatory. Not all kids have lives that allow them to do it. If you can’t cover all the bases in whole ass 8 hours I’m there a day that’s on you, not me. This is only true k - 12, college level courses are voluntary so having some homework could be considered ok.
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 18d
You do have a valid argument. There are lots of children that don't have an environment that allows them to do homework or study.
I don't think this means we should get rid of homework. Homework is essentially practicing what was learned in the classroom. Learning is a constant process, it doesn't automatically happen after being exposed to a topic during the course of an 8 hour day. Learning anything requires practice. (The neurons that fire together wire together.)
If little Billy did the homework and got a bunch of stuff wrong, that helps the teacher identify and diagnose the skill issue, (in theory.) If little Billy didn't do his homework at all, the teacher has no idea Billy could be struggling to learn the material until after he has been tested. It's a tool to help students practice, and a tool to help teachers assess and diagnose. It shouldn't be used as part of the rubric that determines what a child's grade for the material is at the end of the term.
village604@adultswim.fan · 19 pts · 18d
You also run into the issue of little Billy not doing his homework because he already understands the lesson and doesn't want to waste his time.
My math teacher would make me take tests sitting next to her because I wouldn't do homework but aced the tests. Eventually she realized I wasn't cheating, I was just able to grasp the concept from her lectures alone.
But quizes should be used to determine which students need extra practice on a subject. Since everything is digital now, it wouldn't be difficult to build the algorithm.
NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip · 16 pts · 18d
My grandmother was a school teacher. She was very clear about homework: kids should not have any. Kids are kids, they simply are not designed to sit still and work on school work all day.
She expected there to be learning time, play time, sports or activity time, family time, and bed time. There is something useful to be learned in all phases of a persons day, its just different.
If a child was struggling, she would stay after school and work with them, or spend more time during the day with them. At worst they may have to finish up something assigned in class they didnt finish in time, but thats it.
But this assigning homework for homeworks sake, she really did not like that idea at all.
She knew if Little Billy didnt know what was going on, not due to homework, but due to classwork and interaction at school.
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18d
No, discrimination is discrimination, school is as many hours as a full time job, if an education system can’t teach kids what they need to know in that amount of time it’s failing. Discrimination is wrong.
Crozekiel@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 17d
So give them the time to do the practice work at school, in the classroom? Why in any of that does it have to be done at home?
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 17d
Or clubs for that matter, which are what primarily determines your college and scholarship opportunities in my state.
Art3mis@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 17d
Both of these are on purpose. Its a filter to keep "a certain kind" (poors) out
marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works · 54 pts · 18d
Lies of omission count? I was in my 40s before I ever heard of the Tulsa Massacre.
SelfHigh5@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 18d
Same! And I grew up in the Midwest/south. I first heard of it from the show The Watchmen and really thought it was part of the fictional narrative until I got curious and looked it up. Terrible, and also terrible that it stayed so hidden.
marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 18d
I grew up in California and they didn’t teach it.
velma@sh.itjust.works · 51 pts · 18d
Listening to authority with no critical thinking will make your life easier.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 18d
They don't even teach that in the army, dude.
velma@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 18d
Isn't that the exact type of viewpoint the army wants in their soldiers? What are you talking about?
DaGeek247@fedia.io · 5 pts · 18d
They went over handling bad orders in basic training man.
velma@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 18d
Seems like a lot of soldiers still obey bad orders.
DaGeek247@fedia.io · 4 pts · 18d
Look man, saying that the army wants a complete lack of critical thought in its soldiers is an entirely different conversation from 'do soldiers even have critical thinking skills'. You gotta pick one before we can communicate together.
velma@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 18d
I was talking about lies that schools teach.
I'm trying to engage in conversation with you in order to figure out how that was connected to my original statement about the lies that are frequently taught in schools.
Also I'm not a man.
DaGeek247@fedia.io · 3 pts · 18d
Oh. Hey Velma. Sorry about the misgendering. Won't happen again.
*edit
My critical reading skills went out the window today.
