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Bizarre "facts" I was taught at school and subsequently had to wipe from memory
School—what is it good for? Hammering square pegs into round holes till they’re literate and numerate enough for factory work? Or does its true purpose lie in creating an elite force of trigonometrists and diorama-makers? It’s a mystery. One thing I’m sure of: there was an awful lot I had to unlearn after graduation.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learnt in school”
—Albert Einstein
Blue bloods
Once upon a semester, a teacher—I cannot recall, but sweet, merciful Jesus, let it not have been a science teacher—informed the class that deoxygenated blood is blue.
Indeed, if you’re summertime enemies with the nearest star, your blood-glutted veins appear blue, but that’s down to the particular translucency of your fair skin. Did this moulder of young minds believe people with dark skin pumped green blood?
Did Miss take the phrase “blue bloods” literally (and further interpret “eat the rich” as a directive)? Or did she, like far too many educated people, learn an untruth in the same uncritical and unengaged way she swallowed many a fact? By the way, research shows we learn eight new facts a day—that’s as many spiders as we swallow a night!
The explanation for why we never see blue bloodshed was that once exposed to the air, blood is no longer deoxygenated, turning red instantly. Deoxygenated blood is dark rather than bright red, but, dammit, it’s not blue. (If your blood is blue, perhaps you have the cephalopodic cyborg body of my dreams.)
10% of a brain
Where did the idea that we only use 10% of our brain originate? This belief was so prevalent that, at one point in the late 1900s, we were up to our ears in self-help gurus nattering away about “unlocking the untapped potential of our minds”.
What, precisely, were we missing? Telekinesis? Telepathy? The knack for folding fitted sheets while some of us can’t even get them over the mattress? (And end up using the fitted sheet as some sort of cacoon/blanket which is ingenious really and saves you splurging on this Shark Tank product.)
There’s a psych joke that goes something like, “I used 100% of my brain once; it was one hell of a seizure”. You use all parts of your brain, even if not every single neuron is firing at once. Now, as for the theory that some people only possess one-tenth of a brain to use—that’s something I could entertain.
Just a theory
Evolution is just a theory. That dismissive little “just”. Gravity is “just” a theory—Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. I have to tether myself to the floor so I won’t float off into the stratosphere, but in theory, I shouldn’t have to. Of course, a scientific theory is more than a hunch; it is a comprehensive explanation of a large body of evidence.
Moreover, my 10th-grade science textbook felt the need to dedicate a chapter to the Christian creation myth before delving into evolution, but why stop there? Why not explain how Zeus crafted the swan's long neck so he could take a gander at comely mortal women while they bathed?
Meanwhile, Jean Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg Lamarck would argue the swan’s neck naturally lengthened in this pursuit over generations. Why wasn’t he given equal billing with Darwin in the textbook? It’s almost as though not every explanation is of equal merit…
Anywho, what misleading or downright odd things were you taught in school?
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'Hammering square pegs into round holes till they’re literate and numerate enough for factory work?'
This, absolutely.
I am reminded of one particular incident. It was a parent-teacher evening. I had one lovely little boy in my year 2 class who had been born a few weeks premature, and so had slipped over the cut-off between Year 1 and Year 2. He was delightful, but the fully timetabled regime that Year 2 demanded was clearly not floating his boat. (Just as it didn't float mine, but that's by the by.) After some preliminary cautious sounding out of each other, I and his parents agreed that he would have been far happier, more fulfilled and better served by being allowed to play in a sand pit. And I wasn't allowed to facilitate that, as it meant I wouldn't be able to tick the boxes that needed ticking. Because education is not about centring the child, it's about centring the regulatory administrator who might turn up in your staff room at a moment's notice and demand to know why you haven't got your rainbow-coloured performance graphs up on the wall.
And that's why I am no longer a teacher.