this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Mildly Interesting

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

It just listed a bunch of myths and old wive's tales that no one at the time thought were very credible anyway. Literally all of the "facts" they list were common chain letter/email memes that everyone trotted out at parties to sound smart and hip. Nobody ever believed what DARE told us, we always knew Christopher Columbus was an asshole, and every first aid class I've taken recommended against the whole tilt you head back thing.

[–] MiraLazine 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any suggestions for more widely spread myths? Wanna incorporate more but had trouble finding them as being definitely taught in schools

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

widely spread myths

That's your problem. You can't seriously argue that these myths were being taught as fact in school because they weren't. They're all myths spread by common idiots through word of mouth. Common public misconception on the facts can and does happen very independently of actual education, as evidenced by antivaccers lately. The only things you could honestly add to a list like this would be some scientific theory that has been definitively disproven or amended. Maybe something like changing training about CPR would qualify also.

But those kinds of things are boring. It's much spicier to claim that people were taught that Columbus's contemporaries thought the world was flat even though that was just an over simplified story told to 5 year olds to explain why they got out of school on Columbus Day. Meanwhile anyone that didn't sleep through trigonometry should learn that Eratosthenes showed the world was round about 1700 years before Columbus. I would believe that there are some lazy educators out there that would teach such myths as fact, but to claim that it was at all universal is silly. The whole premise of "old generations dumb, look what they believed" is just so smug and offensive. I must be getting old.

[–] joel_feila 3 points 1 year ago

Well DARE was taught in schools and that program did spread myths about drugs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can’t seriously argue that these myths were being taught as fact in school because they weren’t.

One of my elementary teachers taught us the taste bud map myth.

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