You can read the previous stuff, but corsicanpuppy was saying the not even the army, which is more famous than public schools for dlsiking free thought, taught that listening to authority without giving it any critical thought was the way to go, much less public schools.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social · 47 pts · 18d
They still teach the bullshit Thanksgiving story in most schools in the US.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 18d
still? That's actually really surprising. Not sure if that's more of a whitewash or more of a greenwash. Like maybe the teachers are racist idiots, but maybe they know and just like the tradition and want to give the kids something fun to do that feels good in a dark world. I don't think greenwash is the right term for that, but yeah.
I know a couple teachers that teach younger kids, I'll have to ask what they do.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 18d
I don't know what the existential results of teaching them their country is based on slavery and genocide. History for children is just as much about mythology as anything.
Maybe some Germans can answer this question.
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social · 7 pts · 18d
I would be willing to bet that whatever the Germans teach it isn't some version of "and the jews were so happy that they piled into the trains and camps."
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 18d
One of the benefits of being occupied after a war is you're taught the history. It's what the Union should have done in the South.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 18d
😬
TheBeardmancer@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 39 pts · 18d
What they teach: humans only have five senses (touch, smell, etc) What is true: humans have ~20-30 senses (including time, balance, and many more)
EntheoNaut@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 18d
5 senses
4 states of matter
fossil fuel (oil is made from dead dinosaurs)
the American Dream
China is evil
Communism is bad
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18d
We were taught 5 states (solid/liquid/gas/plasma/condensate (BEC and superconductors)), which has always felt like a decent enough explanation for 3rd graders. If you barely understand how to read a phase change diagram, you don't really need the confusing duality of being told "hey so this is totally wrong if you're a chemist, but fundementally true if you're an engineer" when you're still iffy on concepts like "vacuum boiling is not witchcraft".
EntheoNaut@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 18d
I'm clearly a bit older (prior to plasma categorized) and was taught 4.
Warl0k3@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 18d
Huh, that's really interesting. I'd have expected it was prior to condensate being introduced, not plasma, since plasma can be easily demonstrated in the classroom but condensates have really only been easily demonstrable for at most two decades. Very curious - do you remember if you had a standardized curriculum, and if so which one it was?
Nibodhika@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
I also found it weird, I was taught 3 in school, but Plasma was already being considered a different state, just wasn't taught in schools. Condensate had only just been experimentally created and I didn't even knew about them until this thread.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Yeah, I graduated high school in 2005, and it was three phases of matter, but there's also plasma, but we aren't going to talk about it.
EntheoNaut@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 18d
Honestly I think it was just three now that you mention it and the other reply. Have no clue the curriculum, it was in the 70s.
boaratio@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 18d
Pictures of the civil rights movement are in black and white even though color photography existed for decades. They're only in black and white to make kids think it was longer ago than it was.
village604@adultswim.fan · 43 pts · 18d
Color photos were a thing, but they were significantly more expensive than black and white until around the 1970s. They were mostly saved for special occasions.
Plus, news papers didn't really do much full color until the 80s. Before the mid 50s it was basically just the comic pages that had color. It was the launch of USA Today in 82 that popularized the way newspapers use color today.
Photographers capturing events shoot a lot of film, and there was no compelling reason to shoot in color at the time.
It's almost certainly isn't a conspiracy to make students think it happened a long time ago.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 18d
I first realized that in high school. Where it was showing civil rights photos from the 60s-70s in black and white, and acted like racism was OVER.
Art3mis@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 17d
They are in black ad white because that was what was frequently used for newspapers and stuff. Color film was often not as clear and the color tech they used was very hard to use with dark skin. So action shots of a march or speech ae just esier to do in black and white at the time.
Schools definitely like to pretend that its over and thats probably why they dont show any color pictures, as there were almost definitely color portraits of MLK and stuff, but the tech was actually a surprisingly limited factor as well.
boaratio@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 13d
Thanks to everyone pointing out that teaching racism was more expensive if it was in color. Thanks for missing the point.
Edit: There are color photos of the civil rights movements, but my middle school textbooks chose to only use the black and white ones of people getting shot with fire hoses and beaten with billy clubs. Every other page of this hard bound textbook had color pictures in it, so saying it would cost more is a straw man argument. Strange coincidence. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/20/fact-check-most-civil-rights-era-images-werent-made-color/3210472001/
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 17d
"Communism is when the government does stuff."
Agent641@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 17d
I remember my first description of communism from a teacher in 5th grade.
