Things you learned at school that aren't so anymore?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

Inspired by this. I'll start.

When I learned Chemistry in high school, there were exactly two named elements after the Actinides. They were called Kurchatovium and Hahnium. Now they're called Rutherfordium and Dubnium.

Let's try to avoid The Great Politics Mess Up -- that's too obvious an example.

[woo me with science]

1. Nine planets in our solar system.

I miss Pluto.

[pokerfan]

25. Pluto's making a serious run at a comeback

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20023542-501465.html

Astronomers are learning what biologists have learned: that nature doesn't organize itself into tidy little categories like family/genus/species.

Astro 101 updated: Our solar system has millions of objects. Some are larger than others.

[woo me with science]

26. Cool!

Thank you so much for posting this - I had no idea!

I love that Pluto is taking no prisoners in the poll...
Go Pluto!
:applause:

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

2. The earth is a cube

If you sail too far to the left or right, you fall off :)

j/k I'm not that old.

[Burma Jones]

3. That you use punchcards to program a computer.......

[applegrove]

22. At the end of the school year, computer science students at my high school used

to throw all those punch cards out the window. It was like very large confetti.

[Lionel Mandrake]

47. IBM cards lasted from 1890 to the 1970s.

Long before the age of computers, IBM made equipment to punch holes in cards, sort the cards, and print out their contents, either on a separate sheet of paper or on the card itself. The card handling business began with the 1890 US census. It ended with the development of computer terminals (and later, desktop computers) that included both a screen and a keyboard.

Now the equipment to handle IBM cards, like the steam locomotive, is obsolete. They can both be found in museums.

[jmowreader]

54. They were also called Hollerith cards...

after Herman Hollerith, who invented them, and they were used to help the Nazis kill off the Jews.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/ibm-j27.shtml

[Lionel Mandrake]

55. Very interesting.

The connection with the Nazis is new to me.

In retrospect, it makes sense. Card sorting was the state of the art in database management during the 30s and 40s. Of course the Nazis would be interested. And of course IBM would want to do business with them.

[quakerboy]

79. Also found in my parents

possessions.

[hobbit709]

4. There is no Upper Volta. It is now Burkina Faso.

[snailly]

60. We spent half of a year "studying" Upper Volta in grade 5

Ridiculous '70's teaching.

[Odin2005]

68. Who called the USSR "Upper Volta with Nukes"?

Was it Reagan?

[grilled onions]

5. Maps Are Out of date

We studied countries that today do not exist. Short hand would help you get a secretarial job. Spelling. Counting. Today with spell check,calculators and whatever high tech devices are used in an office many skills required then are not even needed now.

[Lionel Mandrake]

42. When people rely on there spell check programs,

their likely to make certain mistakes.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Dinosaurs weren't what we were taught they were.

Turns out they were large, unpleasant birds.

[Lionel Mandrake]

44. There were large and small dinosaurs 100 million years ago.

Dinosaurs were once thought to be cold-blooded and slow-moving. They were probably warm-blooded and fast moving. Some of them had feathers but could not fly. Others had feathers and could fly; we call them birds. The earliest birds, like other dinosaurs, had teeth. The dinosaurs that are alive today, i.e., modern birds, have no teeth.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

63. Love your sig line.

"The wise man does not piss into the wind." :rofl:

[deutsey]

7. How to use a typewriter, n/t

[Xicano]

8. That there was this country named "Soviet Union"

eom.

[nolabear]

9. The world will end if you dangle a participle.

It won't. Oh, the things our teachers had to put up with.

[Lucian]

10. I learned as a little kid that's it's not okay for strangers to play with your balls.

Now, when I go to the airport, everybody be grabbin' my balls. :wtf:

[woo me with science]

14. +1 nt

[TZ]

11. The old nature vs. nuture controversy no longer exists

All behavior is now considered to have both a genetic and environmental component. So its more like how much is nature, how much is nuture...

[Odin2005]

Yup. Too bad it's still pushed by people with axes to grind.

[LeftishBrit]

76. Very true - but I have an old developmental psychology textbook from 1908 that makes that very point

The dogma set in slightly later, and has been hard to shift.

[lightningandsnow]

85. Holy shit! That debate was the entire base of my grade 11 anthro/psych/soc class.

And that was in 2007-2008!

Granted, I knew that most of what was taught in that class was oversimplified, bad science, or just plain wrong, but they're probably still teaching it.

[Bertha Venation]

12. Not in school, but from an excellent book. Only that it's been disproved:

Patient Zero.

And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts (RIP)

[JohnnyLib2]

13. A Catholic can't be elected president.

Civics teacher, 1959. And he was Catholic.

[csziggy]

15. Americans could go anywhere in the United States and not have to provide ID

Unless they were operating a vehicle. That may have been true for some Americans in 1966 when I took ninth grade Civics, but it has not been true for minorities, ever, or for any Americans for a very long time now.

