Ask Lemmy

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.

The United States was founded on principles of liberty and equality for all.

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

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.

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.

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!

Working hard will get you rewarded. When really you get dunked on with more work.

that we have 5 senses

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 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.

"Communism is when the government does stuff."

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.

Lies of omission count? I was in my 40s before I ever heard of the Tulsa Massacre.

They still teach the bullshit Thanksgiving story in most schools in the US.

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.

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.

Listening to authority with no critical thinking will make your life easier.

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.

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)

That Europeans discovered the 'new world', and that it was inhabited by 'savages' aka people with forgettable cultures, skills, and lifestyles.

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.

The people who fought at the Alamo were heroes.

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"

Drugs are bad.

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.

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.

Texas History