"The government can force you to work in any field they decide. If they need dentists, they might just force you go to dentists school for 4 years. If after that, they decide they need plumbers, they will send you to plumber school and you will be a plumber. You don't get to choose. If you don't like it, they will send you to Siberia, which is a bad place."
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 3 pts · 17d
In theory, they could have done something like that, but outside of wartime conscription, why would you?
Plus, for basic practical reasons, a communist government is still broken into a million organisations, which operate and hire just like anywhere else.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17d
In the future we will spend days pining for Siberia to escape the heat waves.
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 17d
Yeah they don't teach this in social studies and any school in America.
They actually teach what socialism is and what communism is. That's where I learned it.
And why I know the difference between the two and what the definitions are both of these things.
polysexualstick@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 17d
In German schools, horseshoe theory is pretty much taught as a fact.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 17d
In light of German history, I guess that's to be expected.
It's not indisputable fact, even if a lot of people agree with it.
schmorpel@slrpnk.net · 34 pts · 18d
That Europeans discovered the 'new world', and that it was inhabited by 'savages' aka people with forgettable cultures, skills, and lifestyles.
one_step_behind@quokk.au · 2 pts · 18d
Which certainly persists to this day. People saying that the USA is "only 250 years old" while ignoring all of the First Nations/ indigenous peoples. It even ignores all of the European peoples that were there before the it was called USA.
I don't seem to encounter this with Canada very often which is interesting. And if we are going off of dates the current nation/ government is created why don't people say "oh well Germany is a young nation, they don't understand history"?
jumjummy@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 18d
I mean the USA as a country IS 250 years old, so I’m not sure where the issue is with that statement.
Aatube@piefed.social · 1 pts · 18d
because through happy accidents (US tried to consciously do this through denazification but that was abandoned, while the USSR did successfully consciously do this for East Germany), the young (West) Germany was instilled with an extremely high sense of historical remorse partly because they were young.
i’ve never heard people say even half of “US is a young nation, they don’t understand history”
frankenswine@lemmy.world · 32 pts · 17d
that we have 5 senses
lando55@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 17d
This is only relevant if you went to school after M Night Shyamalan blew up
MrSelfDestruct@piefed.zip · 31 pts · 18d
The people who fought at the Alamo were heroes.
polysexualstick@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 17d
In Germany, a lot of the times it's taught that we barely did colonialism. Like, "colonialism was bad but it was mostly other countries". Meanwhile, in reality, German colonialism saw the first mayor genocide of the 21st century.
nullspace@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 17d
Those poor mayors.
polysexualstick@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 14d
Oh god, sometimes I feel like my English is pretty good and then stuff like this happens... :D
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 17d
I'll add to that: And that germany improved the lives of people in the colonies because they build railway and Electricity
Also: the classic "people didnt know the nazis would do such things." "Austria was the first victim of the nazis" both ofc wrong. Austria participated actively in all crimes germany did and the centiment that germany and austria should unite was wide spread in both. And OF COURSE THE PEOPLE KNEW WHAT THE NAZIS WERE PLANNING TO DO!
The group leader in dachau also told us "the gas chambers here were luckily never used" Another good one is about reunification that it was all peacful and happy and sunshine, unlike its actually gutting out the entire industry and economy of east germany.
mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 17d
I read it as the first mayo genocide and was ready to cheer
Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 17d
You want to get rid of all mayonnaise?
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17d
On the 5th of May.
crimson_iris@piefed.social · 27 pts · 18d
Drugs are bad.
velma@sh.itjust.works · 44 pts · 18d
More specifically that all drugs are the same type and intensity of bad.
als@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 17d
Except alcohol, we tax that one
NickwithaC@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 17d
"it's not a drug, it's a drink!"
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 17d
"Its not a drug its food! Its bread!" - bavaria
homes@piefed.world · 31 pts · 18d
I remember that when I was getting this “lesson“, my first question was “what about medication’s?“ And my teacher replied with “those aren’t drugs“
And I replied “then why do they call it the drugstore?” then my teacher sent me to the principal’s office for being “smart“. I didn’t understand what was wrong with being “smart“.
snooggums@piefed.world · 12 pts · 18d
I see anyone who uses being smart as an insult really saying "Smarter than me."
Nibodhika@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 18d
Yeah, I've had that same discussion even as an adult. It usually follows like this:
"No, I mean addictive drugs"
"Like tobacco?"