[woo me with science]

16. Margarine is better for you than butter. nt

[Kaleva]

17. Used to be okay to smoke on the bus and bring guns to school

[Odin2005]

70. Bring guns to school!?!

I guess my youth is showing!!! :wow:

[El Supremo]

18. How to use a slide rule.

[cloudbase]

27. I've still got mine,

as well as one of those nerdy slide rule tie clips.

[Kali]

19. we (the US) were almost ALWAYS the good guys and white males were

just about the ONLY people that ever accomplished ANYTHING

[Lasher]

43. The SCOTUS is always above partisan politics.

Yessir, you can always take that one to the bank, I was told.

[Odin2005]

71. My teenage self believed that until 2000. It CRUSHED me.

[kimi]

20. That John S. Mosby was one of the greatest

patriots ever born in these United States. He put Abraham Lincoln to shame.

I went to an elementary school named after him, and we put on a play every year based on his exploits as the "Gray Ghost" of the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Whoops, I mean "The War of Northern Aggression".

Honestly, until I left the state of Virginia at about 11 years old, I really thought that the South had won the Civil War. :crazy:

[meow2u3]

21. The East Indies no longer exist

They're now known as Indonesia.

[pscot]

23. Nebucadnesser put Mischak, Ishak and Abedneggo

into the fiery furnace and god got them out. Of cours I suspected it might not be true when the nuns taught us about it in 6-grade history.

[pokerfan]

24. Fusion energy is just ten or fifteen years away

No wait, that's still true! Thirty years hence. :(

[Bucky]

37. Yep, right after we all convert over to the metric system.

[tigereye]

28. Pluto, that there were only 103 elements? (I think), various historical inaccu-

racies...


:hi: CPD!

[GreenPartyVoter]

29. Not school related, but I discovered something that my middler schoolers didn't know. They

are expecting something in the mail, so one went down at 10:30am to see if it was there. Well, there was plenty of other mail but not the piece they were waiting for. So they asked me if they could go check again in another half hour. It took me a minute to realize they thought that snail mail, like e-mail, received deliveries all day long!

Wish my dad the former rural route carrier had still been around to hear that one. LOL

[csziggy]

69. I learned from Sherlock Holmes stories that British mail was delivered twice a day

At one point in time. Probably only true in central London, but it blew my mind even as a kid in the 60s to think that could be possible.

[woo me with science]

84. Oh, that's funny! nt

[PeaceNikki]

30. .

oops, wrong thread. :blush:

[pink-o]

31. I was in school in the 60s and 70s. Where do I start?

1) Sharks never get too close to shore, they're basically cowards and don't want to be near humans.

2) Plants and lower animals have no feelings and can't experience pain.

3) There is no homosexuality in the animal kingdom (see: bonobos at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo)

4) Never buy anything you can't afford. Save your money, then go to the store and purchase your goods.

5) If your record album gets warped, put it back into the sun between 2 pieces of glass and it will be straight again. Also, if it skips, place pennies on the needle to force it into the grooves.

6) American cars are far better than foreign imports.

And........the lesson that's done the biggest 180 since I was a kid....

7) As Watergate has proven, Republicans in the govt will always weed out their own for crimes and corruption. Ah, the good old days!!

[mia]

32. Now there are five oceans instead of four

Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern, Arctic

http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/oceans.htm

[UrbScotty]

65. They should name it the Reagan Ocean!

:sarcasm:

[Bucky]

33. My econ teacher told us to budget 1/3 of our income for housing costs

The average American today pays 46% of his/her income for housing. The one-third figure only applies to HMO coverage now.

[Curmudgeoness]

34. Duck and cover in case of nuclear attack. nt

[Bucky]

35. Words I was taught to spell in school: Peking; Mao Tse-tung; Calcutta; Czar; hiccough

for you whippersnappers, I'm talking about Beijing, Mao Zedong, Kolkata, the Tsar, and hiccups.

[MilesColtrane]

45. Don't forget Bombay/Mumbai and Cambodia/Kampuchea.

Somehow those old episodes of "Bewitched" wouldn't be the same with, "Paging Doctor Mumbai, paging Doctor Mumbai".

[Lionel Mandrake]

48. Movies are still made in Bollywood,

not Mollywood. :-)

[Bucky]

50. Leningrad, Ceylon, Zaire (a name we really needed), British Honduras, Greenland...

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

53. Greenland???

Greenland is still Greenland!

Or not?

[Odin2005]

72. Heh, I'm 25 and I say "Bombay".

[Bucky]

36. My English teachers told me a preposition was something you should never finish a sentence with.

[Iggo]

39. Those are words to live by.

:P

[Odin2005]

73. You English teacher was an uneducated idiot.

English is not Latin, such BS I shall not put up with!

