25 Things You Learned in School That Aren’t Actually True

Image via We Heart It
Image via We Heart It

When it comes to school, you expect everything you learn to be the truth. Why would someone teach you something that’s false? Aren’t they supposed to be making you smarter? Aren’t the children our future?

I doubt that teachers are feeding false information to students because they want to make them stupid. Truthfully, I think there are just dumb people out there, and somehow they managed to snag teaching jobs. Or, perhaps, THEIR teachers are to blame. It’s a vicious cycle of stupid teaching stupid.

We’ve all heard things in school that turned out not to be exactly true. Whether new information came around disproving a previously held theory, or you just realized you’re teacher was an ignoramus, you discovered that you learned something completely false.

That’s what happened to these 25 people. They learned something in school that they later discovered to be completely false. And, chances are, you were taught some of the same things. Hopefully by now you realized that it was complete BS.

These 25 things you learned in school aren’t actually true:


1.

During the height of the AIDS scare in the mid to late-80’s, one of my health teachers taught us that HIV could be spread by simply hugging or touching someone infected with it.

2.

No one was actually burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials. While in England condemnation by the church actually did lead to some burnings, in the New England colonies the more secular laws called for hanging on suspicion of witchcraft.

3.

That it’s impossible for girls to be colorblind. In 8th grade science, my teacher started showing our class those circles made of different colored dots. If your vision is normal, you see a number. If you’re colorblind you either don’t see a number or you see a different number. When I started calling out different numbers than others in my class, he started trying to like, stump me. He couldn’t believe I was colorblind. He was shuffling through all his cards with the circle-dot-numbers. He just about refused to believe it. This was in 1996. I’ve learned since that it’s still incredibly rare for girls to have colorblindness, but we’re out there!

4.

That cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis.

5.

The US will be switching to the metric system soon.

Written by Alex Cogen

Alex is a New Yorker currently living in Austin. She loves cats, grass, and latex but unfortunately is allergic to all 3. She makes mom and dad jokes more than she cares to admit (jk she'll admit it loud and proud). She isn't as funny as she thinks she is. She is the founder of thelazygurl.com.