"No, I mean psychoactive drugs"
"Like Coffee?"
"No, recreational drugs"
"Like Alcohol?"
I have never had someone give a description of why weed should be illegal but not tobacco.
applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 18d
no one ever told you? it was to fuck with leftists and racial minorities. the same reason for everything fun being illegal.
kurcatovium@piefed.social · 4 pts · 18d
Because you can quite easily grow your own weed avoiding them sweet sweet tax money you're forced to pay when buying tobacco products. That's the only logical explanation I could craft and I've been thinking about the same question for a long time.
Rugnjr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 18d
To be fair I was frankly amazed as a child that in American tv and media they so openly had shops called "drug stores"
homes@piefed.world · 1 pts · 18d
About 100+ years ago, drugstores/pharmacies were referred to as the “Druggist“. In Europe, the term “Chemist” was more popular. I would imagine that would be the etymological origin of the term.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 18d
I think they still use "chemist" in Europe
blarghly@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18d
mmm'kay?
Dozzi92@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18d
Yeah, if you do acid you'll stick a pencil in your eye, or you'll try to claw your skin off. Turns out the real bad part of acid was that sometimes you might get sad for a bit, and you'll probably reach a point where you want the trip to be over, but it's not a big deal.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 26 pts · 18d
Kind of related, but in fifth grade, on the first day of school, my teacher told us that our most important homework every day was to play and have fun, which gave me a lot of hope for the year.
But then it turns out that he assigned a lot of homework, and I felt like I never got to do the homework #1 of play and have fun. It seemed like he had lied to us about which homework was the most important because it didn't affect our grade whether or not we played after school, but if we didn't do homework, not only did it affect our grade, it also meant we got taken out of recess.
SelfHigh5@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 18d
Asshole was trying to teach you “how the real world works” by touting self care as paramount and then assigning seemingly higher value tasks to test your penchant for a good “work-life balance”. I’d feel betrayed too!
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 17d
Columbus discovered America.
At least this is what I was taught when I was in elementary school back in the '90s.
I have no idea if it's changed thus far.
Somsphet@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 17d
Columbus was the first European to explore Cuban isles. Lief Erickson explored Newfoundland about 400 years before I believe.
AppaYipYip@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 17d
Indigenous people discovered and settled the Americas >20,000 years ago.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 17d
And animals knew about it before that, if we don't want to be specist.
It was the old world civilisations discovering the new world for the second time, and for the first time that lead to wider contact. (Columbus himself died before it was found to be a whole continent)
psud@aussie.zone · 6 pts · 17d
I was taught Captain Cook discovered Australia, he wasn't even the first European
ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de · 10 pts · 17d
Everyone knows it was Cap‘n Crunch
Agent641@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
He wasn't a captain either
Crozekiel@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 17d
Neither was Cap‘n Crunch
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 17d
It's especially funny since dude never even touched USA, but USA is racist/genocidal enough to worship dude anyway.
DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 17d
I fucking hate Columbus day.
Let's pop open the diaraies of his crew mates and him and do a read a loud, then! Let's talk about it.
I passionately hate Christopher Columbus and the worship of him.
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 17d
I also despise the fact that it's a national holiday here in the States. I'm not even sure precisely what it is that we're celebrating.
I mean if we're going to commemorate explorers why not Marco Polo or Ponce de Leon or Lief Erikson.
Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone · 25 pts · 18d
When I was in school, they taught us the Tongue Map
For the uninitiated: the theory is that only certain sections of the tongue taste certain things, such as sweetness, sourness, bitterness, etc. It's also total bullshit.
I have heard of schools teaching this as a caution against blindly trusting authority. It's easily disprovable with a simple experiment, and we even did that in class. Simple stuff, like placing sugar on different parts of your tongue to see if you can only taste sweets in the sweet zone.
I told my teacher that I didn't taste any difference, it was all the same. She told me I must be wrong because that's not what it says in the book. That itself could have been a lesson about trusting authority, and I think that at the end of the day you could tell your class it was all an experiment. But that never happened and is a pretty heavy thing to lay on a six-year old.
Either way though, it's a valuable lesson in critical thought and blind trust.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 18d
That war is the connective tissue of human history, rather than the holes in the tissue.
