Things People Learned In School That Turned Out To Be Totally Wrong

Eric Lund

Feb 25, 2022 10:00 AM EST

In theory, early schooling is supposed to be for everyone to have a good foundational knowledge of objective reality. Maybe throw in a workable contextual knowledge of the society they live in and some basic socialization, and you've got yourself someone who's ready to take on the world.

Too bad that's not exactly what we learned in school. A lot of us spent days or weeks learning about cartoon versions of history, systems of writing that no one uses anymore, and times tables that are more or less irrelevant when you have a phone.

And since we were taught this stuff by authorities, it's really hard to parse out which stuff is fact and which stuff is hearsay or just "a fun thought your teacher had that day."

Are we splitting hairs here? School did teach us a lot of foundational knowledge like basic reading, writing and problem solving. But it also planted some stuff in our heads that later paved the way for obvious things people learned embarrassingly late in life.