[Johnny Harpo]

38. A Phone Call Costs A Dime

[Lionel Mandrake]

49. It used to be a nickel. nt

[Sabriel]

40. Girls are incapable of handling power tools in shop class.

Fuck that.

[SeattleGirl]

41. And boys can't learn how to cook

Thankfully, by the time I was in high school in the early '70's, girls were starting to take shop class and boys were starting to take home ec.

[mix]

46. self delete, oops I violated your rule. nt

[Graybeard]

51. There are more stars in heaven than sand on all the beaches.

While this is certainly still true, it vastly underestimated the size of the universe. With modern technology, including the Hubble telescope, we now know that there are more *galaxies* in the universe than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches on Earth.

[LawnKorn]

52. Ronald Reagan told us ketchup and pickle relish were vegetables

[annabanana]

56. Czechoslovakia!

Isn't.

[racaulk]

81. Neither is Yugoslavia!

:hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

57. "No country has ever voted in a Communist government, and no Communist

country has ever been able to change its government."

[Duer 157099]

58. That nerve cells cannot regenerate n/t

[Duer 157099]

59. That all infectious agents contained nucleic acid.

That was the accepted truth until prions (infectious proteins) were discovered.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

61. Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

Are now Tanzania.

Where they discovered tanzanite in the 60s. A beautiful stone.

[Politicub]

62. Peanuts are an acceptable snack for everybody

I don't remember anyone in second grade going into anaphylatic shock during afternoon snack time, but I could have missed it from being high on asbestos fibers and lead paint chips.

[kwassa]

64. That mimeograph machines were high-technology printing devices.

[nolabear]

66. And you could get a contact high off of them.

I can still hallucinate that smell.

[Odin2005]

67. 5 Biological Kingdoms: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera.

Now it's 3 Domains; Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya; each with several kingdoms.

The Kingdoms of the Eukarya are:

Excavata: Euglena, Giardia, African Sleeping Sickness
Rhizaria: "Shelled" amoebae
Plantae: Land Plants, green algae, and red algae
Chromoaveolata: Cilliates, Red Tide, Malaria, water molds, diatoms, kelp
Amoebozoa: true amoebae, slime molds
Fungi: molds, yeasts and 'shrooms.
Animalia: Animals

[zen_bohemian]

74. 3 years of Gregg Shorthand.....what a waste of high school classtime

I could have been taking more art classes....but no, to be a secretary, it was absolutely imperative that we took it...I never ever have used it...

[LeftishBrit]

75. London imports raw materials and exports manufactured goods.

Not even true any more in the 1970s, when I learned it; and definitely not true now (Britain might be in a better state if it was!)

And in my first couple of years in primary school: there are twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. That became out of date before we had even properly learned it!

[axelfox]

77. That we would be living in ...

spaceships by the year 2000. Yeah,that is what scientists said during the 80's.

[FloridaJudy]

78. Anything made in Japan was crap.

And nuclear power will make electricity so cheap it won't even be metered.

Oh, and that ducking under a wooden desk and covering the back of your neck with your hands will protect you from a nuclear explosion.

[LiberalEsto]

80. Columbus discovered America

and Americans are all equal under the law.

[Blue_Tires]

82. Fifth grade, 1988: Despite my protest to the contrary, they had to tattoo it in my brain

There is only ONE proper spelling and useage of "All Right"

A much sadder one is the lack of advances in space exploration...By now many of my teachers predicted that NASA would have moon colonization and made inroads to the outer planets in the solar system (and we're still having issues getting to mars)...

I also learned that sex is just for procreation inside of marraige, and after teenage years pass, women do it more out of duty then of sensual pleasure (yes, I did learn this in a Catholic school)...

And there is NOTHING IN LIFE MORE INPORTANT than making the team/winning the big game/getting a hot date for the prom or homecoming/getting a high SAT score...If you fail any of those things your life is OVER!!!

There's way too much to point out, but pretty much 80 percent of what I learned in driver's ed was wrong...

How important it would be for my future career to be able to type 80 words per minute...

CPD, you already know how lacking our history educations were...All we were ever taught about Central and South America had to do with the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans...

One of my respected science teachers in the late 80s predicted a future of university-size (10,000-20,000 students) high schools and fully automated cars that drive themselves, so far he was wrong on those...BUT to his credit he also predicted the PDA and the Kindle...

[raccoon]

83. The US is #1 and foreigners, even Europeans all want to be Americans.

I don't know if it was ever stated, but it certainly was implied.

[lightningandsnow]

86. The only religions that people who live here practice are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

And yes, you have to choose one.

I had a teacher (this is in the early-mid 2000s, not long ago), who banned us from wearing Halloween costumes to class on Halloween because "If you are truly a practicing Jew or Christian, you do not celebrate Halloween."