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 18d
There is a lot more peaceful trade and cooperation in history than war, but because war is so disruptive and notable it makes the history books.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18d
That, and war makes for better narratives.
snooggums@piefed.world · 6 pts · 18d
Routine trade doesn't have many 'important' events likewards because running smoothly is just normal life. Only one instance of merchants trading poor quality copper is noteworthy, because it didn't change the trajectory of a violent conflict.
cattywampas@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 18d
This reminds me. You often hear it said "history is written by the victors," and while there's truth to that, I much prefer "history is written by those who wrote it down."
Because writing was, for most of history, an expensive and time-consuming process that only a few had access to, there are some big implications from that. One of which being that nobody was very inclined to write down the mundane day-to-day because it just wasn't worth it and few had any interest in preserving it.
SelfHigh5@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
Wow that is a really great way of putting it
KokusnussRitter@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 18d
Ouh, i recently learned that war is likely a product of humans abandoning their nomadic lifestyle for settlements and agriculture.
Yes, there was certainly violence between humans before, but since tribes were always on the move, resources at their current location weren't as valuabe/ worthy of defence. No berries here? Guess we'll move on. Another tribe fishes here already? What is increasing your survival chances? Moving along the shore, looking for a different fishing spot or violently take the occupied one?
If you grew crops on fields it absoluetly made sense to defend your location. You can't take these plants with you, but they'll yield a lot of food you wouldn't want, or could affort to lose.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 18d
Communism and socialism are bad and never worked, as well as the lie that the settlers in the Americas were merely escaping religous prosecution, rather than wanting to kill people for land as already privledged Yeomanry. Also that the slave trade existed in Africa, in reality slavery was not an industry in the African continent and instead Europeans leveraged a small technological gap to trade slightly more advanced technology purely for slaves, which created the slave industry.
winkledinkle@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 17d
Pretty much every history class not so subtly points you to the conclusion that the US had racism, it was bad, but we defeated it so people complaining now are just spoiled.
...when I was a kid. That shit is probably way worse now.
solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 17d
That's more a Yankee standard education. The semi-former Confederate states are more along the lines of it was good, but good got defeated, so we have to keep up the good fight.
thisbenzingring@lemmy.today · 14 pts · 18d
That Custer was ambushed and nobody knows who killed him or why.
He broke ranks and took his troops into an ambush. His arrogant opinion of the fighting abilities of the Lakota and his lust for gold made his defeat elementary. But even though he was a deserter Sherman had to defeat the Indians and so he had to make it a tragic thing
treadful@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 18d
fartographer@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 17d
Texas History
psud@aussie.zone · 12 pts · 17d
That a, e, i, o and u were the only vowels. So what's the vowel in sky?
I got marked incorrect for answering "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y"
aloofPenguin@piefed.world · 4 pts · 17d
I remember learning "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y too" in 2nd grade (at least >10 years ago)
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 11 pts · 17d
That different parts of your tongue taste different things.
When I was little, we did an experiment where we were supposed to "feel" which part of our tongue we were tasting things with, and I was like, "pretty sure I taste it everywhere". That teacher was fired for her anger issues at the end of the year, and that was certianly one of the moments where it came out, haha.
NABDad@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 17d
The annual lie: Next year isn't going to be as easy as this year!
Middle School will be harder than Elementary School.
Junior High will be harder than Middle School.
Senior High will be harder than Junior High.
College will be harder than Senior High.
Working a real job will be harder than School.
catboy_slim@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 17d
"They won't take late work"
NABDad@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 17d
Me coming up with excuses for missing work in High School: "Um, my parents both died in a horrible accident, I got cancer, and my dog ate my textbook."
Me coming up with excuses for missing work in my job: "Yeah, I didn't do it."
catboy_slim@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 17d
And at work, you give yourself an A and go for a C.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
You don't want that to go on your permanent record.
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 17d
I frequently wanted to kill myself, the idea work would be even worse than school really didnt help because school was absolutely awful. So it will only get worse isn't a great message.
CrumblyLiquid@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 18d
It would be interesting if this question prompted people to write the country as well as their answer.
mlg@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 18d
Not really a lie but I'm surprised how little they covered major international events, especially wars like WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam, etc.
All of them were basically a 3 paragraph maximum excerpt before you went back to reading about some random local policy or societal change that didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Biggest lie though was teaching kids that secondary sources like news publishers were reliable sources of information lol. NYT and the Washington Post sucked a long time before the internet. WP especially was just straight Imperialist propaganda sometimes.
Just because they're not a primary source doesn't mean they can't be biased or reporting false information.
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 18d
Is this in the US?
Because the version I learned about in my indoctrination American education was a lot of this was covered, but on a extremely Pro-american slant. Like literally everyone was struggling until America stepped in and stopped the Nazis, communists, etc. Even the narrative around the Vietnam war was that it was Americans helping the poor struggling citizens of Vietnam.
mlg@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 17d
Yeah, I'm guessing the more liberalized history books chose to just omit it as opposed to justifying it.
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 17d
The bavarian socialist republic was a chaotic murderouse revolutionarny group that had to be crushed by the military because they were murdering people just for the fun of it and it was not supported by the people.
The exact opposite is the case. The people were big in support of it, it would have lead to full pure democracy but the SPD corrupted and destroyed they saw it as a threat to their perfered order of a none direct democracy with still clear societal seperation of wealthy and the rest
KokusnussRitter@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 18d
Not a lie, but a giant gloss-over: Germany was really late to the whole colonialism stuff. Almost all of the Americas, Africa and Asia was under colonial rule by the time we breifly got into the 'game'.
Left me with the impression that Germany was by far not as bad as other colonial nations. I wasn't even sure about where former Colonies were located, which countries are there currently and how German rule was. Turns out we were shitty overlords, like everybody else.
Chivera@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 18d
Eating veggies will give you superpowers.
blarghly@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 18d
I mean, it makes you poop better, which is kind of like a superpower
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18d
"then how come I never see anyone with superpowers?"
zxqwas@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 18d
Most of the things are more or less simplified for children.
I would not go as far as to call them outright lies.
crimson_iris@piefed.social · 14 pts · 18d
There are many outright lies though. There is also much underestimation of the intelligence of children.
AskewLord@piefed.social · 5 pts · 18d
people also get really bent out of shape that history changes... because we learn more about it and historians change their consensus and interpretations of events over time.
Pluto is no longer a planet. It was a planet for a long time, but the definition changed because of new evidence that was discovered.
But people are so stubborn about stupid shit like this, they'd rather 'protest' these changes and new interpretations than just chill and be like 'oh ok, makes sense'. Or god forbid... choose to learn the new information rather than stay stubbornly ignorant about it.
Your teacher in 4th grade wasn't lying to you about Pluto or anything else, they just didn't know and they teach what is in the book, and the authors of the book probably didn't know either.
snooggums@piefed.world · 4 pts · 18d
Omitting important context entirely is not simplification. Just saying 'these are the words and principals they aspired to, but did not do themselves' can be conveyed to young children but generally isn't taught until they are in their teens.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 17d
In USA I think it's all the religious stuff deifying the founding enslavers. Let's be honest these people were genocidal enslavers, rapists, etc. The "revolutionary war" was largely so that they could maintain slavery and their disgusting privilege. These people are idiotic fash, not the geniuses they're portrayed as. They were fighting for evil.
This understanding of the history of USA almost completely explains most of its history.
Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 17d
Fighting for evil? I know one example is not enough, and ignores completely the plight of native americans from the founders. But to say they were fighting for evil I would say is a mischaracterization.
Treaty of Tripoli
How could someone evil write something this cool?
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 5 pts · 17d
Most likely, everyone dead by 1950 was a total bastard, if you measure them by modern standards. If you go all the way back to the 1700's, that's could include tolerating or participating in slavery, and of course colonial atrocities.
The American founding fathers were radical progressives for their day, though.
Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 17d
I also can't say that for certain; John Brown, comes to mind.
The best president is probably FDR, who was also dead by 1945.
Edit: Because it's kind of funny for me, I'm leaving the John brown part, but you definitely meant people in power.
There are plenty of bright spots if you look.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 15d
Literally everyone dead by 1950. Not because they were born bad, but because there's only so many ideological pits you can climb out of single-handedly. Statistically, there's going to be something that would, today, get whatever person ahead of their time canceled.
John Brown wasn't so big on women and queers, IIRC. Probably not non-Christians either, although that's just a guess, since a lot of abolitionism had religious undertones.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org · 6 pts · 17d
The civil war obviously was. The revolutionary war was back when the British were still pretty heavily involved in slavery, though. Is there evidence this was a specific driving factor?
AcesFullOfKings@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 18d
HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 15d
Most everything that's taught as the US "defending itself" against a foreign aggressor.
Yes, there are some specific instances the US legitimately needed to defend itself. However, this narrative that the US, especially as its promoted under the guise of "respecting our troops", is mostly false.
Most wars the US fought were imperial and fought for the ambitions of American oligarchs.
I'd actually argue the narrative that's central to US propaganda, that "soldiers fight for our freedom" is extremely harmful to said soldiers themselves. Their service and sometimes lives are wasted on the rich, not for freedom. People should really stop joining the military until that changes.
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 17d
East germany being portrailed only as pure evil and horrible. While yes dictatorship and all that, how ever people did life normal lives and there were aspects avout east germany that were, especially for its time, ground breaking good!
Agent641@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 17d
Pretty good tools and machines came out of GDR
chunes@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18d
mbti
psud@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 17d
MBTI is fun and seems to work well when done for no practical purpose
I participated in the MBTI communities in Reddit and people seemed to be sorted by something important they had in common you could see the stereotypes of the 16 types in their subreddit designs or their absence from reddit
It's useless in the workplace because it's too easy to game
chunes@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 17d
I agree that there are clear patterns that arise, but there is no scientific evidence to suggest that the axes chosen (aside from introversion/extroversion) map importantly onto the brain. You could just as easily pick any other personality traits to form other patterns.
psud@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 17d
It's not scientific. It fails in science the same way it fails in industry, through being too easy to game. They chose the axes to follow the Jungian psychology model, that's why the words don't mean much like their usual meaning
Even introversion and extraversion don't mean their usual meaning. Although the rules that start with E are usually more extraverted (in the conventional sense) than those which start with I.
RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 17d
Three Cue Reading Comprehension.
All because phonics had been taught for so long that cheaper options for textbooks began to become available due to copyrights ending.
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 17d
I don't know if its a lie exactly, but probably the most damaging thing was being conditioned into not defending or speaking up for myself.
I got attacked, thrown into a main road. I was told it was my fault for making myself an easy target because I was playing in some woods after school.
I so rarely ever defended myself because of how scared I was of the punishment being worse than the bruises. I used the internet to escape from it and my parents threatened to take away my PC if I ever got an after school detention. I felt like defending myself was wrong.
The only times I did defend myself was when it was extremely bad and I no longer cared about the possibility of punishment. A guy was sexually assaulting me and I punched him in the face so hard that he completely stopped, almost like his brain rebooted for a good several seconds. Then his nose started dripping blood over the floor.
Teacher was fucking furious with me. When asked why I did it I just looked at the floor and muttered "I don't know". I was probably about 14, I didn't really know what sexual assault was, like maybe if he had been ripping my clothes off? I just knew I didn't like what he was doing and wanted him to stop.
Rugnjr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 18d
That there are different "learning styles", and that some people learn better with one over another. (Visual learner, auditory learner etc.) Same for "love languages"
Nibodhika@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 18d
What is the bullshit about that? AFAIK that is true and not everyone learns the same way.
Rugnjr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 18d
It's pretty much not. Literally everyone learns best by "doing", and the other styles (reading, visual, auditory) depend much more on the content (visual graphs are good for geometry, reading is good for history etc) than the student. Also people's responses on surveys about learning styles are very inconsistent, it's pretty solidly disproven since about 2008
XiELEd@piefed.social · 2 pts · 18d
if you have disabilities that make you unable to learn in one style then of course some styles won't work for you. Near-sighted people who can't afford glasses already experience reduced performance in school. People like me who have Auditory Processing Disorder kind of get fucked in the ass if the teachers don't have any additional resources other than speaking in front of class.
But generally, learning styles was disproven. The difference of retention between ones "preferred learning style" and the control was insignificant, but learning in varied styles is better than only absorbing it in only one way. Relating information to another also helps more.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 18d
Left brain/right brain BS too. I cringe so hard every time I hear an adult talk about it.
Creativity@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 18d
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · -19 pts · 17d
Oh boy, the list is long. We are teaching physics and chemistry like it's a dogmatic religion, raising people who will believe everything as long as authority says it's true.
Languages are taught as word and rules memorization, not use. You can spend ten years learning a language at school and you will not be able to hold a conversation with a stranger in country that speaks it.
Depending on how big of a fan of liberalism your history teacher is either every gay pair in history is just good friends or every two men who entered the same room in history are gays. No in-between.
Whole literary interpretation is just forced indoctrination. "Write your opinion so teacher can punish you if your opinion does not match the one written in government-approved book".
Biology as another religious dogma lookalike. Medicine is literally just statistical guesses. The drug you are given was most likely tested on rats and then tested on poorest students who needed cash to survive. It proved 90% successful on them, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to work on you. There were failures like drugs tested on white students that happened to have terrible effects of black people, and hose drugs were just sent to africa because "they passed tests on volunteers". Your doctor isn't prescribing you shit because he knows it works, he guesses what will help you because most of your symptoms fit hundreds of diseases. Most of the time your doctor will prescribe you specific thing because it worked when he had similar patient recently. Gods I could go for ages on this, my wife is in medical profession and I was constantly bombarded by her analyzing all scientific studies during COVID and talking about how shitty the panic was. The only thing I learned from that is that I can trust local doctor in nearly all cases and government/media propaganda in almost none.
I'm not gonna touch on history. I already know that americans might as well read superman and batman comic books instead of their history books and the knowledge would be the same. My own country has serious victim-hood kink in it's history books that I'm severely sick of.
Home economics I think are the worst. According to what government wants youth to know about economy: food is a luxury, work is an obligation and trying to check what politicians do with your money is a crime.
DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 17d
Stuff like this is why I think it shouldn't be allowed to homeschool your children.
EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 17d
I'm just going to address your first point, what aspect of physics and chemistry are taught as dogmatic? I was science I was taught was framed as the consensus based on the preponderance of evidence not religious dogmatic based on authority. Maybe your experience was different but even in the catholic school I went to that wasn't my experience.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -10 pts · 17d
We're constantly taught about "the laws of physics", etc., when no such "laws" exist. They're simply well established theories. Likewise we're told that physicists are discovering the "laws of the universe". Etc. This is rampant throughout physics - not just in education but in all media, news, etc. It feeds into grifts like "AI" because people are used to sloppy, meaningless language. It completely undermines any scientific understanding.
(I don't care/know enough about chemistry to comment on that. Probably more grifters using bullshit language to get funding.)
Ninjasftw@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 17d
Laws is easier to say than well established theories :) seriously if you whole beef is simply the well established term i think you're trying to hard to find fault
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 17d
I wonder how they will react when they discover dictionaries and their brutal authoritarian chokehold on the words that make up language.
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 17d
You clearly don't know anything about the current drug development and clinical testing methods. Please look into it more before spouting such nonsense.
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · -18 pts · 17d
What nonsense? Are you trying to tell me every drug is tested on every person alive?
FrostyTheDoo@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 17d
Wow now THAT is a wiild requirement.....Why would you need something tested in every human alive to know it's good enough to prescribe to someone that's going to die without it? Do you understand how statistical probability works?
If I told you you have cancer and I can give you a treatment that works 90% of the time and is your best option (which is literally how they frame it), that's not good enough for you? I shouldn't offer a service that I can't guarantee will save you, I should just say "sorry bud, I have a really good idea of what almost always works but....it hasn't been tested on you yet so we just shouldn't do anything"
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 16d
I said nothing of the sort. I did suggest familiarizing yourself with the actual drug discovery timeline. But clearly you did not. Obviously testing a drug on everyone is stupid and impossible, obviously.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 17d
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 16d
For your first point, you can add Canada. It is not taught like that there (personal experience) although the more you learn, the more you see how the "laws" are more theories that actually explain things than 100 % fact. But that's beside the point the original commenter was making.
Tattorack@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 16d
I hate it when people say "just theory". In science facts are theories. Everything is theory. Your whole existence is a theory. A theory is something that has held up to observations, testing, and scrutiny.
People conflate hypothesis and theory all the time. Doesn't help that all media basically does the same.
BreadOven@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 16d
100 % agreed. I just never know exactly how to simplify things very well to appeal to people who may not have a strong Science background vs. people who do. I'm a working chemist, so I know what you're saying though.